Emerging Scholars Projects 2024-2025
Modern Minstrels: ‘Blackface’ in the 20th Century
Professor: Chad Montrie, History
Student: Sohana Hasan, English and Ivy Galloway, Journalism and Professional Writing and French
Project Description:
Little has been written about so-called ‘blackface’ or ‘burnt cork’ minstrelsy after the 19th century, and most of the literature focuses on minstrel shows in the American South. Modern Minstrels will demonstrate how ‘blackface’ performances by both professional companies and “home-talent” lasted well into the modern era and profoundly shaped various other representations of race during that time. Modern Minstrels is part of an ongoing project examining the history of White racism in the United States, particularly the American North. The aim of the new project is to explore an important (and very much related) aspect of racism’s history and further contribute to understanding the politics, economy, and culture of Minnesota and the United States more generally, past and present. To complement this, the project also will include a lengthy appendix offering detailed guidance for readers to recover the history of ‘blackface’ (and other manifestations of racism) in their own towns and cities. Research for Modern Minstrels involves a wide range of primary sources, including newspapers, census manuscripts, and archival collections. Given the project focus and kind of research involved, the Modern Minstrels collaboration is ideal for a student who wants to assemble and develop their own project(s) on race and racism in America.
Imagining and Creating An Alternate Nature with 3D Technology and Fine Art
Professor: Yuko Oda, Art and Design
Student: Ryan Newton, Animation and Interactive Media
Project Description:
What will nature look like in the future? How will living organisms adapt to the changing environment? The project “Imagining and Creating An Alternate Nature with 3D Technology and Fine Art” will answer such questions from the artist’s perspective, through research of the science of nature, it’s cultural symbolisms, and our imagination. Themes will range from destruction, rebirth, entanglement of species, DNA variations, and the resulting artworks will represent nature’s calamities, resilience, and power to heal. Professor Oda’s art is at the intersection of technology with fine art, often bringing together the high-tech with low-tech in one artwork. In this project, 3D digital technology will be used to create imagery to be executed with traditional materials such as watercolors and drawings. 3D modeling software (Autodesk Maya and Pixelogic Zbrush) and compositing software such as Adobe Photoshop will be used to create natural living beings for digital compositions that will be recreated in traditional materials such as paint and paper. Animation and 3D printing may also be explored. The student collaborator will assist with 3D modeling, digital image manipulation, and may also assist with 3D printing, and/or 3D animating the models. This student will also gain experience with the brainstorming and research process of creating large scale art compositions and abstracting natural forms.
The Coinage of Antioch in the Third Century Crisis
Professor: Jane Sancinito, History
Student: Campbell Tacey, History
Project Description:
This project seeks to study the quantity of coins produced in the city of Antioch during the 3rd century CE, a period of major social, political, and economic upheaval. The project will consist of a series of die studies, targeted at the major coinages produced by the mint at Antioch, to estimate the total number of coins issued and assess the impact of Antioch’s production on the local economy. The study will proceed reign by reign, allowing us to break up the work into manageable pieces, while still building toward the ambitious goal of understanding the whole of the monetized economy in this period.
The Statistics of Lowell Manufactures: What Can We Learn from Historical Datasets?
Professor: Bridget Marshall, English
Student: Eva Reyes, Sociology
Project Description:
Lowell’s founders, early residents, and famous “mill girls” were proud of the city and its industrial marvels; in archives across the US, and in our own Center for Lowell History, we can find extensive documentation of the rise of the cotton industry and other entrepreneurial endeavors that started here in Lowell. Many of these sources have yet to be fully explored; this project will dig into a remarkable untapped data set to ask questions about Lowell and the lives of its early residents. The tables “Statistics of Lowell Manufactures” were published yearly from 1835 to at least 1873 (you can see a sample of the original at the Library of Congress). They documented and proudly promoted the accomplishments of Lowell’s manufacturers, sharing detailed information about raw materials, fuels, workers, and products manufactured by each corporation in Lowell, along with information about Lowell’s population and other rising business and community interests. In these tables, we can trace numerous shifting trends in manufacturing, including changes in technology, labor, and consumer products. Some questions we can use the data to help us answer include: How did the gender balance of workers change over time? How did the onset of the Civil War affect workers, wages, and production of goods in Lowell? What changes to wages–including gender disparity in wages--appeared over time? Which consumer goods were Lowell’s various mills producing, and what changes do we see in the production of those goods over time that might suggest changes in consumer preferences?
A History of the Arlington Soccer Club, 1977-2027
Professor: Chris Carlsmith, History
Student: Sebastian Hutchison, History
Project Description:
This project will examine the history of the Arlington Soccer Club (ASC) in Arlington, MA from 1977 to 2027. Drawing from meeting minutes, articles of organization, correspondence, budgets, local newspapers, and oral histories, we will craft a narrative history of this community non-profit organization. With 2,500 players and 300 coaches, the ASC is one of the larger town soccer clubs in Eastern Massachusetts. In addition to documenting the history of the club, we will seek to analyze change and continuity over time. We will compare the growth of soccer to other town sports (i.e., baseball, hockey, football, lacrosse), and compare the ASC to other local town soccer clubs. If the data is sufficient, we might consider the growth of female participation in response to Title IX legislation, as well as trace the careers of players who went to play or coach professionally. My student partner will participate in the collection and analysis of primary sources, help to conduct oral interviews, and search for relevant images.
