Category Archives: Resources for faculty

Resources for faculty, Tips for Students and Faculty

Co-Authoring with Undergraduates in the Humanities II: Peer Review and Publication

In my last post on co-authoring with undergraduates, I shared my experience collaborating with undergraduate co-authors on a humanities research project. I gained some valuable insights from the process of co-authoring an article that emerged from that project. That post, published in December 2022, was completed shortly after we had submitted that article to a scholarly journal. At the end of the post, I promised a second post addressing the peer review process. I am truly delighted to be able to provide that update now, shortly after we were notified that the article was accepted after a substantive revise and resubmit. Here, then, rather sooner than expected, I share three insights from my experience navigating peer review with my co-authors.

​The journal to which we submitted our article in November responded both quickly and prolifically, providing within two months no fewer than four (!) detailed and thoughtful readers’ reports that collectively recommended specific major revisions. I understood this to be surprisingly good news: when we had submitted to a well-respected subfield journal, I had anticipated that we would get informative rejections that would help us revise before submitting to a lower tier venue. However, it quickly dawned on me that most faculty members have very different experiences and expectations for writing feedback than undergraduates do. This was especially true for undergraduates like my co-authors, whose academic careers had been spent at a small liberal arts college they chose because of its supportive professors. In other words: the most critical comments any professor had offered on their writing had nothing on the infamous Reviewer 2!

Rebecca Evans
Rebecca McWilliams Ojala Ballard, Florida State University

What to Expect, Part I: Contextualize the Process

​The readers’ reports were generous, clearly written with an awareness that they would be read by undergraduate researchers. Even so, they did not hold back from candid criticism of the weaker parts of our argument. Before sharing the reports, then, I framed them for the students. I explained both that I had been prepared for a rejection and that this expectation was based not on any perceived weakness in their writing, but rather was my baseline expectation for first submissions. I also explicitly unpacked the differences between professorial feedback and readers’ reports, prepared them to receive less gentle comments than they had previously enjoyed, and offered my honest interpretation of the reports: that they were blunt in pointing out the areas that needed the most work, yes, but that the explicit praise they offered on matters large and small was an indication of sincere excitement about the project. Once we had talked this through, I shared the reports with them. After they had had a chance to review them, we met up in person. We began by processing the experience on a personal level, and I validated both the pride they expressed in the compliments our work had been given and what we had already achieved together, and the prickly defensiveness they admitted had flashed up at the harsher assessments. My preparation on the front end, the rapport we had built over the course of the project, and the real-time, face-to-face format in which we were debriefing made this an effective way to move past negative reactions and into the second part of our work that day: coming up with a shared list of small and large revisions to be made, delegating each revision item to the person initially responsible for drafting that section, breaking those items down into smaller scaffolded tasks, and agreeing on a timeline by which each task would be completed and shared with the group.

What to Expect, Part II: Practice the Humility You Preach

​ Many of the revisions were located in the textual readings on which the students had taken point, and identified issues common even to the most talented undergraduate writers: first, insufficient engagement with current scholarly conversations on the text or topic at hand, requiring another (focused and abbreviated!) research pass; second, slightly too opinionated responses to texts, requiring a reframing to emphasize analytic interpretation rather than personal preference. However, the reviews also suggested that at the largest scale the argumentative framework was stretched too thin, and that the opening in particular was a bit overstated, calling for a reframing to center what they all found to be the very compelling heart of the argument. This was entirely on me—the result, I think, of trying to preserve every insight that had been meaningful to our group throughout the process, rather than really honing in on the strongest arguments. Revision meant not just shepherding the students through modesty in accepting major critiques, but demonstrating that modesty myself. We talked about this openly and agreed that I would send them my revisions while they were still researching theirs, both to help guide them in targeting the newly refined argument, and to model what a real overhaul rather than surface edits looked like. All of the readers who responded to the revised article not only recommended publication with extremely minor edits, but also expressed admiration at the depth and breadth of revisions we had taken on.

What to Expect, Part III: Carry the Load

​ I will take every opportunity available to praise the intellectual maturity, enthusiasm, and dedication of my student co-authors: they are both superstars. Even so, as in the first stage of the process, I had to do a lot of project management during the R&R. The majority of our substantive work was truly collaborative, but I quickly realized that it would be much more efficient simply to take the fiddly little details on myself rather than insisting on doing everything together. Copy-editing, double-checking citations, trimming our revised piece back down to word count, and drafting the editorial memo: I asked for their review and approval of the final results, but my taking point on these saved us all a lot of time (and, I think, is only fair given that the students were at this point recent graduates with full-time jobs, while this labor was actually work toward my full-time job!).

​In all, I found the process of co-authoring with undergraduates to be both smoother and more rewarding than I had anticipated. Look out for our forthcoming article, “Collectivism as Adaptation in Climate Fiction,” in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and in particular for the first academic bylines of Southwestern University graduates Col Roche and Elena Welsh!

Note: I published my last post under the name Rebecca M. Evans.

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Resources for faculty, Tips for Students and Faculty

Co-Authoring with Undergraduates in the Humanities

I often hear that collaborative co-authored humanities research with undergraduates is a problem rather than an opportunity. My colleagues concerns aren’t entirely unreasonable. Humanities faculty publish co-authored work much less frequently than our colleagues in the natural and social sciences do. Similarly, our division (and in particular my home discipline of English) tends to frame knowledge as the result of one scholarly mind at work. This is especially acute in my subfield—contemporary literary studies—where the steps of gathering and of interpreting material happen almost simultaneously as the scholar reads the literary text. As a result, it is much harder to identify hierarchies of co-authors than in academic fields in which student collaborators take on discrete, bounded parts of the data collection and analysis processes.

In this post, I share my experience co-authoring with undergraduates as we worked on an article together, from our initial mentored research experience through submitting the piece for publication. I will speak honestly about the difficulties I encountered, but I want to emphasize the benefits it afforded—not only for the students, but for my work and thinking as well.

Rebecca Evans – Southwestern University

The project began in a collaborative and mentored research experience. Funded by my institution, two students worked with me for six weeks on a project surveying major trends across a broad corpus of “cli-fi,” or climate fiction. After a one-week calibration stage, we spent three weeks independently recording our findings in relation to a set of shared questions: representations of climate science; engagements with climate justice; discussion of adaptation and/or mitigation; relevant climate communication frameworks; and notable formal and stylistic features. During the last two weeks, all participants extended this work into their individual humanities research interests they had developed during the project: I worked on the book chapter that the research project was initially proposed to support; the two students took up, respectively, Indigenous cli-fi and climate fantasy. As our project drew to a close, we reflected on our various interests and findings, and a shared argument began to emerge. All of us were pushing in some way against the dominant critical praise of cli-fi as representing realistic futures; all of us were also finding that our texts were most, and most successfully, interested in navigating questions of community formation and collectivity in relation to climate catastrophe. Now the only outcome required by our institution was that the students present their work at annual research symposium. But the students had grown excited about the project and invested in the broader implications of the work they had begun to pursue. When I mentioned the possibility of seeking to publish, they seized on the idea of a co-authored article, and our work began. Three insights from that process on co-authoring with undergraduates are below.

What to Expect, Part I: Emergent and Evolving Arguments

Rarely do I begin writing an article without a very clear sense of the argument. This project was quite different. Because it was the combined product of three minds, it took different shapes at different points: we had to adjust and expand earlier argumentative structures that didn’t quite “fit” our shared goals; brilliant points (mostly theirs!) that detracted from the overall arc needed editing to be less central or saved for future projects. In the end, this was good for all of us. I saw how the experience cemented the value of revision and the
writing process for the students, turning them into even more mature writers and peer editors. I also found the experience useful during my own simultaneous process of working on my book manuscript, helping me to get back in the habit of rereading, realigning, and letting projects take the best shape possible, not just the shape I had initially planned.

What to Expect, Part II: Necessary Division of Labor

Undergraduate co-authors may be better prepared to write some sections than others. My co-authors produced thoughtful, purposeful, and attentive close readings; but they were less equipped to make the case about how these readings fit within larger conversations, or to articulate how these readings intervened in contemporary scholarly debates. This isn’t to say they didn’t understand the big picture! But dividing our work so that I was responsible for the argumentative frame while they tackled the readings and analysis proved immensely useful for us. Not only did we move more efficiently—I also saw how valuable it was for them to get firsthand experience with how their astute insights and instincts could develop into scholarly arguments. Subsequent drafts of the article showed how this exercise had tightened and advanced their critical voice, as they fine-tuned their individual points to fit into the broader arc. Meanwhile, papers they wrote for me in subsequent classes clarified for me how formative this experience was to their confidence and their ability to tackle more ambitious arguments.

What to Expect, Part III: Slow and Unsteady Pacing

Like many humanists, I’m accustomed to working largely at my own pace, with whatever lapses and sprints that my schedule (and my relationship to the projects in question!) demands. Co-authoring with undergraduates means all of the pauses that are inevitable when different schedules collide—delays that many of us may have experienced mostly on the editorial end of things, and are only exacerbated by the fact that undergraduate co-authors are juggling even
more obligations, with even less extrinsic motivation to finish an academic article. My student co-authors were organized, dedicated, and eminently responsible. Even so, things moved slowly, and required consistent project management and strategic long-term scheduling on my end. The downside: those on tight tenure clocks may not find this to be the most efficient path toward a publication line. The upside: this project benefited immensely from time and perspective and helped me remember the profound value of sitting with ideas and delving into them rather than rushing.

As of this point, we have completed a draft of the article and are preparing to submit it to an academic journal. Stay tuned for an update post on the blog reflecting on the experience of navigating peer review while co-authoring with undergraduates in humanities research!

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Undergraduates Reveal Key Feature of Homeric Scholia Using Advanced Computational Tools

Advanced computational tools such as natural language processing and word embedding can often provide excellent opportunities for undergraduate research in the humanities. This summer, a College of the Holy Cross summer research team completed a project titled “A Composite Model for Homeric Scholia Transmission.” Natalie DiMattia, Augusta Holyfield, Rose Kaczmarek, and I explored the little-studied scholia (historical scholarly annotation) of Iliad manuscripts and used natural language processing methods to analyze the topics within them. As part of the project, we have made available for the first time a diplomatic edition of the scholia within Books Eight through Ten of two Iliad manuscripts. Our work demonstrates that the sources of Homeric scholia are varied across manuscripts with no single stemmatic source. In other words, scribes used material creatively instead of simply copying from earlier works.

Holy Cross research team: Natalie DiMattia ‘22, Rose Kaczmarek ‘23, Anne-Catherine Schaaf ‘22, and Augusta Holyfield ‘22
Holy Cross Research Team: Natalie DiMattia ‘22, Rose Kaczmarek ‘23, Anne-Catherine Schaaf ‘22, and Augusta Holyfield ‘22

Beyond the Stemmatic Model

Previous scholarship assumed a stemmatic model of transmission, with later annotations deriving from earlier ones like branches on a tree, all leading back to singular source. Because we recognized that scribes creatively mixed material from multiple sources, we applied computational methods to identify common units of scholia content. These units have been compressed, expanded, and combined in different manuscripts, making an unrooted network a more accurate model for scholia than a stemmatic tree.

No single method accounts for all the diagnostic features of the scholia: thematic content, technical language, non-linguistic markings on the manuscript, and chronological indications. Therefore, we drew on a variety of natural language processing methods such as TF-IDF, a measure of the proportional importance of words to the document; topic modelling, which identifies recurring clusters of co-occurring terms; and word embeddings, which model sequences of terms. Using this new methodological framework, we created a composite model of the relationships between scholia. The resulting network has no stemmatic family tree, or even one source. Rather, it illustrates an interweaving, two-thousand year scholarly debate about the Iliad.

Image produced by natural language processing

The MID’s Groundbreaking Work

Our research builds on work my teammates and I have been doing for four years as members of the Holy Cross Manuscripts, Inscriptions, and Documents Club (MID), focusing on the Homer Multitext Project. Part of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, the Homer Multitext Project has consistently engaged with and produced groundbreaking scholarship in Homeric studies. The Holy Cross MID was founded ten years ago, and has been working with the Homer Multitext Project ever since, providing students many summer opportunities to work on these incredible manuscripts. Professor Neel Smith, our faculty mentor, additionally serves as one of the Information Architects for the project. Students have turned their work into senior theses as well as presenting at conferences in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Mexico City, and Krakow.

