ASRA Past Recipients
Indexing Identity in 1970's Gay and Lesbian Publications
Joseph Wozniak
About the project: Seek to document terms being used by Queer community into a dictionary in hopes of finding trends in production.
Year: 2021
Faculty Mentor: Marylou Gramm
Faculty Department: History
Librarian / Archivist: Ben Rubin, Megan Massanelli, Jacob Neal, Robin Kear
Deliverables: Omeka page
Detroit’s Marxist Black Auto Workers
Liam Sims
About the project: Having focused on leftist movements and labor activism in the 20th century for most of my academic career, I was fascinated by the bold grassroots effort led by the Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) of the late 1960s to early 1970s. Discovering the extensive collection of newsletters circulated by DRUM in Pitt's Archives and Special Collections, I set out to document the social conditions which spurred the movement, DRUM's successes, and its legacy for Black labor activism. I also sought to examine the Marxist nature of the organization and its influence on parallel leftist groups in Detroit and beyond. Forged under the dual oppressions of racial animosity and worker exploitation, the short-lived DRUM demonstrated the tenacity of America's downtrodden and their strength to dare for a better, socially just future.
Year: 2021
Faculty Mentor: Gregor Thum
Faculty Department: History
Librarian / Archivist: Ben Rubin
Deliverables: Omeka page
Margo Lovelace: The World of Puppetry
Maria Anto
About the project: Analysis of the Lovelace Marionette Theatre Company Records, synthesizing my research into a short documentary. Particular interest in analyzing the impact of Lovelace’s Eastern storytelling and puppetry. This project combines interest in children's media and multimedia storytelling skills and serves long-term goal of working within children's media as a consultant.
Year: 2022
Faculty Mentor: Laura Lovett
Faculty Department: History
Librarian / Archivist: William Daw, Miriam Meislik
Deliverables:
Beyond the Binary: Building and Identity in the Archives
Rachel Bachy
About the project: Exploration of gender nonconforming identities before our modern notions of non-binary using magazines, periodicals, and publications from the Special Collections Department. Will construct a picture of historic non-binary identities to better understand the queer community of the present.
Year: 2022
Faculty Mentor: Julie Beaulieu
Faculty Department: Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies
Librarian / Archivist: Megan Massanelli
Deliverables:
Intergenerational Attitudes Towards Queer Liberation
Thomas Barnes
About the project: Research project focusing on intergenerational attitudes towards queer liberation, particularly on how the 20th-century Homophile movement influenced 20th-century Gay Liberation Movements. The Homophile movement utilized appeasement and assimilatory tactics, necessary to make any progress in a harshly heteronormative society. Research to understand how appeasement and assimilatory tactics manifest in queer social movements to rid them of their influence in today’s fight for queer liberation.
Year: 2022
Faculty Mentor: Laura Lovett
Faculty Department: History
Librarian / Archivist: Ben Rubin
Deliverables:
Sanitization and Americanization in Pittsburgh’s Settlement Homes, 1890-1930
Caroline Berry
About the project: How Pittsburgh settlement houses taught sanitization and Americanization to women and children from the period of 1890-1930 and how these ideals contributed to a newfound industrial, modern identity.
Year: 2022
Faculty Mentor: Laura Lovett
Faculty Department: History
Librarian / Archivist: David Grinnell
Deliverables:
Queer Trash, Un/intelligibility, and the Archive!
Ian Davies
About the project: Drawing upon the archives’ both explicitly and interpretatively queer speculative fiction and horror, I hope to explore queer futures and queer ways of imagining, engaging, and producing knowledge and the future, and contribute to ongoing interdisciplinary conversations surrounding queer temporality and the ways in which queer approaches to the archive have to offer about the processes of imagining.
Year: 2022
Faculty Mentor: Julie Beaulieu
Faculty Department: Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies
Librarian / Archivist: Ben Rubin
Deliverables:
Exploring Trans Identities and Discourses in Community-Based Publications
Tayler Fane
About the project: Research to discover connections between past transgender representation in the archives and current perceptions and depictions of transgender people today. Project directly contributes to Capstone research on the intricacies of transgender representation in social media, with a goal of expanding on this work to create a more comprehensive understanding of transgender representation using historical references in the archives to connect past queer history to our perception of transness today. I also aim to tie this into psychotherapy by identifying ways to better treat trans people’s mental health by gaining a better understanding of how they are perceived by those around them.
Year: 2022
Faculty Mentor: PJ Patella-Rey
Faculty Department: Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies
Librarian / Archivist: Megan Massanelli
Deliverables: Blog Post
Understanding Health Spaces for LGBTQ+ Populations in Pittsburgh During and Post- AIDS Epidemic
Vaibhav Gupta
About the project: Research project on how LGBTQ+ health spaces were constructed in Pittsburgh and the meaning that they held for the community during the AIDS epidemic and beyond. Research will use inductive coding and thematic analysis of archival documents pertaining to gay publications, Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force Newsletters, Pitt Men’s Study, and several dissertations on file for local LGBTQ+ centers. This medical anthropology study of how these health spaces created meaning for a community that struggled in the face of discrimination and marginalization. produce a manuscript as well as a video presentation illustrating my findings.
Year: 2022
Faculty Mentor: Emily Wanderer
Faculty Department: Anthropology
Librarian / Archivist: Jon Klosinski
Deliverables:
Heinz Chapel in the Digital Era
Jennifer Kandray
About the project: Creation of a digital walk through that highlights many key points of Heinz Chapel. The exhibit will include architectural plans, photographs, historical facts, and key points about the construction, past, and other buildings that could have been placed along the site of Heinz Chapel.
Year: 2022
Faculty Mentor: Thomas Morton
Faculty Department: History of Art and Architecture
Librarian / Archivist: Zachary Brodt
Deliverables:
