Library Award for Undergraduate Research
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Item Lesbian Newsletters, Pulps, and Manuals: A Primary Source Analysis(2024) Schmitz, Holland; Woods, ColleenLesbian Newsletters, Pulps, and Manuals: A Primary Source Analysis is a research paper about lesbian publications in the mid 1900s. The paper examines two lesbian newsletters: The Ladder and Vice Versa, which were published in the 1940s and 50s; and two lesbian pulp novels: We Walk Alone by Ann Aldrich and The Price of Salt by Claire Morgan, which were both originally published in the 1950s. By examining all of these texts, the paper declares that lesbian authors created an image of humor, bravery, and care for the local community through the work they published. The newsletters were widely distributed thanks to discreet mailing options, and the lesbian pulp novels were sold in nearly every drug store and shop where someone could walk up to the counter and bravely purchase a novel with a naked woman on the front. Due to the popularity of these texts, the image of themselves that the lesbian authors wished to present did succeed in influencing many people that lesbians are worthy of love and protection, and are strong activists and allies for issues that affect queer identities. This research paper set out to change the way lesbian history was viewed by UMD peers, for the better.Item Recovering Democracy Archives Project(2024) Solomon, Seble; Parry-Giles, ShawnIn my Rhetoric of Black America course (COMM360), I recovered a speech from 1857 delivered by Frances Harper from the Library of Congress archives. I authenticated the speech by comparing different versions and noting any discrepancies or necessary corrections. I also wrote a contextual analysis of the speech, discussing Harper’s biography, educational background, the occasion of the speech, and its impact. After the course concluded, I collaborated with Dr. Shawn Parry-Giles, as part of an independent study (COMM489), to further revise my contextualization paper and prepare for publication on the Recovering Democracy Archives website. I conducted additional archival research about Frances Harper, U.S. social movements from1830 to 1890, and the development and evolution of moral suasion as a method of liberation.Item The Influence of Institutions on the Growth of Senegal(2024) Little, Liam; Moller, DanThis research paper is about the impact of institutions of the lack of sustained economic growth in Senegal. particularly looking at the political and legal institutions and the powerful incentives or disincentives provided. Concluding with three policy recommendations to improve economic growth in the country.Item Evaluating Evaluation Metrics for Ancient Chinese to English Machine Translation(2024) Bennett, Eric; Schonebaum, AndrewEvaluation metrics are an important driver of progress in Machine Translation (MT), but they have been primarily validated on high-resource modern languages. In this paper, we conduct an empirical evaluation of metrics commonly used to evaluate MT from Ancient Chinese into English. Using LLMs, we construct a contrastive test set, pairing high-quality MT and purposefully flawed MT of the same Pre-Qin texts. We then evaluate the ability of each metric to discriminate between accurate and flawed translations.Item F is for Feminism: Understanding 1970s Social Conflict through Sesame Street(2024) Mason, Taylor; Keane, KatarinaDebuting in 1969, the producers, psychologists, and educators of Sesame Street created an empathetic, educational, and engaging world to develop literacy, mathematics, and socioemotional skills in preschool-aged children. Although Sesame Street has been analyzed extensively for its learning outcomes and legacy in popular memory, historians have neglected to look at the discourse surrounding the program. Preserved in the University of Maryland’s Special Collections Archives, tens of thousands of children and adults wrote letters to Sesame Street and explored a variety of topics, from asking Big Bird to come to a birthday party and praising the cast’s racial diversity to communicating dissatisfaction with the promotion of lackluster nutritional values or expressing outrage over a lack of female representation. Focusing in on letters from the first decade of production (1969-1979) and letters from women who self-identified as mothers, who were uniquely responsible for their child’s care and education, two topics emerged as the most pressing: nutrition/breastfeeding and gender representation. The combination of asserting an identity and voicing an opinion in the same letter serves as meaningful examples for how Americans engage in civil discourse to change the world around them. Viewed through this lens, Sesame Street was more than a show with joyful characters, catchy music, and a vampire teaching numbers: it was a two-way mirror into the consciousness of American culture.Item "The White Man's Way": Navigating Race and Memory in "Federal Indian Boarding Schools"(2024) Cotten, Sylvia; Woods, ColleenI firstly propose new terminology for these "Forced Indigenous Labor Schools"; whereas they are called FIBS by the Federal Investigative Report, I suggest "FILS" as "Forced Indigenous Labor Schools." I argue that these methods of cultural dispersion (and the "civilizing mission" as a whole) are rooted in values of whiteness, which include English literacy, Christianity, nationalism, racism, and "individualization" (or hard work). I also categorize numerous "memory relationships," which are the ways that the United States government, Indigenous