Category Archives: Resources for faculty

featured, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers, Resources for faculty

Humanities and STEM Come Together in Scholarship on the Astrolabe

Sometimes undergraduates have an advantage over more senior scholars: pursuing two majors can make them more radically interdisciplinary and more open to unconventional combinations. Olivia Brock, Utah State University ’21, is a double major in mathematics/statistics and art history, interests that combined in her recent project on the astrolabe, that most beautiful tool of late medieval mathematical and astronomical thought. Olivia recently spoke with CURAH about her work.

CURAH: Tell us about your project.

Olivia: My project is designed to answer a question: how can interdisciplinary conversations between humanities and STEM fields be facilitated through the examination of material/visual culture? In particular, I am answering this question by studying the astrolabe, a medieval scientific instrument that puts into question the historical categorization of objects. As an object that is scientific, artistic, religious (and I’ll even add pseudo-scientific), the astrolabe presents a slew of interpretive challenges. I am examining the ways historians of visual and material culture have categorized these objects, and how their categories can limit our ability to fully understand astrolabes as the unique, specific, and complex objects that they are.

In addition, I hope to create an interdisciplinary dialogue that allows artists, scientists, scholars, and others to interact with intellectual ideas that may not be familiar. Ideally, through the dissemination of these ideas in writing and presentation, I can help the widest disciplinary audience connect with a single object and learn about new fields or ideas.

Olivia Brock, Utah State University
Olivia Brock, Utah State University

This particular goal is really important to me. As both a math/stats and art history student, I get a lot of questions about why I decided to do both majors, and comments regarding how disparate these fields are. Though these fields are quite different, and a traditional undergraduate education in either makes the bifurcation even more prominent, I have found that there are a lot of ways that these fields complement each other. It just takes a conscious effort to find these connections. This is why I’m so excited about this project: it allows me to pursue the connections I’ve found in a ways that go beyond traditional art history or math classes.

CURAH: What are the easiest and hardest things about the work you’re doing?

Olivia: There are a few bumps that I’ve run into over the course of this project that have really stood out to me. First, methodology. I work as a writing tutor in the Science Writing Center here at USU, and a big part of my job is helping students with their “Methods” sections. These are strict, orderly, pre-determined methodologies that make predicting the course of scientific research much more feasible. For me, as a scientifically-minded person, the more subjective methodological approach to my art historical research has been difficult to adapt to. I can’t create a step-by-step guide to my research as one might for a lab experiment.

The next bump I ran into was while working to develop an overall thesis for my project. How do I come up with an original and interesting claim, while at the same time ensuring that I can ground my ideas with established literature and evidence? The balance between originality and credibility has been difficult for me to maintain. Fortunately, in Dr. Alexa Sand I have a great and experienced mentor who has really helped me achieve this balance.

I’m not sure there’s been anything I’d specify as being “easy” for me. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs. But I love the work and subject matter, and that makes it easier for me to stay excited and motivated about this project.

CURAH: What kinds of things have you learned? (about astrolabes, about scholarship, or about yourself)

Olivia: I learned

  • that even the most basic object can have a plethora of intangible functions and relationships that become apparent when you look at the object in a different light.
  • that the astrolabe is just a single example of the arts and sciences working in tandem: there are so many interesting multidisciplinary interactions that can be found over the course of history. They just require someone to look for them.
  • that scholarship is hard, but it’s worth it. The knowledge that I can take an idea and pursue it as far as it can be pursued is incredibly rewarding.
  • that I may love sharing my ideas a little more than I love pursuing them. I’ve really enjoyed this process, but my favorite parts, so far, have been the times when I’ve gotten to interact with my research community and share my ideas and knowledge with other curious students.

CURAH: Have you made any discoveries along the way?

Olivia: I didn’t make anything that I would call a “discovery.” However, I never had the expectation of major discovery. My goal for the project is to pursue an idea that is personally important to me and important to the academic community at Utah State. I’m not trying to answer any major questions or problems but rather working to create discussion among my peers.

Because of this goal, however, I have helped some other students make small discoveries. Many students “discovered” the astrolabe for the very first time upon our conversations. Others may have discovered that there are a number of connections between the humanities and STEM that they may not have been aware of before. And others may have even discovered that there is a place in the research realm for even the most bizarre or disparate of interests. I also made personal discoveries about myself and my interests that will undoubtably change the course of my academic and professional career.

CURAH: How do you imagine the project will help you in your career goals?

Olivia: I must admit that my career goals are a bit unclear right now. However, through this project, I have become much more open to pursuing academic scholarship, at least through graduate school, and maybe into a career. This project also taught me that I love talking and writing about science in a non-scientific way, which has sparked ideas about potential careers in scientific communication or scientific journalism.

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Resources for faculty

Introducing students to qualitative research in Writing, rhetoric, and literacy

THE CHALLENGE

Typically situated within departments of English, the allied fields of writing, rhetoric, and literacy studies (WRL) face a particular set of challenges with respect to undergraduate research. Specifically, many of the methodologies that inform WRL research are archival and empirical in nature. Undergraduate English majors, however, practiced in scholarly inquiry guided by textual interpretation and literary analysis are often unfamiliar with the methods used in WRL. Moreover, becoming proficient enough to conduct independent undergraduate WRL research requires several semesters of engagement. This is an amount of time often beyond the reach of many students. The same is also true of English majors studying folklore and linguistics, disciplines that often engage archival and empirical methodologies and longitudinal studies.

FINDING A SOLUTION

Although research opportunities in WRL may be open to all students, faculty face the institutional challenge of making them accessible to all students as departments of English strive to prepare a more diverse range of students to engage in undergraduate research.[1] That accessibility, then, is contingent on creating sustainable means of introducing students to, and preparing them as, archival and empirical researchers. By situating the research experience in English 3379 (“Methods for the Study of Writing, Rhetoric and Literacy Studies”), the faculty sought to mitigate the challenges of students’ unfamiliarity with WRL methodologies. They also addressed the limited time available to them to conduct research.