Learning self-care when young: How music may enhance educational video-storytelling to support accidental injury prevention in children
Professors: Elissa Johnson-Green, Music; and Jiabin Shen, Psychology
Students: Jesús Santiago, Psychology; Jonathan Labrie, Psychology; and Alejandro Bonilla, Music Studies
Project Description:
This interdisciplinary research project in music, psychology, and neuroscience focuses on accidental injury prevention in children and on effective ways to teach them how to care for themselves through body awareness and strategies to safely navigate various environments. In a previous study led by Jiabin Shen, Department of Psychology, children were shown educational videos in which peers told stories about how they used skills and strategies to keep themselves safe. Based on that research, we are interested in how the addition of a musical soundtrack to educational video storytelling might enhance children’s learning and help them to retain knowledge and skills about injury prevention. Our main research questions: How might the combination of music and video storytelling enhance children’s ability to internalize, synthesize, and engage with information about injury prevention? How might children’s interactions with the videos help raise their awareness and reduce incidences of accidental injury? What are the differences in knowledge retention among treatment/control groups? Our Emerging Scholars will work with us to prepare the music videos, recruit participants for pilot and beta testing, work on-site with college students and children to collect data, organize and analyze collected data, and prepare submissions to peer-reviewed journals and conferences
Challenging Assumptions about Media Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights
Professor: Jenifer Whitten-Woodring, Political Science and Honors
Students: Tierny Roggiolani, Psychology; Carolina Cabral, Criminal Justice
Project Description:
For more than a century philosophers, politicians, human rights advocates and ordinary people have called for media freedom. Spreading media freedom has historically been viewed as a key to promoting democracy and human rights. Each year United States and European Union donors contribute more than half a billion dollars to media assistance programs in the Global South. The idea is that independent media will foster democracy, hold government accountable and make life better for citizens. These are grand expectations. Many journalists have risked their lives, and some have died striving to fulfill them. Yet, really, little is known about whether free media are up to the task or how the high choice media environment facilitated by internet proliferation has changed the potential effects of media freedom. In this project, the professor and Emerging Scholars student will develop a theory about the necessary conditions for media freedom to have these idealized effects and hypothesize about the effects of media freedom when these conditions are absent. The research team will then test these hypotheses across countries and over time and put them in context with case illustrations of countries including Hungary, India, Myanmar, and Uganda. Because this project is both quantitative and qualitative, the tasks will vary depending on the interests and skills of the student. The student could choose to work on either the quantitative or the qualitative component or a combination of both.
A Letter from Ohrdruf
Professor: Ellen Wetmore, Art and Design
Student: Yotam Perliger, History
Project Description:
I have a letter written to my grandmother on 19 April 1945, about 10 days after the first concentration camp was “discovered” by the Americans. This is Ohrdruf, Germany. The writer, James, was a high school friend. Using this letter, we will make a short graphic novel. We will experiment, test, then implement how to effectively communicate the tone and content of this letter, using layout, typography, drawings & photos with this text. This letter discusses both wonderful and terrifying things. How do those events and stories affect us now? How do we illustrate this specific story while framing for the reader the larger narrative? Who were the communities involved with Ohrdruf– i.e., who were the populations at this site? Why were 12-year-old kids enlisted to protect the local towns? Who was this group of young American soldiers, small town kids mostly, dropped in the middle of France? How did they get to Germany exactly? Who was in the camp? Student researcher would help with image research for both history and visual composition, get up to speed quickly on the WW2 German theater and the genocide as it unfolds in this place. Student researcher will read and note topics and conventions of previous graphic novel publications, like “Maus,” experiment with story pacing, layout, and drawing. It is essential for the student to understand and accept that this process is iterative and needs a growth mindset.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Textile Disposal Ban: At the Intersection of Fast Fashion and Sustainability
Professors: Aaron Smith Walter, Assistant Professor of Political Science; Jasmina Burek, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Student: Colin Ormong, Political Science
Description: In 2022, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection added textiles to its list of materials that were banned from disposal in the state. This ban could have substantial impacts on individuals and institutions across the state, and identifying the impact of removing textiles from the waste stream and messages to increase public awareness and compliance is important to maximize the benefits of the change. The goal of the project is to produce a case study for campus-based interventions and community outreach strategies to support the growth of textile repurposing and recycling including textiles made of natural fibers and synthetic (man-made) fibers. The scope of the project includes analysis, development, and implementation of public policies supportive of contributing to a more sustainable resource stream for textiles entering the recycle or disposal stage of their life cycle on and around the UMass Lowell campus. This project will collect data on how the University is responding to the new textile waste ban, the awareness of the ban among students, faculty, and staff, use life-cycle analysis to understand the impact of current levels of disposal and or recycling on the environmental footprint and what actions students and the university can take to make positive changes
Platforms of the Major U.S. Political Parties: A Structural Approach to Policy Images and the Narrative Indicators of Policy Change
Professor: Aaron Smith-Walter, Political Science
Student: Alan Quinn, Psychology
Project Description:
The main thrust of this research aims to build a bridge between two core theories of the policy process, the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) and Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET). As Peterson (2021) notes, PET relies on the concept of policy image which relates to the manner in which a particular public policy is discussed and presented. PET scholarship has acknowledged the image is a product of both fact, values, and beliefs, but has not moved toward an approach to studying the policy image which has been accepted and consistently applied by PET scholars. The NPF’s approach to narrative, on the other hand, has established a robust approach to the identification of key pieces of evidence used in policy narratives (Smith-Walter, Peterson, Jones, and Reynolds Marshall 2016), values (Smith-Walter, Jones, Shanahan, and Peterson 2020), as well as the role of characters (Smith-Walter, Fritz, and O’Doherty 2022) which serve as a more robust and reliable approach to the study of policy images.