ASRA Past Recipients
The Black Panther Newspaper: Examining the Work of Emory Douglas
Ahona (Raka) Sarkar
About the project: This semester, I have been examining the changes in Emory Douglas’ artistic production for The Black Panther Newspaper over time, and identifying how he used his art as a vehicle to promote the ideals of the party. My work will hopefully be put toward helping create a LibGuide for Hillman Special Collections, as well as creating a didactic activity for Dr. Bender’s World Art Class next semester.
Year: 2017
Faculty Mentor: Gretchen Bender
Faculty Department:
Librarian / Archivist: Jennifer Needham, Arif Jamal
Deliverables: Poster
The Transference of Agency from Religion to Children in England through Children’s Fantasy Literature
Kayla Rafkin
About the project: Kayla’s project focused on how children in fairy tales or fantasy literature have changed through the 19th to 21st centuries.
Year: 2017
Faculty Mentor: Lori Campbell
Faculty Department: English
Librarian / Archivist: Clare Withers, Jeanann Haas
Deliverables:
Dixmont State Hospital: The Rise and Decline of Moral Treatment in Psychiatry
Alina Quach
About the project: In the upswing of great social reform and rapid advancements in civilization in the early 19th century, there was an increased humanitarian awareness on the mistreatment of the mentally ill that would pave the way to a boom of psychiatric institutions, one of which was Dixmont State Hospital. However, the momentum of this movement would waver as the social perspectives of mental illness and its treatment changed towards the end of the 1800’s. This project sought to draw from the Dixmont annual record archives to investigate the hospital’s architecture and practices represent society’s belied in moral treatment to cure mental illness. In addition, Dixmont will serve as an example of an institution, amongst many at the time, that lost its original purpose of caring for mentally ill through moral treatment. The rapid influx of patients, especially those that were criminally insane, would force Dixmont to compromise moral treatment and send many patients back to prisons. This project ultimately uses the experiences of Dixmont to narrate the evolution of social perceptions of mental illness and its curability through the perspective of psychiatric hospital in the 19th century.
Year: 2017
Faculty Mentor: Robert Slammon
Faculty Department: Sociology
Librarian / Archivist: David Grinnell, Edward Galloway
Deliverables:
Rewriting the Fairytale: Princesses and the Power of Body Politics
Jennifer Orie
About the project: This project explores common female tropes in traditional fairytales. However, by relating the fairytale stories Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast to the modern dystopian fantasy novels The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and by Kiera Cass, we begin to discover how the definition of the princess has changed to invite female agency. Moreover, in extending further to include the Wonder Woman comic as an additional example of modern fairytale retelling, the role of princess shifts from objectified damsel to active heroine initiating progressive ideas.
Year: 2017
Faculty Mentor: Lori Campbell
Faculty Department: English
Librarian / Archivist: Clare Withers, Jennifer Needham
Deliverables: Poster
Mapping the Action: Pittsburgh's Social Movements as Found in the Archives
Claire Matway
About the project: Claire has studied Pittsburgh histories of political movements, activism, and social and economic geography and used GIS software to create maps and infographics that chart and analyze these histories.
Year: 2017
Faculty Mentor: Annette Vee
Faculty Department: English
Librarian / Archivist: David Grinnell, Edward Galloway
Deliverables:
All Power to the People:Creating the Artistic Culture of the Black Panther Party
Maureen Jones
About the project: Maureen has studied the artwork of the Black Panther newspapers to see how they reflect African and African American artistic and cultural practice and determine if they share any visual commonalities with other leftist publications during the time period.
Year: 2017
Faculty Mentor: Gretchen Bender
Faculty Department:
Librarian / Archivist: Jennifer Needham, Arif Jamal
Deliverables: Poster
The Hand We Are Dealt: a Poetic Guide to Playing Cards
Lucas Grasha
About the project: Lucas has studied the works titled, Die Tarocchi (Kristeller) and Les cartes àjour (Allemagne) to gain insight into playing card history and the historical and social value of the artwork of playing cards. He aims to write a book of poetry based upon his research.