Beginning in my first year, when I took Introduction to Ancient Greek and joined the club, I learned the foundational skills required to work with these texts. I have continued my work in MID throughout my three years at Holy Cross, as well as continuing on through Advanced Greek, and I have taken on an active role helping see through projects at Hackathon, as well as testing and introducing the new software to other members. In the spring of my sophomore year, I audited a course on archaeological data analysis, which gave me an initial overview of working with digital notebooks and forms of analysis such as topic modelling. My previous summer research allowed me to gain experience with the forms of textual analysis we continued to develop, as well as how to be a more efficient reader and editor of the manuscripts.

Creating New Research Opportunities

This summer, my team and I developed our modeling methods even further by tackling the scholia, a much more complicated corpus. My senior thesis will focus on the theme of weaving on the Iliad and its scholia, and my experience doing research has been invaluable, not just for the technical skills it gave, but in my work directly building and processing the corpus that I will use for my thesis research.

My team received the high honor of having a paper based on our research accepted at the SCS-AIA, the preeminent conference for classics and archaeology in America. The session we will be presenting at, Ancient Makerspaces, is unique among classics conferences for its combination of the classics and digital humanities, and the scholars and presentations there will offer a fascinating introduction to the latest developments in the fields I am most passionate about. The work my team has done will continue throughout the year as we expand our corpora of books of the Iliad, and even though I’m graduating, I’m very excited to see what the next generation of MID scholars at Holy Cross produce.

Anne-Catherine Schaaf is a senior Classics major at the College of the Holy Cross.

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Resources for faculty, Tips for Students and Faculty

Improving Online Teams for Undergraduate Research

Keeping undergraduate students engaged and energized in ongoing research teams is an activity made more challenging by the need to meet exclusively online. Dr. Nathaniel Stern, a Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a dual appointment in Art and Mechanical Engineering, shared his experience working with online teams at a recent gathering of the Wisconsin Council on Undergraduate Research (WisCUR). Afterward, CURAH caught up with Dr. Stern to hear a bit more.

CURAH: What has the move to online teams taught you about what students need?

NS: In brief, there are four things my students need: empathy, energy, structure, and materiality. I provide these things through check-ins, “stokes,” schedules, and visual and material engagement.

I should say also that teams of students need these things regardless of present circumstances, but the need has certainly been amplified by having to meet online.

CURAH: Let’s take these one at a time: tell us about empathy.

NS: In terms of empathy, every meeting begins with a prompted sharing exercise: “The best part of my week was . . .” or “I feel up/down about X” or “I am looking forward to Y.” Sometimes I have them arrange what the empathy check-in will be. I participate, too, and we all respond to each other. In addition, I spend a little extra time with each student on rotation. Here, the goal is to make them feel heard and seen.

CURAH: Now, energy—and what are “stokes”?

NS: Stokes are little things we do to inject energy into our gatherings. We have silent dance parties, play Simon Says, throw invisible knives and balls to each other, set up poses and make drawings on our screens. The main goal here: we want to get out of our seats and get excited about what we are doing. Often, we tie this to where we are in the project, to aesthetics or brainstorming for new ideas, that sort of thing.

CURAH: How do you structure your online teams?

NS: We meet weekly, typically in groups of five. We maintain schedules and timelines, core to-do lists, and assignments using Gantt charts, Google sheets, MURAL with virtual sticky notes, and more. We work on these together, and my one or two most senior students take charge. They use these tools to create investment in the whole project, as well as accountability for individual tasks.

CURAH: Tell us what you mean by materiality.

NS: In my mind, it’s related to the stokes we do for energy. We want to remember we have bodies, that we are bodies, and that we make use of them. But this also means paying attention to visual materials and, well, things. We use MURAL for brainstorming frequently because it mimics a physical whiteboard and post-its. We send materials to each other to play with, we sketch and write during our time together as well as on our own, and we share out. In the fine arts, it should be said, we often confuse medium and discipline, so I make clear to my students that matter really does matter here!

One thing that also helps is that I actually make all of this transparent to my students. I let them in on what I am doing and why. I ask them for feedback on what they need. This mirrors how we make decisions about research direction together, and how we decide who works on what.

CURAH: Can you tell us about one of the projects you’re currently working on with student teams?

NS: I am working, in collaboration with artist and director (and UW-M alum) Samantha Tan, on a Zoom-bound documentary about the Black Lives Matter movement, entitled Leverage: Taking Antiracist Action in This Moment. With the coronavirus pandemic also in the background, the film presents how a variety of community members are working hard towards equity. We do not speak for the movement (or its leaders), but rather with diverse voices who are making Black lives matter. We share what they are both learning and doing, in order to ask us all to take action in this moment, and every moment.

CURAH: As we round into the second year of collaborative work constrained by the global pandemic, any last words?

We still do stokes at every meeting!

For more information on Dr. Stern’s projects past and present, see https://nathanielstern.com.

Resources for faculty, Tips for Students and Faculty

Repatriation as Undergraduate Research: Lessons from Two Case Studies

We are fortunate to live at a time when museums and public collections are finally returning objects to the people and cultures from whom they were taken. Colleges and universities, large and small, often have their own collections and will continue to be a part of this process (in some cases the law requires it). As two cases at Albion College make clear, repatriation represents an opportunity for undergraduate research. Activities appropriate for mentored students include reviewing a collection, determining which objects are legitimate subjects of repatriation, and documenting them completely. The actual repatriation process itself requires communication and public relations. Its fruition serves as an important public confirmation and validation of basic research.

NAGPRA requires research

Happily, the law actually requires some research (how often does that happen!) through the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) . All museums, federal agencies, colleges, and universities need to compile an inventory of Native American human remains, funerary objects, and summarize other cultural items. No university collections, no matter how small, are exempt, regardless of where the cultural items are physically located. Much of this inventory and summary work is within the capabilities of mentored undergraduates. At Albion College, for example, the inventory and summary research of student Chelsea Adams resulted in identifying a Zuni Ahayu’da, one of twin gods of war.

