The Arts & Humanities division is proud to announce the winner of our small sticker design competition. Ahna Huff, a student at Redford University, submitted the following design.
Honorable mentions go to Angela Elgawli, Cassandra Tubwell, Michelle Villanueva, Rebekah Hollar, and Brannen Howard.
CURAH’s Trimmer Travel fund, made possible by a generous donation from Joe and Carol Trimmer, supports an annual travel award to help undergraduates travel to present their work at conferences in the Arts and Humanities. Applications are invited through March 22, 2022. The award is up to $1000.
Here is the link to the Travel Award application on the CUR National site. Students will need a free(!) membership to CUR to use the application portal. They can apply for their free membership here.
NCUR 2023, the annual CUR conference for undergraduates, will be running in-person April 13-15, 2023. Presentations in all fields are welcome, and a large number of arts and humanities students usually participate. Abstracts are due by November 30. Rates for the conference are quite reasonable. Need help writing an abstract? Here’s our easy set of instructions.
This year’s conference is making a few changes. Here are some of the notable differences (from the conference page):
The portal for student applications to CUR’s Posters on the Hill program is now open. The event itself will take place virtually in the spring of , 2022 (the date will depend on the agenda of Congress). This is a highly competitive program but very friendly to the arts and humanities. In 2018, for example, only 60 of 409 total submissions made the program, but proposals in the arts and humanities face slightly better odds: four out the seventeen proposals in the humanities were successful! With a little help from you, your students can successfully apply to Posters on the Hill this year!
The application process may not easy for your students. As their mentor you will have an important role. Two items on the CURAH resource page can be helpful: “how to write an abstract” and “how to make a poster.” The latter is particularly useful since posters are not a common form of presentation in the arts and humanities. Fortunately, our disciplines actually provide the background and skills for extremely compelling visual presentations of scholarship and creative activity.
As you help your students apply to Posters on the Hill, keep in mind that the event is partly an exercise in advocacy for undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative activity. Posters will be seen by Senators, Congressional Representatives, Congressional Staff, officers from the NEH and NEA, and the Press. The selection committee pays careful attention to the interests of your State Representatives. These usually have something to do with the unique resources and economic contributions of your state. But truly excellent and unusual student work on any project has a good chance of success. Don’t let the advocacy issues stop you; make sure your best students apply to Posters on the Hill. Participation is a wonderful opportunity. Students have an opportunity to meet with their Representatives, attend field trips, and hear from speakers who are innovators and supporters of 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We still do stokes at every meeting!
For more information on Dr. Stern’s projects past and present, see https://nathanielstern.com.
Young Scholars in Writing: Undergraduate Research in Writing and Rhetoric is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes research articles by undergraduates of all majors and years on the subjects of rhetoric, writing, writers, discourse, language, and related topics.
For volume 19, the publication is accepting the following types of submissions by April 16.
The YSW editors are eager to support undergraduate research in writing and rhetoric and are available to Zoom into your classes to discuss research and publication in YSW with your students. Just send an email (youngscholars.editor@gmail.com) to let them know if you’d like to schedule a virtual meeting.
A PDF of the full Call for Papers (CFP) is available here.
Emily Murphy Cope, Ph.D.
co-editor, Young Scholars in Writing
Assistant Professor of Rhetoric & Writing Studies
A special virtual poster session dedicated to undergraduate research in Art and Art History has been announced for the 2021 Annual Conference of the College Art Association (CAA), to be held February 10–13, 2021. Students who have been engaged in undergraduate research in object or medium studies, text-based analysis, experimental archaeology, thesis research, or creative inquiry are encouraged to participate; additionally, faculty and museum professionals with experience mentoring undergraduate research on this topics are invited to submit proposals.
Further information is available at this webpage; the deadline for submission is November 23, 2020.
Want to make an exciting poster for CAA 2021? We’re here to help!
When Chloe Landis first examined the images of Pharaoh Ramesses III from the high gate of his mortuary temple, Medinet Habu, she knew there was an untold story in their depictions of women. Landis, an undergraduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles with a double major in Art History and Egyptology, had studied early scholarship on the site. These scholars viewed the women as mere footnotes to Ramesses III’s sensational murder by members of his “harem.” Landis’ work led her to recount a far more complex story, one that emphasized the lived experiences of these women in ancient Egyptian society and their relationship with the Pharaoh. Landis is also the winner of the Trimmer Travel award from CURAH and the 2019 UCLA Dean’s Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Research. Her faculty advisor was Kathlyn (Kara) Cooney. CURAH caught up with Landis in the midst of the pandemic to ask about her research.