tribes, FILS students, and their families think of one another, and indicate changes and continuities about these perceptions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I use newspapers from the Carlisle Industrial Training School and the Genoa Indian School to determine this information. I ultimately argue for further reconciliation efforts between the United States government and the Indigenous tribes and their affected family members.Item Executive Orders Under Judicial Scrutiny: The Role of Partisanship in Judicial Outcomes(2024) Zinno, Matthew; Wohlfarth, PatrickScholars have extensively examined the executive branch’s success in the federal judiciary, principally through the Solicitor General’s influence on the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet, scholars have focused little attention on the factors that affect the president’s ability to successfully defend legal challenges to executive orders . This question is especially important given the president’s increasing reliance on executive orders to enact policy. I argue that presidential success defending executive orders is not only influenced by the legal merits, but also by the political context, including judge partisanship and presidential approval. I construct an original dataset of all litigation in federal courts involving executive orders enacted since 1945. I present several key findings. First, I show that the president’s ability to successfully defend their executive orders varies considerably. And, while few executive orders are ruled wholly unconstitutional, courts routinely limit their scope and executability. I also find a statistically significant relationship between copartisan judges (i.e., those appointed by presidents of the same party as the executive order author) and rulings in favor of the executive. Additionally, I find a statistically significant relationship between judges’ ruling on executive orders and whether the case was adjudicated during versus after the issuing president’s tenure. These results lend empirical evidence to the claim that judges, like other political figures, are motivated by partisan and ideological considerations. This research underscores the importance of understanding the partisan factors that affect judicial decision-making on executive orders as they become an increasingly common tool for presidential policymaking.Item To Resurrect a Community: Reparations for Urban Renewal and Displacement in Lakeland(2023-04-23) Nowicki, Braden; Montroso, Alan"To Resurrect a Community" is an essay which provides a detailed portrait of harmful urban renewal in College Park's Lakeland district. Taking two major lines of inquiry - theory surrounding infrastructural oppression of minority communities throughout the nation and history/context for the renewal which occurred and Lakeland - I present arguments for confronting past racist renewal and preventing it in the future.Item Alienation and Alliances: Transgender Coalition-Building from the 1970s through the 1990s(2023) Grafstein, Julia; Keane, KatarinaCoalition-building in the transgender movement has received scant attention from scholars in history or gender studies. In an effort to understand transactivists' motivations and how they worked with others, this thesis analyzes the partnerships formed within the transgender community and with potential allies of the lesbian, gay, and feminist communities. Using archival records, magazines and newspapers, published reports, and oral histories, this thesis argues that trans activism in the period between 1970 and the end of the 1990s was multifarious, fractious and inconsistent. It also demonstrates that trans activists worked to build coalitions with potential allies in the women's movement and the gay and lesbian rights movement whenever possible. Such coalitions held the promise of greater influence and of shared values. Because I have submitted three of my other chapters for publication at several journals, I am submitting the introduction and my second chapter for your consideration. This chapter focuses on transgender coalition-building within the transgender community and gives insight into the internal struggles of a nascent movement. The introduction will detail the focus of my thesis altogether and lay out key background information. The separated bibliography has all of the sources from my thesis, while the bibliography at the end of my research paper has the sources from only the chapters I am submitting.Item A Self-Portrait of Success: The Images of Jewish Masculinity in 1940s America(2023) Yang, Mason; Cooperman, Bernard“A Self-Portrait of Success: The Images of Jewish Masculinity in 1940s America” is a research paper that seeks to define what masculinity and success looked like to Jewish men in the mid-twentieth century. To do so, This paper examines New York Times obituaries throughout the 1940s and analyzes the content that prominent Jewish men had published about themselves. These obituaries represent the fulfillment of the Jewish male aspirations and what they wanted to be known for. Along with this, this paper also explores Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, a 1949 play that narrates the life and death of an “everyman.” While he strives to find success and fame for himself and his family, he fails to achieve the same aspirations as the men in the obituaries. Ultimately, this paper works to add complexity and new dialogue to the understanding of Jewish masculinity and also seeks to generate interest in comparatively working with both nonfiction and fiction primary printed sources.