ASRA Past Recipients
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
Children’s Voices in the 19th Century and What it Revealed about Adult Constructions of Childhood
Stephanie Liang
About the project: My project examines child voices in juvenile periodicals of the 19th Century, including St. Nicholas Magazine and Robert Merry’s Museum, in order to learn what these voices reveal about the adult construction of childhood. In my research, I have uncovered the ways in which adults impose their authority in these spheres created for and populated by children, such as the St. Nicholas League and the Letterbox columns. Through content restrictions, word limits, and required adult-endorsements of child-authored work, adults follow a very narrow idea of the child to exist within their pages, one that fits with their notions of what a child should look and sound like. The practice of allowing a child to speak but then regulating that voice and selecting only voices that exemplify a fictionalized, “ideal” version of a child helped perpetuate adult authority and the myth of childhood, which exists even in the present day.
Year: 2016
Faculty Mentor: Courtney Weikle-Mills
Faculty Department: English
Librarian / Archivist: Clare Withers
Deliverables: Tumblr Post
David Hull Through His Own Philosophical Lens
Naomi Kasturiarachi
About the project: This project investigates the ways that philosopher David Hull (1935-2010) put his own philosophical approach into practice. Hull famously argued for an evolutionary theory of scientific change, according to which, conceptual and social change in science – like natural selection – requires heritability, variation, and differential fitness. I use this as an interpretive framework to highlight Hull’s own contributions to science and philosophy as demonstrated in the contents of his archival papers.
Year: 2016
Faculty Mentor: Andrew Inkpen
Faculty Department:
Librarian / Archivist: Lance Lugar, Brigitta Arden
Deliverables: Poster, Tumblr Post
A Case Study of 15th Century Gregorian Chant Leaves
Nicholas Grieneisen
About the project: University of Pittsburgh’s Hillman Library Special Collections Department holds 29 Gregorian chant leaves ranging from the 12th to 17th centuries from multiple locations in Western Europe. One set of six leaves, dating from the 15th century Netherlands, Is particularly interesting in that many of the originally scribed neumes, and occasionally the corresponding text, were erased and replaced with newly scribed neumes and text. My goals for this project were: 1) to analyize the musical differences between the pre-edited and post-edited chants, and 2) to research the socio-cultural atmosphere of the Catholic Church in 15th century Netherlands to determine what compelled the scribe to make these edits. In order to accomplish these tasks, I transcribed each of the pre-edited and post-edited versions of the chants using Sibelius notation software and subsequently analyzed the chants musically, as well as consulted multiple digital and print sources on subjects ranging from general church practices during the 15th century to specific performance practices in Netherlands. This project is meant to serve as a case study that will augment the growing knowledge base of Gregorian chant.
Year: 2016
Faculty Mentor: James Cassaro
Faculty Department: University Library System
Librarian / Archivist: James Cassaro
Deliverables:
The Possibility of Socialist Feminism: Here and There, 1970s – 1990s
Alexandria Greenhold
About the project: Socialist movements traditionally focus on means of production and distribution of wealth. The accomplishment of these tasks, however, relies on the deconstruction of hierarchical relationships, the abolition of the class system, and acknowledgement of the value of paid and unpaid labor by all members of society. Therefore, socialism and feminism can go hand in hand in many ways, as feminists seek to dismantle hierarchies of class, race, gender, and sexuality in order to create an equal and just society. In this study, I conducted a rhetorical analysis of literature (meeting minutes, newsletters, pamphlets, fliers, and booklets) written by various local and national socialist and feminist organizations in order to critique their strategies for political reform and disruption. For a comparative analysis, I looked at Sweden – another capitalist country with a notably different political system – to see how women and feminists played a part in the Social Democratic Party and to analyze the success of their welfare reforms. Through this research, one can understand how the past influences the present and hopefully, how the future can progress in the right direction.
Year: 2016
Faculty Mentor: Marie Skoczylas
Faculty Department:
Librarian / Archivist: Edward Galloway, David Grinnell
Deliverables:
The Depiction of Black Characters in Children’s Literature During Black Arts (1965-1975): A Movement to Education Children on the New Found Importance of Blacks
Corina Andriescu
About the project: The number of educated black youths has vastly grown since the end of slavery. With this increase in education comes an increase in the black child’s exposure to literature. As black children read in the early twentieth century, they found few books that depicted characters in a positive light. When the Black Arts movement grew during the Civil Rights era, which is only a cross section of history that differs in significant ways from what has come before and after, many authors sought to write and illustrate more books that were depictive of the rising black minority population. Some of these books were targeted specifically at children in hopes that the children will start learning about the importance of the black race early. These children’s book authors focused on three main points, which mirrored those that were being preached to adults during Civil Rights, and most importantly, the depiction of black people succeeding in society by dreaming, working hard, not being discouraged, and caring for one another. The children reading these works would not only be educated but also be instilled with a yearning to aim for a brighter future for themselves and for the black race.
Year: 2016
Faculty Mentor: Courtney Weikle-Mills
Faculty Department: English
Librarian / Archivist: Clare Withers
Deliverables: Tumblr Post, Contributed LibGuide content
Affective Experience of Queer Nostalgia in the Archives
Zachary Grewe
About the project: The number of educated black youths has vastly grown since the end of slavery. With this increase in education comes an increase in the black child’s exposure to literature. As black children read in the early twentieth century, they found few books that depicted characters in a positive light. When the Black Arts movement grew during the Civil Rights era, which is only a cross section of history that differs in significant ways from what has come before and after, many authors sought to write and illustrate more books that were depictive of the rising black minority population. Some of these books were targeted specifically at children in hopes that the children will start learning about the importance of the black race early. These children’s book authors focused on three main points, which mirrored those that were being preached to adults during Civil Rights, and most importantly, the depiction of black people succeeding in society by dreaming, working hard, not being discouraged, and caring for one another. The children reading these works would not only be educated but also be instilled with a yearning to aim for a brighter future for themselves and for the black race.
Year: 2016
Faculty Mentor: Julie Beaulieu
Faculty Department: Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies
Librarian / Archivist: Robin Kear, Jennifer Needham
Deliverables: Tumblr Post 1, Tumblr Post 2, Tumblr Post 3, Tumblr Post 4