THE COURSE

As a required gateway course in the WRL concentration, English 3379 was designed to guide students through the processes of articulating research questions, aligning those questions with and then practicing empirical methods, building project proposals, and presenting their in-progress work. Through a series of three scaffolded research modules, students consequently gained a better understanding of the research undertaken in WRL. The course also employed a series of short videos to introduce students to the Ohio State WRL faculty and their areas of research. Additionally, ENGL 3379 included a course-specific LibGuide that offered resources and processes for undertaking research in English studies and WRL.

Schnabel, Jennifer. “Engl 3379.” OSU LibGuide. http://guides.osu.edu/c.php?g=715909&p=5094612.

THE RESEARCH MODULES

Module One

The first module in 3379 introduced archival research methods, prompting students to apply their established skills in textual interpretation and rhetorical analysis as they engaged the historiographic methods necessary to examine and interpret primary source artifacts originating from the Ohio State University community during the 1970 “Spring of Dissent.” Then, students collaboratively researched and analyzed artifacts related to social justice and social change on the OSU campus, producing final project proposals such as “The Rhetoric of the Spring of Dissent: Music as a Primary Motivator in the Student Riots of 1970.” Specifically, they

  • Analyzed one oral history or dissent documentary artifact housed in the university digital archive.
  • Collaboratively conducted background research on the period.
  • Searched the student newspaper archive and the University Archives to locate additional artifacts that situated the oral history and dissent documentary artifacts.[2]

Module Two

Then, the second module required students to apply their developing skills and knowledge of WRL to examine and code discursive artifacts and investigate questions related to writing studies. Specifically, students

  • Practiced coding portions of selected anchor texts
  • Articulated a rationale for a RAD (replicable, aggregable, and data-supported) study that required empirical (qualitative or quantitative) research methods
  • Proposed a working research question and claim situated in discrete data sets examined through aligned research methods.

Module project proposals then examined the “Efficacy and Impact of Early College High School upon Student Achievement and Identity” and “Evolving Classrooms: Trading Pen and Paper for Laptops.”

The Final Module

The final module further extended students’ engagement with qualitative research. Here, they created interview and survey protocols and analyzed their fieldnotes.  This module asked students to

  • Conduct an ethnographic observation of a community literacy space and compose field notes and a reflection on that observation
  • Study a range of literacy narratives, including those from our class and others housed in the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN), and formulate research questions from those narratives, and
  • Create interview questions for a specific set of subjects (participants).
” The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives Blog.” https://thedaln.wordpress.com/.

Student Projects

Students then composed project proposals such as “Literacy Standards in the Housing Industry” and “Crafting Coffee, Community, Literacies, and Lattes: Understanding Coffee Literacy within the Roosevelt Coffeehouse in Columbus, Ohio.”

 “The Roosevelt Coffee House. workfrom. https://workfrom.co/the-roosevelt-coffeehouse.

The course ultimately closed with a Work-in-Progress Symposium, a showcase event open to the University community through which undergraduate 3379 researchers disseminated their work to and had conversations with graduate students, faculty and staff.

IMPACTS

As a survey of WRL and its research methods, English 3379 creates the space for WRL students to engage published scholarship in the field. Additionally, they try their hands at WRL methods, and use those methods to ask and investigate the questions that interest them—alongside their peers and under the guidance of a teacher-researcher and mentor.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to acknowledge the Office of Distance Education and eLearning at The Ohio State University, which has funded an ALX Grant to support the curricular revision of English 3379. Professor Jonathan Buehl serves as principal investigator on that project. Thanks, as well, to Professor Tamar Chute, University Archivist and Head of Archives at University Libraries for her partnership in the archival project and Professor Jennifer Schnabel, English Subject Librarian for designing the 3379 LibGuide.

Kay Halasek, Susan Lang, and Addison Koneval, and will present “Designing with Research in Mind: Implementing Diverse Methdologies in an Undergraduate Course in the Humanities” at ISSOTL 2019 in Atlanta, GA at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, October 11, 2019 (Session A708).

NOTES

[1] National venues for developing and presenting undergraduate research in WRL are many: The Naylor Workshop in Undergraduate Research in Writing Studies and the Conference on College Composition and Communication undergraduate poster sessions as well as publications such as Young Scholars in Writing.

[2] See Sheridon Ward’s August 19, 2019 CURAH blog post, for another undergraduate English major’s archival experience at Ohio State.

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featured, Resources for faculty

Face to Face and Hand to Hand: Undergraduate Archival Study at the LMA

These days, study of the archives often begins with digital images, but an in-person visit to an actual manuscript remains a powerfully transformative scholarly experience, especially for undergraduates. Sheridon Ward, Ohio State University ’21, was lucky enough to spend time working through a massive and dense wardmote inquest book at the London Metropolitan Archives (the LMA). Sheridon has a double major in Medieval & Renaissance Studies along with Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology. CURAH caught up to her after her visit to the LMA.

CURAH: Tell us about your project.

Sheridon: During the autumn semester of 2018, I took a class that explored popular culture in 16th and 17th century London with Professor Chris Highley. As the final project, we were assigned to write an article for the Map of Early Modern London (MoEML), a map based on the Agas map that was drawn around 1561 and reprinted in 1633. Professor Highley introduced me to wardmote inquest books as a possible theme-based entry for MoEML, specifically the St. Dunstan in the West inquest register. Though it started as more of a term paper than anything else, I have continued working on the project since then, and I finally got to visit the book itself when I was in Europe over the summer.

Sheridon Ward pictured on a trip to England that featured work at the London Metropolitan Archives.
Sheridon Ward, Ohio State University, ‘21

Originally, I worked using photos that Professor Highley had taken during his visit at the LMA, and I started to decipher the pages in the massive volume that spans from 1558 to 1823. I only studied pages within the early modern period in the first volume. These pages detail the sessions of the wardmote inquest for the Faringdon Without Ward. It names the inquest members, lists prominent businessmen (the licensed and unlicensed victuallers–sellers of alcohol– for example), and then “presents” people who have committed offenses to the Lord Mayor of London for redress. These offenses can range from petty complaints against poultry dealers for their baskets protruding too far into the road to accusations of adultery.

Overall, my archive project summarizes and explores the wealth of knowledge of everyday life that can be found in the pages of the wardmote inquest book. It reveals their priorities and values, how government on the smallest level worked, and how they systematically and scrupulously organized these sessions. Additionally, it addresses questions of social mobility and social standing by studying how aldermen were affected by their participation and what infractions were and weren’t punished.

CURAH: What are the easiest and hardest things about the work you’re doing?

Sheridon: The greatest obstacle that I faced during this project was unquestionably deciphering the secretary hand in the documents and coping with the fact that English spelling wasn’t yet standardized. I frequently had to use the OED Online to verify the spelling of the word that I thought I was seeing in order to link it to the modern spelling of the word.

Another obstacle was the monotony of the court proceedings. While snippets of information were fascinating to read, most of the items dealt with defective pavements or improper weights and measures. When each sentence is a struggle to decipher, it makes skimming for the more unique items much more difficult.

The easiest part of my research was finding the resources that I needed. Prof. Highley would send me frequent emails with articles related to wardmotes, and the LMA created a welcoming environment for looking at these documents. I was originally intimidated by handling a document so old, and I was terrified that they wouldn’t even let me into the archives to look at the document, but I was surprised at how painless the process was even though I’m just an undergraduate.

CURAH: What kinds of things have you learned, about the early modern period, about scholarship, or about yourself?

Sheridon: Through this project, I’ve learned a lot about early modern social structures and how they parallel our current structures and preoccupations. When I was exploring the part of London that I was studying, I came across a sign that listed the current aldermen of the Faringdon Without Ward. While some of these aldermen are now alderwomen, it was surprising to learn that these government structures still exist so similarly 400 years later.

I also learned that no matter how much passion and inspiration you have for a project in scholarship, you still need determination and discipline. Otherwise, you miss those small snippets of unique stories and information that actually breathe life into the document. And although technology has evolved to give scholars greater access to important materials, nothing compares to handling the material artifact itself. It provides a wealth of information in its own right, even before you read the words on the page.

CURAH: Have you made any discoveries along the way?

Sheridon: While I haven’t found any groundbreaking information, one thing that struck me was just how intrusive some of these documents seem. The extent to which the rest of the community is involved and watchful of everyone else seems like an invasion of privacy to my modern sensibility, but it was entirely normal then. They kept track of who came to church regularly and reported people who failed to attend church as “recusants.” However, even though this is the type of issue that would be presented to the Lord Mayor, the frequency with which some people were reported seems to suggest that it wasn’t effectively handled or simply wasn’t a priority.

Henry Lusher, for example, appears almost every year as a recusant from 1621 to 1651. However, in 1622, he was named as a petty juryman, and the fact that his recusancy continues for likely more than 30 years is puzzling and raises questions as to how important regular church attendance really was in the early modern period.

CURAH: How do you imagine this archive project will help you in your career goals?

Sheridon: Learning how to read secretary hand early on in my career is a very valuable skill to have, and I have gained experience in reading court documents that are more informal and less bogged down with technical terminology as kind of an introduction to other handwritten legal documents.

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Resources for faculty

Why Undergraduate Research is Perfect for Gen Z: New Major at Furman University Integrates Original Scholarship into the Humanities Curriculum

In the past, undergraduate research in the humanities favored independent projects and one-on-one mentorship. But these “unbundled” opportunities are giving way to a more systematic approach. Original scholarship is increasingly being built into the curriculum. A good example is the new interdisciplinary major in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) at Furman University in Greenville, SC. Furman’s new WGSS major is deliberately centered on mentored undergraduate research in combination with internships. These experiences help undergraduates translate their academic and political interest in feminism, gender identity, and LGBT issues into meaningful careers and lifelong civic engagement.

The perfect major for Gen Z

Furman’s new major responds to a broader trend: Gen Z’s urgent interest in inclusion and gender equity. Students entering college now have watched #metoo rock Hollywood, disrupt industry. They have seen it transform the conversation in both higher education and politics. They were in high school when the first female presidential candidate from a major political party lost the White House to a male candidate accused of sexual assault. They were in middle school when the Supreme Court affirmed the right of LGBTQI people to marry. They have watched debates about “Bathroom Bills” play out during their adolescence. And they want to know how their colleges approach housing options for transgender and nonbinary students. They arrive on campus already asking questions about the place of gender and sexuality studies in their curriculum. A major in WGSS enables undergraduates to connect their current, real-world concerns with the scholarly study of women’s history and issues of gender and sexuality.

Making undergraduate research interdisciplinary

Furman’s WGSS major is truly interdisciplinary, offering courses from ten academic departments. Research is required at both the introductory and advanced level. One longstanding component of introductory WGSS course is the Activism/Advocacy Project. It asks students either to volunteer their time at a relevant local organization (rape crisis center, domestic violence shelter, etc) or to address a gender- or sexuality-related challenge on campus (for instance, contraceptive access). Students then reflect on the outcome of their project. Recently, students have shared these advocacy projects with the campus community through presentations at the university’s annual undergraduate research event, Furman Engaged. This introductory project gives a hands-on experience with a self-directed gender studies project to students who are just exploring the field rather than pursuing a minor or major.

For more advanced students, the Directed Research course, completed in the senior year, brings together their varied coursework by allowing each student to develop and execute an independent research project or to collaborate substantially on multiple phases of a faculty-designed research project in one or several disciplines.

Career anxieties–and genuine impact

Gen Z students also grew up in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2008. They come to university making savvy inquiries about how their education will translate into marketable skills. Furman’s new major uses undergraduate research as a way of responding to these concerns. The Furman major’s emphasis on research and internships helps answer the most pressing query students (and their parents) voice about any academic program: how will this help me/my child get a job?

College professors have reason to be wary of the corporatization of higher education, of which anxiously emphasizing career outcomes is one symptom. Nonetheless, students’ academic training has the greatest value when it leads to careers that engage their intellectual passions through their whole lives. By requiring directed research and internships, Furman’s new WGSS major supports advanced students as they conduct independent intellectual inquiries and apply their knowledge of feminist and LGBT issues in practical contexts. These engaged learning experiences prepare students to make a genuine impact on the social, political, and practical problems that first piqued their interest in this academic field.

As an interdisciplinary field with strong humanities representation, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies has for almost fifty years connected pressing social and economic justice concerns with rigorous academic frameworks for analysis. Now, designing a WGSS major with an undergraduate research component ensures that graduates enter the workforce prepared to think critically about questions of gender, sexuality, and privilege that they will encounter daily in their careers and communities.

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Resources for faculty

Gallery founder reflects on her undergraduate research experiences

Undergraduate research experiences can prepare students for the future in ways they might not expect. Hannah Litvan graduated with art and creative writing majors from Albion College in 2015; within two years she had founded the Ice House art gallery in Evanston, Illinois. Starting a business required skills not typically included in studio art or creative writing, but Litvan found that her undergraduate research experiences in particular had made her more articulate, more adaptable, and with a larger perspective on the core value of art.

Ready For Anything

Litvan says she founded the Ice House gallery because she saw a need: “I noticed my hometown community was lacking a representation of fairly priced, quality local art for sale, though it had plenty of artists looking for a place to show and sell their work.” But starting a gallery would be challenging. “As much as I learned about art and myself as an artist [in my college coursework], I learned nothing about art as a business or about being a business owner,” Litvan says. She quickly found herself having loan meetings, pitching ideas, and meeting with large and varied groups of people.

Presenting her undergraduate research project, a study of comics and art, helped her communicate with her new audience. “It was good to hear feedback and questions from a larger audience,” she says, an audience “who thinks differently than me, who would ask questions I may not have thought of, and think about my idea in their own way thus giving me a different perspective. That happened both in my undergraduate research experience and early groundwork for the gallery. Even now I work with the city and large groups of people in each of my shows. I have to make sure I cover a lot of ground as far as what I show in order to appeal to more people.”

Hannah Litvan, Founder Ice House Gallery, former undergraduate scholar

Working on a complex and evolving project also turned out to be something Litvan had experience with by way of her undergraduate project. “My research idea started off a lot more simplistically than what it turned into,” she says, “and that was true of my gallery too. I thought a nice little local art gallery would be nice, then a whopper of a space fell in my lap and I needed to be much more than a gallery. There are artist studios, classes, workshops, concerts, performance art, constantly changing shows and collaborative events with other businesses and the city. It still has the base value of what I wanted to present, but now on a much larger scale.”

Balancing Art and Business

Being an entrepreneur doesn’t mean abandoning your core values, even if the day-to-day work sometimes can seem far from the reason you began. As Litvan says, “I’ve always placed a large value on art, and have always pushed for art appreciation, sales, features and for serious treatment of that profession. I wanted to convey that in my undergraduate research as well as with my gallery.”

Litvan considers herself primarily as an artist rather than an entrepreneur, although her future goals certainly draw on the business skills she’s learned. “Opening and operating my own gallery has its ups and downs. I love coordinating group shows, setting up and installing shows, talking about art as well as selling it. These are all skills that I learned both in my education and on the job. Now I have all the experience and knowhow all those other jobs wanted me to have straight out of school, and I can be my own boss.”

“But it is not a ‘dream come true,'” she adds. “Owning a business leaves little time for personal time, especially when it comes to creative time. I am slowly reclaiming that as my business stabilizes. I don’t know where I will be in 5 years or what type of career I will have, but I know I always want to be involved in and with art.”

Hannah Litvan participated in Albion College’s Foundation for Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity (FURSCA).

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Resources for faculty

Student researchers contribute to the Map of Early Modern London (MoEML)

Large digital humanities sites can offer great opportunities for undergraduate scholarship. One model project is the University of Victoria based Map of Early Modern London (MoEML), a blend of history, geography, and literary study focused on London in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. MoEML usually relies on advanced scholars, but through its pedagogical partnership program  MoEML also invites mentored undergraduate contributions. It is perfect for contributions from undergraduates who are just beginning true humanities scholarship. And its strong peer review process and insistence on faculty mentoring mean that student contributions are always of high quality. Here two recent undergraduate scholars reflect on their work with MoEML.

Emily Allison, at Albion College, researched early London’s brothels. During the course of a summer project she wrote and encoded the entry for the Cardinal’s Hat in Southwark. Her faculty mentor was Dr. Ian F. MacInnes.

Ashton Davenport, at North Carolina State, researched Stationer’s Hall with fellow students during a recent class with Dr. Maggie Simon.

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

Emily: The easiest thing about the work I did for the Map of Early Modern London was how immediately captivating the research was. I completed my MoEML articles with the help of a summer research grant at Albion College. That meant I was able to treat the project like a full-time job. Even logging 40+ hours a week on my research, I very rarely felt like the process was boring or tedious. Each day I was met with a renewed sense of purpose. I felt like working on the map was a puzzle that I had to assemble before the summer was over.

Emily Allison, Albion College, '18 in Victoria, home of MoEML
Emily Allison, Albion College, ’18 in Victoria, home of MoEML

I found that the most frustrating thing was how my research was never complete. I would think that I had exhausted every source I could find and then stumble across a new one that would bring with it new contradictions and complexities.

Ashton:The easiest part of the project was finding the general research surrounding Stationer’s Hall. It was the location of the governing body for the printing industry in its prime, so hundreds of primary and secondary sources mentioned it. It was also very easy to work with my classmates. We were all in the same major and knew each other. Therefore creating our draft proved easier than I thought it would be. The hardest part of the project was narrowing down our research to only a few sentences. We didn’t want the draft  to be too long and tedious. Our group had five pages of research after we were done! We had grown to love every fact we learned about Stationer’s Hall; having to depart from some of those facts and only include the essential ones was heartbreaking.

Ashton Davenport, North Carolina State University, '18
Ashton Davenport, North Carolina State University, ’18

CURAH:What kinds of things did you learn? (about the early modern period, about scholarship, or about yourself)

Emily: Prior to my work with the Map of Early Modern London, my knowledge of the early modern period was minimal at best. Therefore, before I could delve into the specifics of brothels in early modern London, I had to do a fair amount of research to lay groundwork. Even with this extra layer of research, I found that I could successfully set a schedule for myself and stick to it. That came as a surprise, since up until that point I’d never conducted such an extensive research project. It made me feel like I could handle taking on larger projects in the future. I also learned that independent research can sometimes be lonely and totally overwhelming; I was grateful for the frequent reassurance I received from my advisor that I was taking the proper steps and doing enough, even when it felt like I wasn’t.

Ashton: I had never done research quite like this before, and I learned quickly that there is an abundance of information available regarding anything one wants to  research. That’s why narrowing down the research that pertains to your specified subject can be difficult. The filters and advanced search techniques our NC State librarians taught us were helpful. Databases like Early English Books Online (EEBO) were also important. As far as the early modern period itself, I learned about the Great Fire of London, one of the most important events we encountered. The fire burnt down Stationer’s Hall and destroyed most of its important documents. I learned many things about myself, but the most lasting thing I learned was my passion for early modern research. I had always loved it (I have an affinity for King James I), but this project fed my passion. It allowed me to explore some of London’s greatest buildings while also focusing on one small one that had a big impact during my favorite period of history and literature.

CURAH:Did you make any discoveries along the way?

Emily: During my research, I attempted, with increasing difficulty, to find the exact locations of the brothels listed in John Stow’s Survey of London. I came to learn that brothels were often conflated with other public houses (such as taverns and inns), and the more I tried to parse out what brothels were and how they functioned in the early modern landscape, the harder it was to draw clear distinctions between the various types public spaces. This idea of geographical ambiguity formed the basis for my Honors thesis, as I analyzed Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure with the knowledge I had acquired about prostitution in early modern London.

Above all, MoEML helped me understand London’s history—and history in general—in new ways. My research forced me to conceptualize history with geography at the forefront, which was something that I had never done before.

Ashton: My group discovered a source that proved to be everything we needed and more: Cyprian Blagden’s The Stationer’s Company: A History, 1403-1959. This detailed history gave us facts we would use for the majority of our project. Stationer’s Hall moved locations four different times during the early modern period. After the Great Fire of London, the Stationer’s Company set up headquarters in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital for 28 months during the reconstruction of the hall. At the end of the 17th century, the Hall generated revenue from renting out the premises for dances, dinners, and lotteries. This information was the most essential, and it steered our research into the right direction. The discovery of this source was pivotal for our research.

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

Emily: My work with MoEML taught me a breadth of new skills that I use at my current place of employment. For instance, part of my job requires that I carefully examine primary source documents to verify historical dates and events. Verification was a major component of my brothel and prostitution research. Conduct ing thorough research and dealing with conflicting ideas also are useful abilities. They help with my work at a state historical society.

MoEML also gave me insight into the nature and intensity of humanities research, which is useful given my plans to attend graduate school in the near future. If I had any doubts about continuing my education, doing research for MoEML solidified not only that I would be able to do it, but also that I might actually be able to do well at it.

Ashton: I am now a high school English teacher in my hometown, and the things I learned from this research project have helped when teaching my students about how to conduct their research. I encourage them to stick with it and not get overwhelmed when presented with the abundance of information, something I had to learn to do myself. My next step is to go to graduate school and achieve a Master’s in English, and surely my research with MoEML will resurface and the tools I used within this project with help me with my further research projects in graduate school.

CUR Councilor Ian F. MacInnes is MoEML’s U.S. Agent for Pedagogical Partnerships. If you have an interested student or are thinking of working with MoEML in the classroom, please contact him.

cover photo: Programmer Joey Takeda, Student Emily Allison, and MoEML Director Janelle Jenstad with a replica of the Agas Map of London in the University of Victoria offices of MoEML

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Resources for faculty

Materials Matter: Humanities and STEM Work together in Innovative Program

Because human culture has a material element, the material world offers an important connection between the arts and humanities and STEM fields. This connection fuels Binghamton University’s new transdisciplinary research group: Material and Visual Worlds. Materials are part of everyday life, yet their physical properties, social histories, and conditions of formation are opaque to most of us. And academics rarely study these varied aspects of materials in concert. With support of a Humanities Connections grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities, we at Binghamton are creating a suite of undergraduate research and general education courses to connect the humanities with STEM fields focused on materials.

The project

Our team includes a cultural anthropologist, a classical archeologist, a graphic designer, a physicist, an engineer, and me (as Director of Undergraduate Research and an interdisciplinary scholar). We are creating spaces where students can consider innovations in the development and use of materials as products not only of elemental processes and scientific experimentation but also of human needs and desires, and of historical forces.  

After one year of planning, we developed a pilot course, Materials Matter, that was team taught in Spring 2018 by a humanist (Roman archeologist Hilary Becker) and a scientist (physicist Todd Rutkowski). The course focused on one material: pigments. It taught foundational concepts of the physics of light and color and technical methods of analysis, as well as analytic methodologies of the humanities. These methods included interpretations of textual and artifactual evidence, and theorized understandings of relationships between people and the material assemblages with which they are enmeshed. Students applied scientific tools like X-ray fluorescence to the study of pigments used in ancient and modern times. They also practiced techniques of fresco painting and mixing pigments with different binders by hand, comparing their characteristics. Later, they visited our project partner, Golden Artists Paints in New Berlin, New York, and learned how scientists and artists work together to develop new paint formulations. Their experiences reveal how transdisciplinary study is not just a luxury of the academy but also a wider key to innovation.

Challenges

While students loved our pilot course, we are still refining our approach. From the outset, we wanted to have students analyze glass and ceramic materials as well as pigments. We also want to scale up the 20 seat seminar to a large lecture hall style sectionalized course to provide more students with this experience. But we don’t want to sacrifice the experiential nature of the course activities or the assignments that allow students to formulate and investigate their own questions. An undertaking of this scale has taken a massive orchestration, and our university structures don’t always make it easy. For example, how do we support the instructional expertise we need to teach science and humanities rigorously in one course? How do we support TAs from each area to lead discussion sections and labs? And how do we catalogue such an integrated course in our bulletin?

Development

Dr. Pamela Smart, my colleague on this project, has led the second iteration of Materials Matter. For the first time at Binghamton, we have created a course designated as both laboratory science and aesthetics general education. To support the course, we have assigned one TA from art history and one from chemistry to lead separate sections. Using our NEH award, we hired a a post-doctoral student to formulate and test each lab exercise. We’ll also be inviting guest lecturers to contribute their expertise. Golden Artists Colors will again contribute to the course, and we are bringing in our second industry partner, Corning Museum of Glass. Students will work on a lab custom designed by their chief scientist Jane Cook and curator Marvin Bolt, and then take a field trip to the museum. We will also carefully assess our course through pre- and post-course surveys and focus groups of students and faculty.

Future plans

Ultimately, we want to show undergraduates how to combine research techniques and perspectives from the humanities with those of the sciences. The next planned course will be a first-year research immersion experience, a two-course sequence that will be part of Binghamton’s new initiative, the Source Project. This initiative teaches first-year students how to do research in humanities and social sciences. It also offers courses like Materials Matter which bring these fields into mutually enhancing conversation with STEM fields. For example, a first-year student from the Spring 2018 course chose to ask why red ochre was used as an adulterant with cinnabar in wall paintings in Roman villas. He answered the question by considering cinnabar’s chemical as well as economic properties. Asked to reflect on his experience doing this work he concludes, “By combining the humanities and sciences, I was able to ask unique questions, go further in-depth, and expand more than I would have been able to otherwise. The humanities and sciences need each other in order to tell a complete story.”

Implications

The challenges we face in integrating STEM and humanities have implications not only for teaching and learning but also for the ways we go about organizing research. Over the past two years we have seen how the intellectual labor of our team has spurred new relationships and integrative research projects for faculty and staff. And we are pleased that our first doctoral student assistant received a post-doc position to work on a new interdisciplinary curriculum at another public university. This project has deepened our conviction that the most compelling and productive way to foster a liberal education is through integrative, experiential coursework that goes beyond the boundaries of any one discipline. If you’d like to hear more, we will be presenting our work in a panel at the AAC&U annual conference later this month with other like-minded colleagues creating similar experimental courses at their institutions.

Resources for faculty

Creating a Web Version of a Medieval Book of Hours: Reflections from Student Researchers

Sometimes a single item in the archives can be the basis for an extended student project. This is how Kathleen Dusseault at Truman State University found herself creating a web version of a medieval book of hours in the library’s special collections. Dusseault worked with mentors Dr. Jon Beck (computer science) and Amanda Langendoerfer (library). Drawing on translations created by a former Truman student, Lauren Milburn, Dusseault designed and created a permanent addition to the library’s website. CURAH tracked down both Kathleen and Lauren and asked them about their work.

CURAH:How did you get involved with the project?

Kathleen Dusseault, Truman State University

KD: I became involved with the project due to a frequent exposure to the materials located in Truman State University’s Special Collections and Museums Department from a couple of different art history courses. As I continued to pursue a degree in Art History I needed to complete an internship that involved elements of art history in some way. I also started working in Special Collections starting in the fall of 2017, and over the course of that year I reflected on what I could do for an internship. In the spring of 2018 I took a week long digital humanities class that taught the students some html and worked as a class to develop online resources that helped make something more interactive or easier to use. My group worked on making a site that would allow for students to see all the art prints that can be checked out visually instead of having a list of artist and title. While I did not work on the coding for that website, I found myself interested in developing something that would be useful for future students and others while at the same time working on a new skill.

This brings me to the project itself. I knew that I wanted to create a website (something that I had never done before), but I wasn’t sure on what precisely or where. I brought the idea up with the head of Special Collections and Museums, Amanda Langendoerfer, and she suggested several different books or exhibits that would work well for such a project. I was drawn to our one Book of Hours because of my previous interactions with the manuscript due to my art history classes and the work that former student Lauren Milburn had completed on it.

LM: As I was pursing my Classics degree, I developed an interest in sacred religious texts. When it came time for me to complete my

Lauren Milburn, Truman State University

Capstone, my Classics department mentors suggested that I examine The Book of Hours in Truman’s Special Collections. After an initial examination of the manuscript we decided that transcribing and translating the text would be a challenging endeavor that would benefit future students. At the time having a digital copy of the manuscript was a long-term goal. Kathleen’s dedication and hard work made this dream a beautiful reality.

CURAH: What exactly was your part in the creation of the website?

KD: Years earlier the scans of the manuscript were taken in TIF format (for preservation) and a JPEG format (for uploading digitally) excluding certain blank pages. One of my goals, however, was to have the book be viewable outside of Special Collections just the way that it would be seen within, except digitally. With the help of Annie Moots (the Special Collections digital librarian) I got to scan the original pages that were missing (all of which were just blank pages not included in the original scan). I inputted all the JPEGs into a plugin called 3D FlipBook which accomplished this goal. I then researched Books of Hours in order to add content to several pages. I placed all content onto the WordPress site myself. The only other thing that I was not a part of was the translations by Lauren Milburn. In order to create that portion of the website labeled as Translation and Transcription I added the already written content myself but kept the way that Lauren formatted the writing (for her capstone). Originally, however, they were two separate text documents. The biggest change I made was placing the transcription on the left, the corresponding scan of the manuscript, and the translation on the right.

LM: For my Capstone project, I transcribed and translated the Latin within the manuscript. In addition, I deciphered and indexed abbreviations, decoded the format of the text, and created footnotes to provide context for the readers.

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

KD: The easiest part to this project was adding content to the website. After looking at several books on the subject I found it easy to narrow a focus down on what sort of information I wanted to provide. I also had a lot of fun at the end of my project doing some user testing with library staff and friends who volunteered. I found that as I went along with the project I knew where to click to find certain information and it didn’t seem to work the same way with those who tested out the site at the end.

The hardest part that I had was working with Lauren Milburn’s transcription and translations. I was unfamiliar with the structure of quires (which is how Ms. Milburn had divided the content of her translation and transcription). In order to accomplish the task of putting the work online I first needed to understand how she had created the translation and transcription. Once I became more familiar with her work this was no longer an issue.

Formatting was another thing I struggled with on occasion. This was due to my lack of experience with WordPress, but after working on a couple of different pages and developing pages with a website builder plugin called Elementor I wasn’t finding this to be as much of an issue.

LM: The easiest part of working on this project was engaging with the subject matter itself. As a Roman Catholic I found translating the familiar prayers and sections of scripture exceptionally enriching. It also felt incredibly humbling to connect with a text that was a sacred source of meditation and prayer for the original owners. The hardest part of working with the text was deciphering the abbreviations and learning the writer’s Latin shorthand. Certain phrases and words were often shortened within the text because the prayer or piece of scripture had been stated in–full earlier within the Quire.

CURAH: What kinds of things did you learn?

KD: There are many different things that I learned while working on this project. As I only had a beginners knowledge on what a Book of Hours is and its purpose there was a lot of content that I learned in order to make the website. I also learned a significant amount about how to work with WordPress, which I think will be beneficial later on in life, and I learned quite a few things about myself. At the beginning there were three goals for my project. I wanted to make the Book of Hours visible outside of the reading room at Truman State, have the transcription side by side with original pages, and add the additional content for those who would like to learn more about such a manuscript. It’s from gathering this content and presenting it that I learned more about myself, surprisingly. I found that altering my perspective on the information was difficult for me. What I mean by this is that having even the slightest knowledge on the subject had me skipping over important pieces of information that would be necessary to people just learning about what is a Book of Hours. I found myself constantly looking over the information to find these gaps and sometimes completely missing them. To combat this I had users that volunteered to test out the site and read the content within it to find these spots where I may have missed crucial information. Watching users read the content and listening to their questions also let me know where information should be located or added. Due to this project I also thought more about future careers and potentially going into the field of museum registrar or an education route (such as history or museum).

LM: This project enabled me to learn about the process of creating Books of Hours and their accompanying illuminations. In addition, I learned how to carefully work with and handle the fragile vellum. In doing so, I was able to honor the past while working to provide a resource for students in the present.

CURAH: Did you make any discoveries along the way?

KD: This kinda relates back to what I learned, I probably wouldn’t say that I learned anything earth shattering about the Book of Hours that I worked with, but I did learn a lot about myself. I really enjoyed creating educational content that can be used by a variety of different people (i.e. researchers, students, faculty, scholars, anyone really). I also note in the site that within the border design on two of the illuminations have a particular flower in the border. That was an interesting tidbit that felt a little bit like a discovery to me.

LM: One fascinating aspect of working with this text was coming into contact with little French notes written in in the margins and in the back of the manuscript. Discovering these notes written by the owners made this project magical. The process of analyzingthe illuminations was another intriguing facet of this experience. Particularly, in regards to the ways in which ritual played a part in the owners’ mediations. For example, there is an illumination in which the face of Mary (the mother of Christ) has been “rubbed” away. I learned through this process that the owners must have repeatedly touched the illumination in this spot as they were praying.

Finally, the greatest discovery I made while completing this culminating project was the immense value in studying Classical languages. The time I spent studying Latin, Greek, and working on this Capstone project at Truman shaped who I am as a human and teacher. I am currently finishing a graduate degree in Applied Behavior Analysis and I still utilize the tools I cultivated as a Classics student every day. Specifically, this project and field of study enabled me to develop problem solving skills and the ability to analyze complex texts. I am extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from all of the professors in Truman’s Classics department and to have had their mentorship throughout this project. The trajectory of my life and career has been profoundly impacted by their support and knowledge. I am also exceedingly grateful to Kathleen and her dedication to digitally preserving this manuscript. She has done such stunning work and has given an amazing gift to our university.

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Resources for faculty

Rewards and challenges of UGR in Art History and Philosophy (from 2018 CUR Biennial presentation)

Centre College faculty Amy Frederick (Art History) and Eva M. Cadavid (Philosophy) presented at last summer’s Biennial CUR conference. Here they reflect on some of the followup questions the audience asked about the rewards and challenges of incorporating undergraduate research at a small liberal arts college.

CURAH: What were some of the challenges you faced when you started doing undergraduate research at Centre, a small liberal arts college in a small town?

Eva Maria Cadavid

Eva: The biggest challenge for me was thinking about what undergraduate research looks like in philosophy. I found myself thinking that it either had to look like the sciences or feeling like my students would have to have all sorts of expertise if they were to genuinely work in my areas of research. Philosophy is normally seen as a solitary endeavor. It is not. If it was, why would we share our work at conferences and try to get feedback from others? Admitting that was my first step to identifying how to foster research with students. Students can collaborate with each other and with faculty while still being responsible for research that is theirs.

Amy Frederick

Amy: I absolutely agree that scholarship in the humanities has traditionally been solitary, which can be a challenge when thinking about conducting research with undergraduates. As an art historian, I find that our geographical location at Centre also presents obstacles for meaningful undergraduate research. Our closest regional art museums are the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY (89 miles away), and the Cincinnati Art Museum (121 miles away). My first thoughts upon arriving at Centre turned toward attempting to rectify this situation for my students. A common thread through my ongoing efforts is to provide opportunities for them to interact with objects both inside the classroom and as part of independent research projects.

CURAH: How are you addressing some of those challenges?

Eva: I am still trying to figure out what I am doing with UGR. Some of my students are doing the traditional independent study where they develop an interest they have over a semester and either revise a paper or write one. But I only work with students who are really focused on the topic and who agree to present their work publicly and revise their final papers. This seems to me a more traditional (and very valid) way of doing UGR with humanities students.

Some of my students have become an integral part of my research, which intersects both philosophy and social science. We have a research team with students staking their skills and developing a main project under the umbrella of our overall research but also very much knowing that they must help others on the team as needed.