Year: 2017
Faculty Mentor: Benjamin Miller
Faculty Department: English
Librarian / Archivist: James Cassaro, Marnie Hampton
Deliverables: Poster
Materiality as Method: Communicating Through Form in Artists’ Books
Caroline Fazzini
About the project: My project explores the relationship between the physical form of an object and meaning – particularly feminist narratives about materiality, gender and the body – and how both the artists’ books and periodicals address feminist issues, yet with the potential to reach and influence different intended audiences due to the mode and media that are used. Artists’ books are typically created in small editions and provide a relatively private and intimate viewing experience, whereas periodicals are intended for a wide public audience and are more publicly declarative. I examine the disparity that exists between these works’ projected audiences, which results in discrepancies in their materiality and content.
Year: 2017
Faculty Mentor: Gretchen Bender
Faculty Department:
Librarian / Archivist: Kate Joranson
Deliverables: Poster
Explorations in the Written Identity of Percussion
Theresa Walker
About the project: Percussion has a unique written identity with particular emphasis on aural transmission and functionality. Percussion parts are often unclearly notated and give the percussionist an unusual amount of authority of interpretation compared to other instruments. Although the music is left open to interpretation, the performer is still expected to know and adhere to unwritten standards dictated by percussion traditions. In my research, I examined military, jazz and dance band instruction manuals from the Theodore M. Finney Music Library, dance band percussion parts from the Johnny Master’s Collection, and various manuscripts of early percussion parts from online research in order to look for trends in notation throughout the history of Western percussion and written information from percussion teachers on the typically unwritten traditional standards. I found an enormous importance on dialogue between percussion student and teacher, as well as some explanations for why certain trends are commonly unnotated and left to the interpretation of the percussionist.
Year: 2016
Faculty Mentor: Matthew Rosenblum
Faculty Department:
Librarian / Archivist: James Cassaro
Deliverables:
Discovering the Artists’ Books of the Frick Fine Arts Library
Leslie Rose
About the project: As the Archival Scholar for the Frick Fine Arts Library, my research focuses on the University’s incredible collection of artists’ books. In the simplest terms, an artist book is an item of artistic expression that often mimics or reimagines the traditional format of a book. The primary goal of my research is to examine the diversity of the University’s collection by examining themes related to various forms of identity. In addition to this, I have created a catalog of searchable metadata for the collection, in an effort to make this absolutely amazing resource more accessible to faculty and students.
Year: 2016
Faculty Mentor: Gretchen Bender
Faculty Department: History of Art & Architecture
Librarian / Archivist: Kate Joranson
Deliverables:
Feminist Activism in Pittsburgh in the 70s and 80s
Lucy Powell
About the project: Many times, we try to build activist projects from the ground up, but it is worthwhile to retrace our footsteps and look to the past. Archived publications are invaluable in not only connecting with the roots of current practices, but being able to see what has been useful in the past and applying it today. The focus of this research was to describe and analyze feminist and related activist publications working to dismantle oppression in Pittsburgh in the 1970s and 1980s. Six publications are highlighted, which present six different areas within broader culture of feminist or alternative press. These areas include youth organizing, newspapers, literary magazines, publishers, newsletters, and book reviews. All of these types of publications came together to contribute to a larger community of Pittsburgh feminists that also reflected an even larger imagined community of people who read these and other similar publications. The culture surrounding this movement was similar in many ways to the internet today, but the sense of community in the 70s and 80s is much different. My research explores the ways that community was created from these publications and how they affect functions in archived texts.
Year: 2016
Faculty Mentor: Julie Beaulieu
Faculty Department: Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies
Librarian / Archivist: Jennifer Needham
Deliverables: Tumblr Post
Sexuality Onstage: Exploring Stigmatized Experiences and Contemporary Pittsburgh Theatre
Kimberly Potenga
About the project: This project explores the way that contemporary Pittsburgh theatre has addressed and explored stigmatized experiences onstage, with a particular focus on issues relating to sexuality. This research focuses primarily on four major Pittsburgh theatres – The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, City Theatre, and Quantum Theatre – and considers the work of other theatre companies as a supplement. An in-depth analysis of trends in content matter and playwrights, as well as the reception and ticket sales of relevant shows, was conducted in order to locate the instances when Pittsburgh theatre artists have explicitly discussed stigmatized experiences and analyze any perceptible change or conversation they inspired. The ultimate objective is to find out where Pittsburgh as a community has set its limits in order to challenge these limits and create platforms for open, honest conversations about stigmatized and isolating experiences.
Year: 2016
Faculty Mentor: Michelle Granshaw
Faculty Department: Theatre Arts
Librarian / Archivist: William Daw
Deliverables: Tumblr Post