This Ahayu’da was subject of a successful repatriation effort.
This 19th century Ahayu’da had been in Albion College’s possession since 1973. It was returned to the Zuni people in a ceremony in 2018.

This was a clear case for repatriation since the Zuni consider any Ahayu’da removed from its shrine (where it retires to decay naturally) as stolen. After documenting the Ahayu’da carefully and following the NAGPRA protocol, it was repatriated in a ceremony on campus involving several Zuni elders.

Repatriation is highly collaborative

Opportunities also exist for repatriation outside of the United States. These are less formally defined than with NAGPRA repatriation, although the process can be more complicated and more collaborative. Archeologist Joel Palka (currently at Arizona State University) was using a collection at Albion College as part of his 2005 book on the Maya and identified an urn whose twin resides in Chiapas, Mexico. In 2016, he collaborated with Albion’s archivist, Justin Seidler, anthropologist Brad Chase, and Albion students to perform an instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) on the urn. Since then, Palka has helped Albion work toward repatriating the urn to Chiapas, along with Josuhé Lozada Toledo, an archaeologist and Professor of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mexico (INAH).

“Everyone has been extremely excited about the process,” says Meghan Webb, Albion College anthropology professor, “and it has been an encouraging process. All involved also see the repatriation as a process and opportunity to build ongoing relationships.” Webb has been working with student Dulce Aceves on a research project connected with the repatriation, which is expected to conclude in the spring of 2021.

Repatriation is scalable

These cases at Albion College make it clear that repatriation of even a single object is a major project, requiring intensive research and extensive communication. As a result, it’s possible that even small collections can potentially provide ongoing opportunities for undergraduate work. In addition, given the large number of small tasks, repatriation is a potential opportunity for a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE), expanding the reach of the experience.

Repatriation is the right thing to do!

Finally, repatriation puts faculty and undergraduate students on the right side of history. The work of repatriation teaches students about the ethics of collections and about the history of Western colonialism and hegemony.

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Resources for faculty

Virtual Interviews Expand Reach of Undergraduate Art History Project

If there is any silver lining for undergraduate research during the Coronavirus pandemic, it lies in way virtual meetings have expanded possibilities for connecting artists and scholars across the globe. Kylee Turner, an Art History student at University State University, was able to take advantage of this trend to radically extend the interviews she planned as part of a project on contemporary printmaking. CURAH recently caught up to Kylee, virtually of course.

CURAH: What was the nature of your project?

KT: My URCO research is a combination of my two passions, film and printmaking. I’m recording interviews with printmakers from all around the world to capture the rich history and energy around the art form. I will use the footage and information I gather to make an energetic and informational documentary about printmaking.

image of Kylee Turner
Kylee Turner, Utah State University

CURAH: What were the easiest and hardest things about the work you did?

KT: The easiest part of my project has been staying motivated, no matter the changes that have come due to the state of the world. I want to learn what my interviewees have to teach me and I’m excited to share that information with others. Printmaking is a largely community-based art. There is a really passionate group of people that are excited about the work they are doing and want to bring others in to share the magic that lies within the process. I am thrilled at the idea of capturing that and hopefully letting new people experience the intense passion that comes with making. My desire to do this, and do this well, brings in the biggest stressor and most difficult part of this project. There is no book on “How to Make a Documentary on Zoom” and I don’t know how my final product is going to look compared to what I had originally planned.

CURAH: What kinds of things did you learn? (about your topic, about scholarship, or about yourself)

KT: Undertaking such a massive project has pushed the bounds of the small world that I thought I lived in. I had planned on visiting artists in Utah, Idaho, and the surrounding states based on availability of artists. My grant money included a travel fund that I was going to use to get to Florida to speak to artist that had a different background and setting. This, to me, was a fairly broad stroke I was going to use to try and paint a very complicated picture. Now, Zoom has allowed me to complete interviews with artists from all over America as well as Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and Hong Kong. The reality of being able to paint a global picture of printmaking has been huge for my research and really solidified the idea of scholarship to me. Reaching out to big names—people in the MOMA, artists making waves, printmakers inventing processes—it all seemed out of reach before this. Now, it’s reality.

CURAH: Did you make any discoveries along the way?

KT: Researching in my field of study has been eye opening on many fronts. Hearing from so many passionate and active artist has help keep my personal practice of printmaking alive. I’ve learned simple ideas to share printmaking with more people and complex technical skills that I hadn’t heard of before. While this might not directly show in the documentary, learning new things proves how expansive this field is. There’s so much to be excited about and dive into. I’m reminded with each interview I conduct that this is a worthwhile topic and that there is something here to share with the world.

CURAH: How has the project helped you in your career goals?

KT: In video, one of the greatest strengths you need while applying for jobs is a strong reel of work. While I’ve been working on video projects throughout my university career, this is different than anything I’ve had the chance to make. It will help me prove my film skills to future employers but, more importantly, my ability to adapt and overcome roadblocks in the creative process. This project is a proof of my ability to plan, shoot, produce, and problem solve effectively. While it hasn’t landed me my dream job yet, I’ve still got a lot of work to do before I’m finished here.

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Remote Creative Writing Mentorship: Two Perspectives

By Liam Strong and Julie Gard

Creative writing student Liam Strong and faculty mentor Julie Gard reflect on the challenges and joys of working together remotely at the University of Wisconsin-Superior during the Pandemic.

A Student Perspective – Liam Strong

A Frigid Spring 

I had planned on celebrating Pride Month in June 2020 like I would any other year. I’d made a lot of plans, but I’d never accounted for a pandemic. The arrival of COVID-19, however, didn’t halt my one stationary plan of completing my Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) through the University of Wisconsin-Superior. 

As a distance learning student, I had already constructed the skeleton of my project online. Working with my mentor and professor, Julie Gard, I planned to write a poetry chapbook manuscript (16-25 pages) by August. Or at least that’s what Julie insisted I do instead of the full-length manuscript I had initially challenged myself with. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the finished chapbook is practically devoid of its influence. 

What the pandemic didn’t change was how politically charged the manuscript ended up being. Pride Month wasn’t going to happen once the Black Lives Matters protests began this summer, and they informed the outspoken nature of the manuscript. The pandemic didn’t change the experiments I did with poetic forms, nor with language, nor my hopes for the project. 

If anything, isolation brought me closer to myself and my identity, which wasn’t planned at all. 

Content, Themes, Meditations

Truth be told, the original title of the project, Like a Body From Blood, was a placeholder. Because the project’s themes began broadly, they weren’t fully realized until almost halfway through the summer. I wanted to write a set of poems about the non-binary experience, about grappling with one’s gender dysphoria. I wanted to celebrate queerness, existing in a sometimes bizarre transgender body and mind, and not be angry. 

The poems are sad and indignant (in a mutedly poetic way) because I found myself in everything I had compiled for my Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship project’s reading list. I hadn’t planned on writing poems dealing so much with my body image, with every one of my multitudes. I’m the only one who will say the manuscript is about insecurities. 

Books from Liam’s reading list.

Thematically, what started as my exploration into theorizing non-binary poetics then became a narrative. After reading Bodymap by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, I knew there were roads to my gender fluidity, masculinity, femininity, my physical vulnerability. My emotional vulnerability. Joshua Jennifer Espinoza’s I’m Alive. It Hurts. I Love It. reached out to hold me because it knew my pain, my joys, my place in the world. I realized with that book my manuscript needed to do the same.

Workshopping Poems and Myself

I’d often be distracted trying to read the titles of the dozens of poetry books behind Julie’s head while we discussed my poems and readings via Zoom. I’d hear her dog, Nikolai, lawnmowers and endless road construction, or her partner coming home while we workshopped at her outdoor office. I tried, however, not to be distracted by my own expectations toward how I had been writing before the project began. 

My weekly poem drafts were unlike any I had written before—largely due to Julie’s feedback and my propulsion to do something different. I was tired of being comfortable, especially with writing the fine-tuned poetic line, and in turn focusing on crafting an evocative, personally charged line. Though not every single poem I wrote took on a specific poetic form, every poem had form in that it was written with purpose in mind. I wrote poems in conversation with the content of my weekly readings; poems in response to another poet’s poem; long narrative poems that were unlike the tight, brief poems I typically wrote. 

I could see my body in every poem. Each poem had bones, flesh, genitals, and a name that didn’t fit their visage. The poems were all searching for belonging, and I just didn’t know it yet. 

An Audience of One vs. An Audience of Many 

Many authors and teachers of writing suggest that one should always write for themselves. At the end of summer 2020, my SURF project implored the opposite. Although most, if not all, the poems in the final manuscript are “about” me, they are not for me. 

I titled the chapbook Likeness. Once we had begun composing the list of poems that would make it into the projected order of the manuscript, we realized that the themes extended beyond gender identity and toward kinship, toward finding likeness in others. I wasn’t writing for myself, but rather for people who didn’t have a literature to call their own. Though there isn’t a dedications page, the manuscript is for all transgender, gender-nonconforming, and non-binary individuals. As someone who grew up without any non-binary poetry to see myself in, it became my goal to ensure that others could see themselves in my experiences as a person of gender and sexual diversity. 

Certain Uncertainties

Having endured the pandemic thus far, I can’t help but regard the toll it’s taken on my mental health in conjunction with a 200-hour fellowship project. There were days where I didn’t want to look at a poem, then days where all I wanted to indulge in were literature podcasts, poetry collections, and my personal free-writes. There were days where I felt like a boy, days where I was a girl, days where I didn’t want to be clearly defined by a binary. Although many poems over the course of the summer were undoubtedly fun to write (particularly those in response to Chen Chen’s When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities), others became therapeutic. As in, I may not have been ready yet to tackle their emotional baggage.

Bouts of dysphoria would hit me, but during those times the best strategy for coping was gardening. Hours spent picking weeds, trimming bushes, and topping begonias became a necessary reprieve from not only the difficult personal content of my poems but also the social climate of America. 

That all said, I won’t discount the newfound relationship I now have with writing and workshopping poems. The workshops Julie and I held weren’t simply devoted to constructive criticism and revision—our workshops were more like discussions of poetic intent, considering how to best fulfill the then uncertain themes of the chapbook. Uncertainty offered so much to me, despite my evasion of it. I may not have found my true self with all these poems, but that was never the point. I will always continually find myself. I have a lifetime of poems ahead of me to write, and this summer of writing has been the bridge between me and the poetics I want to see more of in the world. 

Liam Strong and Julie Gard, hard at work.

A Faculty Perspective – Julie Gard

Writer at Work

Liam’s apartment had white walls, comfortable couches, and a cat. Bookshelves, a washing machine, lamps, and warm light. Outside of the Zoom frame in which much of our mentorship transpired, they described gardening and working in the dirt. I loved to imagine this companion experience to a summer of reading and writing poetry–the tangible digging, planting, and growing. I have never been to Traverse City, Michigan, so their life outside of the apartment was an imaginary space for me. I knew they lived on the third floor, so I pictured them in a fortress up in the air, safe to take on poetic form and the false gender binary.

Set-up and Structure

Liam and I have never met in person; they were a student in my online, advanced poetry workshop in Spring 2020, which is where I got to know their writing and work ethic, sensing they would be a perfect candidate for a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. Our remote mentorship was not a response to the pandemic, but this format certainly turned out to be convenient.

Structure is important whenever a faculty member is accompanying a student on their journey with an independent project, and Liam and I worked together to set up a framework ahead of time, with the understanding that we could tweak it. In the late spring, we developed a timeline that included weekly readings and due dates. We committed to meeting once a week throughout the summer, with these meetings scheduled as “recurring” in Zoom and on both of our Outlook calendars. In between meetings, we agreed to check in over email if any questions or challenges came up.

In terms of our mentorship medium, video meetings have limitations but can be extremely effective as a space in which to discuss creative writing, especially when accompanied by written feedback and exchange. I think of the long tradition of epistolary mentorships between writers, and between writers and editors. In many ways, writing is a well-suited discipline for long-distance work, and adding a face-to-face element, even if virtual, adds another layer of richness.