CL: My research focuses on a monumental gate structure that stands at the entrance of Pharaoh Ramesses III’s mortuary temple called Medinet Habu. This gate, referred to as the Eastern High Gate, has a series of rooms with an unusual series of reliefs on the interior walls depicting Ramesses in attendance by royal women. These images depict Ramesses in in intimate poses with the women, poses which are not only extremely unusual for Egyptian art but are odd given the context of the entrance into the pharaoh’s temple. My project involved studying the High Gate through an art historical lens. I wanted to fill in gaps in our conception of how the High Gate functioned as a ritual space for the pharaoh. I also wanted to understand the relationship between the king and the royal women depicted in the images.
CL: I think accessing sources was probably both of the easiest and hardest parts of the project. It was incredibly challenging to understand the reliefs with only a partial picture of them, as I could not visit the High Gate in Egypt and relied solely on excavation photos and line drawings of the reliefs made by epigraphers. Black and white photos from the 1930s are not useful when you’re looking for visible paint remnants or trying to understand orientation and spatial analysis of the reliefs within the High Gate. These problems left some gaps in my analysis.
On the other hand, The Epigraphic Survey from the Oriental Institute of Chicago has excellent excavation photos and an entire volume of documentation of the High Gate in its entirety, including line drawings of the entire gate and translations of texts. The Oriental Institute has incredible online access to their excavation images and publications that were invaluable in my study of the High Gate. Their records also include multiple volumes of documentation of the entire Mediet Habu temple complex. Working through their records gave me crucial context to the High Gate’s purpose and let me compare images to reveal the artistic style under Ramesses III.
CL: I learned that the Eastern High Gate was possibly the site of the murder of Ramesses III, an event which served as the catalyst for my project. Ramesses III was murdered in a plot by members of his so-called harem, their extended families, and officials. It was all documented in a collection called the Turin Judiciary Papyri. These accounts were confirmed by a scan of the king’s mummy that showed his throat had been slit. Because Ramesses’ death was so salacious and possibly occurred within the High Gate, often the reliefs are used almost as footnotes in articles about Ramesses’ murder, rather than discussed in their own right.
I also found much of the early scholarship frames the women as the villains of the story and out for their own ambitions, without reflecting on the complexities of the political atmosphere of the reign of Ramesses III and the involvement of the women’s extended families. When I discovered the biased way these women were discussed in scholarship, they became the passion of my project. I wanted to understand their role in society and how they functioned vis-a-vis the king.
This became the most prevalent when I realized how debated the term “harem” is in the field of Egyptology. Many scholars believe this term, does not capture the realities of the ancient Egyptian institution. A “harem” is a problematic orientalist image, which conjures an idea of women lounging around and only meant to serve the king sexually. But in ancient Egypt it housed royal women and was where royal children were raised. Early European egyptologists named the institution based on their understanding of the Ottoman harem and 19th-century harem paintings. The amount of colonial, orientalist and sexist baggage within egyptology is astounding, but it was essential to work through in beginning to untangle the perception of the women in the High Gate reliefs from their likely purpose.
I made some very interesting discoveries along the way! I found that through the iconography of the reliefs there are allusions to the king’s sexual power and sexual ability. These allusions broaden our understanding of how the High Gate functioned, not only within the mortuary context, but also as a functional space. Few texts are preserved inside the High Gate, which necessitated greater art historical analysis and this brought me to my most intriguing finds. Ramesses and the women are seen holding and giving each other various fruits, mostly pomegranates, which often are a symbol of fertility. The most interesting plant that I was able to identify was the mandrake. This small yellow plant is believed to have aphrodisiac qualities and has been linked to sexual iconography by Egyptologists who found similar mandrake iconography on objects from the tomb of Tutankhamun. In one scene, Ramesses is not only holding a mandrake tightly to his lap, but appears mostly unclothed, an allusion to his body and sexuality.
The clothing or lack thereof was another discovery I made. The women especially appear to be completely nude, though scholars argue their clothing may have been painted over the nude representation. My analysis showed trace evidence of garments in only a few reliefs. The emphasis on the body is only heightened because the gestures made by the king are sexualized. Scenes show the king caressing the women. In one scene that has been purposely damaged, Ramesses’ hand is placed directly in front of the woman’s genital region.
These visuals of sexual activity and fertility demonstrate Ramesses’ ability to reproduce and regenerate life, a vital attribute for every king in ancient Egypt. But the display of images such as these suggests a social and political need for the king to have these images publicized in monumental stone. Rituals certainly occurred between women who held priestess roles and the king, long before Ramesses and the High Gate was built, but images like these have never been published on a monumental scale. I argue the public presentation of these images demonstrate that the king felt a need to visually display his sexual ability, perhaps to coincide with the rites which occurred within the High Gate or to ensure the act of reproduction would continue forever since it was preserved in the walls. The heightened tensions of Ramesses’ reign that ultimately led to his death may explain why the king would need to reveal his ability to procreate and the royal women’s role in these rituals.
Though I’ve decided not to follow a path in traditional academia, I’m so grateful for this project in expanding my research skills and igniting my passion for future avenues of research. This project truly put my analytical skills and language knowledge to the test, while providing me with archival research experience that was truly invaluable. I would like to go into the museum education field. This is not directly applicable to egyptology, but I feel that so many of the hard skills I developed have already demonstrated how transferable they are.
Large academic conferences all over the country, including NCUR have canceled their 2020 events in advance of the pandemic. But some have begun to think about ways of moving events online. These might include everything from annual campus celebrations of student research to regional conference. An example is the Michigan Medieval and Renaissance Undergraduate Consortium (MMRUC), coordinated by Marla Lunderberg at Hope College. She decided early to go online for both posters and presentations. The event took place on its original date, March 28, using Google Meet.
Many of the challenges Lunderberg faced were the same as those faculty faced in suddenly moving to online teaching. “My own entry to synchronous online teaching was on March 23,” Lunderberg said, “so the week that we were organizing the event and offering students guidelines for presentation etiquette in general and online presentations in particular, I was far from an expert in online work.” But in some ways those challenges made the conference possible. Initially, few participants responded when Lunderberg suggested holding the conference online instead of canceling it. Then, she said, “everyone suddenly realized that their online experience was working, and that they had the time and energy to pull off the move to making this happen.”
The online format also allowed Lunderberg to put things together quickly. Many participants waited until three days before the event to signal their willingness to continue. As a result, Lunderberg said, “I had a couple of long nights sending out encouraging instructions and scheduling practice sessions so students could feel comfortable with the technology on the morning of the event.”
Students and faculty from four different institutions ended up participating throughout the day. One concern was that student might appear to present their work and then log off, but that didn’t happen. “I was especially pleased with students’ participation in the Q&A sessions following each paper presentation,” said Lunderberg. “They were receptive to the concept that participation in a conference means entering into conversation about the material they’ve researched with others who also cared about that material–and the Q&A sessions showed their engagement with their material.”
Presenter Anna Scott, whose project was on “Love as a Weapon in Shakespeare” said, “what I liked best about the conference was probably the interactive way in which we as students and teachers could engage. I could answer questions from my peers and professors and connect with the comments of others even though we were not face to face. I thought everyone was really patient and encouraging. Even though it wasn’t a traditional setting, it was a great first conference experience for me.”
Ordinarily, posters require careful set-up organization, but the online format can actually make poster presentations easier. Several students had intended to present posters at the initial face-to-face meeting. Some chose to turn the poster into a presentation. Others shared their poster with the group before the conference, allowing participants to prepare questions. “I’d certainly offer this choice in the future,” Lunderberg said. “Both options offered the students a great opportunity to demonstrate knowledge of their topics by responding to questions and engaging in conversation.”
As Lunderberg reflected on the experience, she said, “I think it’s important to think about the goals one wants to achieve through this or any other event, and then to think about how those goals might best be achieved in spite of a change of format.”
Communication with participants is as important in a conference as it is in online teaching. “Students feel best about their own work entering new territory if they have some idea what they are aiming to achieve,” said Lunderberg.
And finally, it’s important “to have a sense of humor about whatever might not go as planned.”
The Midwest Modern Language Association’s 2020 Convention will take place November 5-8 at the Hilton City Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The theme is “Culture of Collectivity.” The association is seeking proposals for papers that examine “how meaning is forged in connection with collective acts.” Abstracts for undergraduate papers are due on April 30 and must be submitted via email to mmla@luc.edu. (If you need help writing an abstract be sure to check out CURAH’s five step guide.) Undergraduate members of the MMLA can compete for the Student Paper Prize. The winning paper will be announced during the keynote speech, and the author will receive a prize of $100!
