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Modeling Titan’S Atmosphere Through Investigation Of Low-Temperature Kinetics And Branching Of N (^2d) And C2h4 Towards Cyclic-2h-Azirine (C-Ch2nch), Ruby Neisser, Sophia Haile

Undergraduate Research Awards

Excerpt from paper: "Understanding the rate coefficients and branching of reactions in extraterrestrial atmospheres is of vital importance because it allows us to build a more complete picture of the overall chemical makeup and photochemical behavior in these alien environments. Gaining insight into these exotic reactions is crucial not only for understanding extraterrestrial environments, but also for providing a better understanding of reactions on Earth. The atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is notably rich in nitrogen compounds and chemical reactions, which makes it an immensely important environment to study.1 Titan’s reducing atmosphere resembles that of early Earth (the first …

The Mark I And The Canvas Of War: Gender Roles And Military Vehicles, Coran Goss

Undergraduate Research Awards

Excerpt from paper: "When my professor introduced us to our COLL-100 final project about telling stories with certain objects, I knew that I wanted to research something related to the military. Weapons, vehicles, uniforms, and other military equipment can give insight into how industrially advanced a country is, not only militarily, but also economically and culturally. In the following project, I describe the process that I went through when conducting my research on a tank I found in a British museum, as well as exploring the narrative pushed by the museum exhibit the tank is located in. I will demonstrate …

Manufacturing The Freak: Animality And The Western Sideshow, Sebastian Cannito

Undergraduate Research Awards

Excerpt from paper: "Come one, come all to the fascinating world of the carnival: a wonderland at first glance, something from a dream or a nightmare. Spirited jingles from a cheap speaker are playing overhead and everything is painted to look like a circus clown. Step right up! The carnival talker beckons you inside. “Freaks! Live! Dead! Other! SEE THEM NOW!”

Little captured the spirit of this place better than the sideshow banner. For a long time, these painted tarps were valued only for their ability to lure in an audience; once obsolete, they were reused as scraps. Since then, …

“Lepers For Show:” The Performance Of Medical Authority And The Illusion Of The Chinese Medical Threat In Nineteenth-Century America, Claire Wyszynski

Undergraduate Research Awards

Excerpt from the paper: "The energy of the crowd was infectious. On a fateful day in August 1884, over 200 men flocked to the City Hall of Washington, DC. They gathered to hear the remarks of Dr. Charles C. O’Donnell, the candidate for coroner of San Francisco, who had traveled across the country from California to deliver a speech to their city. It was unusual for a local politician of the West to journey so far for a speaking engagement, but this peculiarity only seemed to warm the crowd to him more. Under the shadow of the Capitol, the anticipation …

The Racial Inventions Of Medieval Travel Writings, Paramita Vadhahong Painter

Undergraduate Research Awards

The famous travel writings of Ibn Battuta and Sir John Mandeville convey formative racial, political, and sociocultural dynamics that shape their respective regions and time periods. This paper investigates how their travel narratives manipulate the reader into accepting the authors’ definitions of otherness through the lens of race, religion, and alterity. Their accounts address elements such as bodily difference, standards of social hospitality, and religious customs from untrustworthy yet popularly accepted standpoints, indirectly promoting reform of other cultures towards their own worldviews. Although Ibn Battuta is a historical figure whose travels across the Islamic world are documented in written accounts, …

The Forced Effeminization Of Male Chinese Immigrants And The Consequences Of This Process, Hailee Brandt

Undergraduate Research Awards

The aim of this paper is to uncover and highlight the forced effeminization of male Chinese immigrants and the consequences of this process during the Chinese Exclusion Act Era. The Chinese Exclusion Act Era is defined by a period of time within American history in which strict and scrutinizing laws were created with the aim of restricting access to the United States for Chinese people. Additionally, these laws aimed to restrict the freedom the Chinese people might have had whilst living their lives in America if they ever were to make it through such oppressive borders. The most notable of …

Retelling Tales: Patience Agbabi's Queering Of Chaucer's "The Man Of Law's Tale", Caylin Wigger

Undergraduate Research Awards

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is recognized as a formative text within the canon of English literature. Because of his widely known status, Chaucer and his writings have become the central focus of many medievalists; this does not simply mean the increased presence of critical writings, but also creative works that are inspired by The Canterbury Tales. Patience Agbabi’s Telling Tales is a contemporary poetic retelling of The Canterbury Tales in which she explores the origins of ideas such as diaspora, colonization, racialized thinking, social hierarchy, and binary thinking, only to question these ideas in her own writing. Author …

Impacts On Native American Literacy Throughout The 1800s, Alyssa Lawhorn

Undergraduate Research Awards

The literacy of Indigenous peoples of America underwent extreme transformations as the tedious attempts by descendants of colonizers to integrate aspects of white American life into Indigenous customs continued. Native American literacy exclusively consisted of oral traditions prior to the arrival of British colonizers in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia. These oral traditions were, and still are, key elements of Indigenous culture as they serve to distribute cultural lessons, record histories, and share religious legends through the generations and amongst others. As the basis of Indigenous culture these traditions were one of the primary features of Native American life that scholars …

“A Colony Of Our Choice”: Black Baltimoreans And Emigration To Trinidad, Mars Mcleod

Undergraduate Research Awards

Black American history is a narrative characterized by a struggle for rights, including rights to self-preservation and self-determination, for all Americans. Exemplified throughout all four centuries of Black America’s creation, Black resistance to white supremacy has appeared in the form of protests, violence, emigration, and social movements, as well as more accommodationist theory and practice. Black Americans have been the primary force in building out and enforcing revolutionary the ideas presented in the Declaration of Independence, ensuring that those words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator …

Jewish Pioneers In The Service Of Christian Whiteness In The 19th-Century American West, Elizabeth Klein

Undergraduate Research Awards

In recent years, historians of American religion have contributed significantly to pushing back against the conception of America as a nation founded on religious freedom and characterized since its inception by a strong sense of pluralism. Although religious tolerance was one of the most essential American ideals, it was not always a reality for minority religious groups, and the religious pluralism that developed in the years after the Revolution was created by those outside of the Christian majority who had to fight to create space within it. This research has shown that over the course of American history, Jews have …

Gold Nanoparticles And Liposomal Nanocarriers For Drug Delivery In Cancers, Ari Cogswell, Sylvia Guillet

Undergraduate Research Awards

Cancers are a complex range of diseases that are universally characterized by uncontrolled cell growth that often manifest as malignant tumors. Worldwide, they are the second leading cause of death. The most prevalent current treatments, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, indiscriminately damage both cancerous cells and healthy cells. This results in an abundance of short-term and long-term complications, which can kill the patient before killing the tumor. This illustrates the need for more targeted, effective treatments with fewer adverse effects on healthy tissue, and the use of both organic and inorganic nanoparticles is among the most promising solutions (Yang et. al., 2022). …