A Flexible Pedagogy

As a mentor, my role is to help a highly motivated and well-prepared student set up a framework in which they can work independently on a significant project and make discoveries. Providing structure while giving up control is somewhat like teaching a course where the student authors or co-authors the course objectives. In a mentorship of this kind, often the “course objectives” become more focused as the project continues. I now see creative project mentoring as occupying a space between an advanced college writing course and the life-long work of a professional poet. I strive to equip the student with the skills and framework to pursue in-depth creative projects independently in the future.

I know from my own experience with writing mentors such as George Barlow at Grinnell College, and Valerie Miner and Julie Schumacher at the University of Minnesota, that encouragement and praise can very much coexist with questioning, suggesting, and looking deeply into a work. Taking someone’s writing seriously helps them to grow, as does modeling a state of curiosity. This is not a project of dismantling or asserting dominance, but rather of working with a highly engaged student as a collaborator. What is the student curious about? How does this overlap with what I’m curious about? How can a recommendation for revision or further development truly be a suggestion that the student has the freedom to take or leave?

Logistics in Illogical Times

Each weekly meeting began with a general check-in, acknowledging our lives as human beings outside the scope of the project. The social unrest across the country, and in our own cities and states, was often part of the conversation, including how we were responding to and finding ourselves influenced by it. This check-in was followed by a discussion of the week’s reading, and then Liam’s poem drafts for the week and my feedback. Liam provided me with their draft work a couple of days ahead of time so I could prepare feedback, and we could discuss the draft together from an informed place.

At the beginning of the summer, the focus was on individual poems. As the summer progressed, our lens expanded to include, usually at the end of the session, a discussion of the overall manuscript and how it was shaping up. We considered how the poems might interact with each other and themes that were emerging, some expected and some unexpected.

Liam chose the reading list for this project, and it was exciting to read these new-to-me works and become familiar with the growing body of poetry by trans and gender-fluid writers, and to learn about the growing field of trans poetics. As a cisgender, queer person in her forties, I was grateful to have my world expanded in this way. My experience is an illustration of the personal and intellectual growth that is one of the rewards of mentoring.

Web of Connections

Liam completed this project during a time of social and political unrest, in the context of a world-wide pandemic. Both of us acknowledged the stress of these circumstances. Two important coping mechanisms were acknowledgment and integration: making space to discuss how we were impacted by these events, and also allowing them to become part of the summer’s writing.

There were few challenges in terms of the logistics and structure of the internship itself. Technology worked well, and the framework we set up, with some tweaks as the summer went on, also proved effective. Liam completed two versions of a polished, powerful final manuscript. It was deeply rewarding to watch Liam become part of an important literary conversation, sharing their own truth with and among creative peers and kindred spirits. 

At our university’s Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium, held virtually in October, I had the opportunity to watch Liam give a powerful reading of several of their project poems. Audience members expressed a heartfelt connection to and admiration for their work. On a personal level, it was rewarding through this mentorship to expand my knowledge of trans poetics, and in turn my own sense of queer community and creative possibility. 

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Resources for faculty

But I’m a High-Achiever! Insights into Undergraduate Mental Health

By Chelsea A. LeNoble & Tessly A. Dieguez

We don’t often put “high achievement” and “mental health concerns” into the same sentence, but we should. High achiever mental health is a serious and growing issue. For example, according to the 2019 American College Health Association survey, nearly 50% of responding students recently felt overwhelming anxiety. In addition the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these mental health concerns, sending college student anxiety and depression rates skyrocketing (Anderson, 2020). Considering that attending a high-achieving school is now considered an “at risk” category for failing to thrive through adulthood (Luthar & Kumar, 2018), it’s hard to ignore how dire the undergraduate mental health crisis has become. When students are conditioned to keep quiet about mental health challenges, the imagined benefits of high achievement disappear. Burnout, depression, and suicide are left in their wake (Cook, 2007).

The Stigma of Mental Health Concerns

Despite these devastating consequences, stigma persists around mental health concerns, coupled with relentless pressure to prioritize achievement above all else. As a result, individuals with mental health issues can be viewed as incompetent, ineffective performers, unable to cope, and in extreme cases, violent (Boniecki et al., 2012; Britt, 2000; Campbell, 2018). This stigma may prevent students from disclosing mental health concerns or seeking help (Bandelow & Michaelis, 2015; Britt et al., 2008). Recently, the idea of “high-functioning anxiety” has become popular. People with “high-functioning anxiety” are described as productive, perfectionistic overachievers who suffer from fear and extreme self-criticism below the surface (Morgan, 2017). While it may seem appealing at first, this term further contributes to the stigma associated with mental health concerns by implying that pushing through without help is admirable and those with clinical mental health issues cannot truly be high functioning.

Supporting Mental Health

The science of stress and goal striving does not support these assumptions. A first step in dismantling this stigma and supporting the mental health of all students is to acknowledge that worry and anxiety are normal responses to stressful academic environments. Thinking and worrying about one’s goals creates the same type of fight-or-flight response as being chased by a bear (Verkuil et al., 2010). This stress response is a “default” state that must be inhibited by the recognition of safety signals. But for high-achieving students in high-pressure environments, such safety signals are often absent (Aloia & McTigue, 2019).

When High-Achieving Students are Struggling

There are a few key resources that can support high-achieving undergraduates struggling with mental health. The burden of seeking these resources for high achiever mental health should not only fall to students; the institution (and advisors, instructors, academic staff, etc.) has a substantial role. For example, professors can create classroom environments that strengthen mental health by providing resources in course syllabi and openly speaking about mental health in class. To reduce anxiety, students need reliable safety signals that indicate their goals won’t be threatened by seeking and accepting mental health support, and with the foundation of a supportive environment, individual coping resources become more relevant and useful.

Additionally, on-campus counseling centers provide therapy, peer groups, and presentations on college student mental health topics. One of the most effective exercises students can engage in is cognitive reframing (identifying and changing negative thought patterns). A list of resources to support college student mental health can be found below.

College Mental Health Support Resources

To Build a Stronger Mental Health Climate

Campus Climate Matters (https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9904.html): RAND Research brief of a college climate of mental health with discussion of intervention outcomes.