Most of the students who have worked with me over the last 4 years are not philosophy majors. Some are and some declare a minor after working with me for a few semesters. They bring a lot into our research and they also develop a lot of philosophical skills that they then take with them and apply in their chosen fields.  They bring creative and fresh perspectives and challenge me to  defend and to rethink the way I do philosophy.

Amy: When I arrived at Centre, I was happy to find that the College owns a small teaching collection of art. Two years ago, two students and I began the long process of creating a database for the College’s ceramics collection. While work had been done on the collection in preceding years, it was never a primary focus for any one person or office. The students learned new vocabulary and how to create and use metadata. The students and I regularly discussed how each step of the process would inevitably lead to twenty more steps that they hadn’t initially considered. We all had to readjust our expectations, especially me. By the end of that first summer, one student was able to put all of the digital photographs of the objects into a OneDrive folder, and the second student had been able to input most of the already-known information into an Excel spreadsheet. No supplementary research was done, and we did not get through even a description of each object for our spreadsheet, much less a decision about how this information would eventually be presented to the public.

This past summer, another student took up the task. Work in the interceding two years had been sporadic and inconsistent, and often without parties talking with one another. We now have (incomplete) databases in OneDrive, GoogleDocs, Excel, AirTable, and an old image database. We have old file folders in a variety of locations on campus. I think I have become more realistic about the scope of this project, and more enthused by the continued student interest in working on it. I am thrilled that these students are learning to “do” art history. We will keep making small steps forward.

CURAH: What aspects of your experience might be applicable at other institutions?

Eva: Mostly, it has been very successful but it works best when I trust the student and give them the freedom to fail. It is also an endeavor that takes time. Although independent studies can lead to success in only a semester, for creating a research team, it helps to have students stay with the team over a few semesters, help train each other, and stake an area where they then train the next person. It may sound weird to think of applying this to philosophy, but it is doable – whether it is developing bibliographies, websites, documents, etc.

Amy: For me, I think it is important to discover and then utilize what you have. What are your available resources for undergraduate research (on campus, in the community), even if those resources may not be what you expect or are familiar with?

———————

What are your early experiences like in integrating undergraduate research in the humanities? Let us know in the comments or by contacting the editors at editors@curartsandhumanities.org.

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Resources for faculty

Letter-press poetry merges art and creative writing in interdisciplinary course

Poetry and fine art have a long history of fruitful interaction. At
Albion College, professors Anne McCauley (art) and Helena Mesa (English) have taken advantage of the natural connections to create an inspiring example of interdisciplinary creative activity: a course called “Visual Poetry,” where students print broadsides of their own poetry on three Vandercook proof presses. There are several valuable results of this kind of interdisciplinary creative activity.

Revision

Some students approach the class primarily as artists and others as creative writers. But both learn the true meaning of revision and the value of meticulous attention to detail. “No one wants to spend hours writing and revising a poem, setting type, printing a poem, trimming and prepping a package or broadside, only to discover that she misspelled honeysuckle or that he omitted a period,” says Mesa. “The process demands that we slow down and proofread-proofread-proofread before we say something is ‘finished’ or ‘published.’ Setting type is itself a slow and careful process. “Hand setting type requires a lot of attention to detail and patience,” McCauley says. “The job is a meticulous one, often tedious. This exercise and the results make us aware of how much we take for granted the words we consume online and in hard copy.”

“In these broadsides words are physical and the voice we hear when we read them feels present.” — Anne McCauley

Reflection

This interdisciplinary creative activity also promotes new kinds of reflection on the craft for both the artists and the creative writers. “ Poets rediscover what space can do for a poem,” says Mesa — “the placement of a line, of a stanza, of the poem on the page affects how we read, and in printmaking, that space provides students a new conceptual understanding of space.” Artists find their ordinary experience in printmaking amplified. “Every step is deliberate and time intensive,” says McCauley. “And there are no ‘happy accidents’ in letterpress printing. It takes a lot of experience on these presses to feel confident in experimenting with the process, the materials and the imagery.”

Challenges

Because it demands a new approach to the material, a course featuring interdisciplinary creative activity like “Visual Poetry” is challenging for students. “It’s one thing to write a poem, workshop it, show it to some friends or family, and potentially, file it away forever,” says Mesa. “But when you write and revise a poem for display, as a broadside or small book, the process can raise new anxieties about whether or not the poem is finished. That is, there’s a tension between the intimacy of a private poem, a hidden poem, and a poem meant for the public, meant for display. And while we discuss the reader in all of my workshops, it’s easy to hide a poem and never show it to anyone after the semester ends. It’s less easy to hide a poem that’s designed to hang on a wall.” Artists experience their own challenges. “Artists initially anticipated it would be a more direct, less time intensive process,” says McCauley. “But first they had to generate and organize the words to create their poetry. With this combination of challenges, the writing and the preparation to print, the physical investment was (mentally and physically) exhausting and exhilarating. After working with an artist/writer at a press for several hours, I found that I often had to provide an additional dose of patience necessary when everything seemed to be going wrong on the press.”

Creative exchange

The most important benefit of interdisciplinary creative activity is the opportunity to incorporate different approaches and ways of thinking. “Visual Poetry” allows students discover fundamental artistic processes. “Art students, like writers, build on imagery,” says Mesa. “They create things that mean something, and detest clichés, especially the easy ‘put a bird on it’ clichés. Our artists had just as much to say about the imagery within a poem as our writers did, which gave us a common ground to start the conversation.” Students also benefit from the interaction between experts in two different fields. Both McCauley and Mesa say that the collaborative classroom gives their students a better and different version of themselves as teachers. They are conscious about marrying their skillsets. And their collaboration makes for projects that Mesa says “are more inventive and challenging than we could ever envision on our own.” Both instructors find the class energizing, despite the additional time it takes. Mesa muses, “Perhaps it’s tapping into a long history of ekphrasis—art written in response to poetry—that engages our creative selves in a new way, which invigorates my teaching energy.”

Do you have examples interdisciplinary creative activity with students? Let us know in the comments or directly to the editors@curartsandhumanities.org

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