CURAH congratulates the first two recipients of our new annual faculty mentor award: Neel Smith, professor and chair of the Department of Classics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, and Donald Lawrence, professor of visual arts at Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada.
Please see the full announcements at CUR.org for Neel Smith and Donald Lawrence.
We have updated our resource page to include information on writing research proposals. Take a look at our new advice to undergraduates writing research proposals (the full article).
Every year CURAH awards travel grants to deserving undergraduates. This year we congratulate our two award winners, Tori Dehlin (Utah State University, majoring in Global Communication and Spanish) and Madeline Hass (U of Wisconsin Oshkosh, majoring in philosophy). Tori and Madeline presented their original research at this year’s National Conference on Undergraduate Research at Kennesaw State University.
Dehlin examines public discourse around sexual harassment and abuse in the twittersphere. She looked at tweets in English and Spanish to construct her comparative analysis and emphasized the value and impact of #MeToo/#YoTambien on different communities of participants and users of the hashtag. As Dehlin explained, this paper is the beginning of an ongoing study that will explore the impacts of social media in creating narratives of shared experience, as well as examine how discourses such as #MeToo/#YoTambien change over time.
Hass builds on work done by Gordon Graham. She constructs a philosophical argument about how art is able to transcend standard statements of value, advocating for a level of understanding that takes us beyond human experience and sensory perception. The audience embraced Hass’s argument with enthusiastic engagement. Speaking about her experience, Hass said, “NCUR has had an incredible impact on my undergraduate experience. It has given me the opportunity to present my work to other young academics and to improve my skills as a speaker. Most significantly, it has helped me to see that academia can be accessible, and that there is a place for people like me in academia.” Hass hopes to attend graduate school to continue her studies in the field of philosophy.
We have updated our resource page to include more information on making posters. Take a look at our new advice to undergraduates making posters (the full article).
Medievalist Jo Koster at Winthrop University has helped us update our resource pages by allowing us to adapt her own handouts on the process. Take a look at our new advice to undergraduates writing abstracts (the full article).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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: 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.
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.
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?
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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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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.
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
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.”
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.”
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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Opportunities for undergraduates to present alongside faculty are rare in the humanities, but the Humanities Education and Research Association (HERA) is notable exception. Their annual conference welcomes “educators at all levels… including undergraduate/graduate students.” Best of all, HERA sponsors a $1,000 prize for undergraduate research. The prize goes to the best undergraduate paper at its annual conference. HERA also gives a smaller award to the student’s attending faculty mentor.
The 2019 conference is in Philadelphia, March 6-9. Its theme is “Highbrow, Lowbrow, Nobrow: Research and Aesthetic Values in the Humanities.” But HERA encourages participants to interpret their theme as widely as possible. The deadline for proposals (150-200 words) is January 25, 2019.
Last year’s prize for undergraduate research went to Leann Christopherson from San Francisco State University for her paper, “‘Everything was a Pretext to Arrest us’: Communicating Intersectionality through Transgressing Literary Borders in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” Her faculty mentor is SFSU English Professor Sarina Cannon.
More information is available from HERA’s conference page on their website. If you are a student interested in submitting your work, you should check out CURAH’s guide to writing an abstract.
Do you have information about an undergraduate conference opportunity or a prize for undergraduate research in your area? Let us know using the comments or by direct email to the editorial team.