Shareable Resources on Anxiety Disorders (https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/education-awareness/shareable-resources-on-anxiety-disorders.shtml): Infographics that can help build a positive mental health climate in the classroom

The Jed Foundation (https://www.jedfoundation.org/mental-health-resource-center/recommended-resources/): A collection of nationally-recognized organizations supporting mental health

Tools Students Can Use Individually

Cognitive Distortions: When Your Brain Lies to You (https://positivepsychology.com/cognitive-distortions/): Website that explains common cognitive distortions, how to reframe them, and free worksheets for practice.

6 Things Every College Student Should Know About Therapy (https://www.self.com/story/college-students-therapy): Article addressing common concerns college students have about therapy.

The Student Counseling Virtual Pamphlet Collection (http://www.dr-bob.org/vpc/): Wide collection of university counseling center resources divided by topic

Anxiety and Depression Association of America (https://adaa.org/adaa-online-support-group): ADAA’s anonymous peer-to-peer online anxiety and depression support group.

Thnx4 Gratitude Journal (https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/what_we_do/online_courses_tools/thnx4_gratitude_journal): Online journaling challenge over 10 or 21 days. Gratitude reflection helps remind our brain of existing safety signals.

Moodnotes Mood Tracker (https://apps.apple.com/au/app/moodnotes-mood-cbt-tracker/id1019230398: App that helps develop healthy thinking habits.

References

Aloia, L. S., & McTigue, M. (2019). Buffering against sources of academic stress: The influence of supportive informational and emotional communication on psychological well-being. Communication Research Reports, 36(2), 126-135.

American College Health Association. (2019). Undergraduate student reference group data report spring 2019. https://www.acha.org/documents/ncha/NCHA-II_SPRING_2019_UNDERGRADUATE_REFERENCE_GROUP_DATA_REPORT.pdf

Anderson (2020, August). Students reporting depression and anxiety at higher rates. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/08/19/students-reporting-depression-and-anxiety-higher-rates.

Bandelow, B. & Michaelis, S. (2015). Epidemiology of anxiety disorders in the 21st century. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 17(3), 327–335.

Boniecki, K.A., Thomas, A.D., Gowin, K.C., & Britt, T.W. (2012). Prejudice towards people with mental illness: an integrated threat approach. In D.W. Russell & C.A. Russell (Eds.), The psychology of prejudice: Interdisciplinary perspectives on contemporary issues (pp. 155–174). Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Britt, T.W. (2000). The stigma of psychological problems in a work environment: evidence from the screening of service members returning from Bosnia. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 30(8), 1599–1618.

Britt, T.W., Greene-Shortridge, T.M., Brink, S., Nguyen, Q.B., Rath, J., Cox, A.L., Hoge, C.W., & Castro, C.A. (2008). Perceived stigma and barriers to care for psychological treatment: implications for reactions to stressors in different contexts. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 27(4), 317–335.

Campbell, E. (2018). Reconstructing my identity: An autoethnographic exploration of depression and anxiety in academia. Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 7(3), 235-246.

Center for Collegiate Mental Health. (2019). 2019 annual report. https://ccmh.psu.edu/assets/docs/2019-CCMH-Annual-Report_3.17.20.pdf.

Luthar, S. S., & Kumar, N. L. (2018). Youth in high-achieving schools: Challenges to mental health and directions for evidence-based interventions. Handbook of School-Based Mental Health Promotion (pp. 441-458). Springer, Cham.

Morgan, L.T. (2017). High-functioning anxiety makes you a great student, but a miserable human being. Odyssey. Retrieved from https://www.theodysseyonline.com/reality-high-functioning-anxiety-college.

Verkuil, B., Brosschot, J. F., Gebhardt, W. A., & Thayer, J. F. (2010). When worries make you sick: a review of perseverative cognition, the default stress response and somatic health. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, 1(1), jep-009110.

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Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers, Resources for faculty

Samuel Beckett, Optimist?: A Summer Research Experience

Summer undergraduate research in the humanities can be a great opportunity for students who might be interested in graduate work. Many colleges have programs that pair students with faculty mentors; these experiences often begin work toward a major, capstone experience.
 
Carthage College, in Kenosha, WI, has such a program, the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience, or SURE. Each summer, between 25 and 50 students from across campus spend ten weeks on campus in collaboration with a faculty member on a new or developing line of inquiry. This summer, rising senior Caleb Hays (English/Public Relations) worked with English Professor Maria Carrig on Samuel Beckett, the Irish writer; CURAH recently got to hear a bit about it.

CURAH: Tell us about your project.

CH: My project centers on the renowned Irish writer Samuel Beckett. Mostly known for his theatre works such as Waiting for Godot, Beckett is also responsible for some wonderfully strange prose works. I had to produce a critical essay that would add something new to the conversation surrounding Beckett studies, a task much more difficult than it sounds. Beckett is an insanely popular author, and in searching through the hundreds of books and essays on his work one gets the feeling that everything to be written about him has already been written.
 
Yet, in my searching I started to get the feeling that the studies revolving around the author were largely about his theatre work, and painted Beckett as a pessimistic writer. I felt the latter was inherently false. The little I’d read of Beckett did have a certain weightiness to its content, but it was also extremely funny. I set out to uncover the underlying optimism in Beckett’s work by focusing on his trilogy of prose works, specifically his novel Malone Dies.
 
I worked for ten weeks with Professor Carrig as my supervisor, reading and discussing everything Beckett. Understanding this project would transfer over to my senior thesis, I concentrated on consuming as much material as possible. I read many of his plays and prose works, including many critical theorists and essayists pertinent to the subject. My paper took on a post-structuralist ideology in nature, focusing on the meta-fictional techniques used in Malone Dies and the multiple strata of narration concealed within the text. Ultimately, I came to view Malone Dies as being about the desire to reach a beginning, rather than an ending. 

Caleb Hays, Carthage College ’20, English/Public Relations

CURAH: What drew you to Samuel Beckett?         

CH: I discovered Samuel Beckett’s work through a creative writing professor of mine, who mentioned to me in passing that I may enjoy some of his work. I was searching for a subject to complete my thesis on, so I read the first Beckett novel I could get my hands on: Watt. The novel was so unlike anything I had ever read, and I was hooked from the very start. I began to read more of his work, eventually coming to Malone Dies, finding myself so immersed in the work’s strangeness that I knew I had no other choice but to write about it. I have always loved modern, experimental writing that tests the limits of what fiction is capable of, so it was a perfect match.

CURAH: What were the easiest and hardest things about the work you were doing? Any surprises?

CH: The easiest part of my project was the reading. I read a lot of material through the course of the ten weeks, and I loved every minute. I was fortunate enough to receive a stipend for the work, so I spent my days doing nothing but reading and trying to make sense of some dense texts—which was a dream come true for any English major. The hardest part, while still enjoyable, was the actual creation of the paper. I had pages and pages of notes, but attempting to condense them and form a linear argument became quite difficult with the amount of material.
 
As far as surprises go, I suppose the biggest was how fulfilling the work was—I’ve never taken part in a project of this scope, so naturally I was nervous in the beginning. As the ten weeks progressed I realized how gratifying academic research of this level can be in its capacity to introduce new avenues of thinking.

CURAH: How has your understanding of Beckett grown?

CH: I’d like to say that my understanding of Beckett has grown a great deal, but I’m not sure that such a thing is possible. I have a greater respect for the depth of his work and the techniques he uses in his writing—but as a whole his writing is just as strange and otherworldly as when I first read it. In part, this is the beautiful thing about Beckett; reading his work is an experience, one that seems to change with time.

CURAH: How has the work informed your plans about the rest of college and beyond?

CH: The work I did this summer with Professor Carrig has made me seriously consider a career in academia. As of now my future is still uncertain, but the search for the appropriate graduate program is on the horizon. The project has given me a great deal, including the realization that being a student of literature is something I’ll continue doing for the rest of my life, regardless of career path.

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featured, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers, Resources for faculty

Undergraduate Computer Engineer Delves into the Digital Humanities

Timothy (TJ) Scherer, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University ’22, is majoring in Computer Engineering at the University’s Daytona Beach campus. In November 2018, he became the student web designer for Dr. Debra Bourdeau’s Hogarth Online website and entered the world of digital humanities, something he never expected as a student at an aviation-focused university. Scherer modernized the site over the past year and has begun adding content this academic year.

Bourdeau is Chair of English, Humanities and Communication for ERAU’s Worldwide campus. She received an internal grant to revitalize the project, which had remained relatively unchanged since 2004. Because Dr. Bourdeau lives in the Atlanta area, project meetings occur by Skype; she and TJ have had to learn to work virtually.

CURAH recently caught up with TJ to ask how the project is going.

CURAH: Tell us about your project.  What has been your role?

TJ: The Hogarth Online project was started with the goal of creating a more widely accessible resource for William Hogarth’s works. More often than not, commentary on Hogarth’s works is highly detailed and not welcoming to newcomers. This project is aimed at those who want to learn about William Hogarth but lack the expertise many existing resources assume. From home to classroom, I hope that this project will serve as a resource to students and professors alike. To accomplish this, I have compiled commentary and observations to help explain the individual elements of each artwork in a sophisticated yet simple manner. I want to provide the necessary background information to enrich people’s understanding of Hogarth.

My role in this project is to modernize the original website, improving the aesthetics and functionality using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This mostly consists of reorganizing the large amount of content using more recent web development techniques, along with adding in new content as the project grows. My greatest focus in this project has been adding as much functionality as I can to make the website a valuable classroom resource, providing different ways to view both the artworks and the associated commentary so that it can easily adapt to lesson plans and the technology in the classroom. From personal experience, this tends to be a frustrating issue for many students, and I believe that I have been successful in mitigating it.

Timothy Scherer, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, ’22 Computer Engineering

CURAH: What have been the greatest challenges in the work you are doing?

TJ: Going into this project, my experience with HTML and CSS was fairly limited, and beginning to build the infrastructure for a website requires a significant amount of knowledge to maintain an organized structure that can be expanded upon in the future. It took a lot of research and practice to fully understand the best ways to structure the code, but once the foundation was in place, I had lots of room for experimentation to find the best layout for the site.

Once I had determined a general layout, I had to address the problem of organizing and displaying a large amount of content . After some research and experimentation using HTML and CSS, I decided that it would not be enough. Further research suggested that JavaScript had the answer to my problem, but I had never used it before. Using guides and example snippets of code, I was able to gain enough understanding of JavaScript to create a solution.

Beyond these technical challenges, I encountered some small difficulty in transferring the content because I was new to Hogarth. I was very fortunate to have Dr. Bourdeau available whenever I needed. Every time we talked she taught me a little more about Hogarth and his historical background.

CURAH: What have you learned (about Hogarth, digital humanities or yourself)?

TJ: Over the duration of this project, I have learned several things.

  • Engraving on a metal plate is a very interesting process, and the result is quite stunning. It absolutely amazes me how much effort has to go into each plate. The planning and the amount of detail involved is quite inspirational.
  • There is a surprising lack of documentation of Hogarth’s works. It took a decent amount of time to locate high resolution images of each of Hogarth’s plates that are included in the project.
  • I far prefer tasks that require research and creative thinking to achieve a goal. I enjoyed solving the problems I encountered while modernizing the website much more than I enjoyed transferring all of its contents to the new website.

CURAH: What has surprised you about this project?

The most surprising part of this project is the sheer amount of effort needed to produce this website. There are so many resources out there with similar levels of detail and content that it becomes easy to take them for granted. I can’t count the number of times a website’s design has frustrated me as a user, but being on the other end of the interaction is very eye-opening. From obtaining grants to compiling information, there is so much that goes into preparing to take on such a project, and even more to actually execute it. I was surprised to realize that it takes all of this effort just to make a single website, and it has given me a greater appreciation for each website I visit.

CURAH: How do you think this project will help you in your career or future studies?

The technical skills that I have developed from this project are probably the most notable way in which this project has already benefited me and will continue to in the future. By improving my understanding of the languages required to take on this project, I am simultaneously improving my skills in other programming languages. Further, the effort I put in to develop these skills has shown very good results, and now I think I will be more willing to put the same level of effort into future endeavors. Beyond this, the experience in communication and collaboration with Dr. Bourdeau is something I anticipate being very useful in the future, and that I am very thankful for.

Hogarth Online, before its revitalization
The revitalized Hogarth Online
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