Library

Research Strategy

Research Process

• Search strategies described, but minimal reflection about the process. (1 point)

• Search strategies explicitly described, along with successes and dead-ends. Shows some reflection about the research process. (2 points)
• Demonstrates significant reflection about the research process, as well as independence and initiative. Search strategies explicitly described. (3 points)

Library Services

• Does not describe use of library services. (1 point)
• Shows some use of library services (such as interlibrary loan, University Archives & Special Collections, research help, and instruction). (2 points)
• Describes use of multiple library services (such as the catalog, OneSearch, databases, interlibrary loan, University Archives & Special Collections, research help, instruction, meeting with a library staff member, data analysis consultation). (3 points)

Sources Used

Evaluation of Sources

• Demonstrates some evaluation of sources. (1 point)
• Demonstrates that sources have been evaluated for quality and relevance. (2 points)
• Demonstrates critical reflection of source quality and relevance. Considers objectivity, authority, currency, and coverage. (3 points)

Citations

• Submission with a bibliography: Not all sources are cited. (1 point)
  Digital project with no bibliography (formal citations are not necessary, but students submitting digital projects with no bibliography are asked to include a list of the sources they used in their research process essay): No attribution of sources in the research process essay or digital project. (1 point)
• Submission with a bibliography: Cites sources, with some mistakes, missing information, and/or inconsistencies. (2 points)
  Digital project with no bibliography: Attributes sources in research process essay or within digital project. (2 points)
• Submission with a bibliography: Accurately cites all sources using a consistent style. (3 points) 
  Digital project with no bibliography: Attributes sources in research process essay or within digital project, with context on use, influence, or how the sources shaped the project.  (3 points)

Adapted from Tufts University’s Research Award rubric.

• Prize for research which makes use of materials in the Brandeis University Archives & Special Collections:
  • Gavi Klein, Rewriting the Nation: Dorothy Thompson on Women, Anti-Fascism and American Journalism in the 1930s
  • Jolecia Saunderson, Defying Gravity: Explorations of Liberation, Knowledge, and Pathways Towards Empowering Black Women Through the Eyes of Zora Neale Hurston’s Life
• Prize for research which contributes to understandings of racism and anti-racism:
  • Rebekah Kristal, Black Intellectuality: Challenging Conventions of Belonging in STEM
• Prize for graduate student research: 
  • Joseph Weisberg, As It Is Said: A Proposal to Use the WPA Interviews to Locate a Vernacular History of African American-Jewish Encounters in the Nineteenth-Century South
  • Peizhao Li, Achieving Fairness at No Utility Cost via Data Reweighing
• Prize for research conducted in a University Writing Seminar:
  • Caelen Hilty, On Trial: Surveillance as Epidermalization and the Ahmaud Arbery Case
  • Bridget Kennedy, Pathologizing Bias: Racial Disparities in The Diagnosis of Schizophrenia
• Prize for research conducted by an undergraduate outside of UWS:
  • Luca Swinford, “You’re Just Disabled”: Race-Avoidance In 1970s Special Education Legal Cases
• Prize for a digital research project:
  • Joshua Aldwinkle Povey, Boston's response to the AIDS crisis

• Brianna Lackwood, Imagining Black Food Justice Through a Black Femme Literary Hermeneutic, Prize for research which contributes to understandings of racism and anti-racism
• Rafael Abrahams, “Intimate With the Stars and the Trees”: Black Conservationism in the Progressive Era, Prize for graduate student research
• Logan Shanks, The Quest for Black Social Mobility and the Role of Black Women Leadership, Prize for research which makes use of materials in the Brandeis University Archives & Special Collections.  
• Lucca Raabe, “Rational” Racism: How the Math Department at Brandeis Functions to Reproduce Racial Inequality, Prize for research which makes use of materials in the Brandeis University Archives & Special Collections.  
• Logan Shanks, ‘Us had the kind of love couldn’t be improved’: An Exploration of Black Relationships in The Color Purple, Prize for research conducted in a University Writing Seminar
• Roshni Ray, Women’s Interpersonal Friendships: Grassroots to Impactful Feminist Movements, Prize for research conducted in a University Writing Seminar
• Jocelyn Gould, A ‘Pandemic Effect’? Women’s Candidate Emergence Amid the COVID-19 Crisis, Prize for research conducted by an undergraduate outside of UWS
• Caroline Greaney, The Palantír Project: Exploring Tolkien Criticism Through Distant Reading, 1970–Present, Prize for a Digital Research Project

• Rebekah F. Kristal (Research completed in a University Writing Seminar), “The North End Italian: Practicing Cultural Traditions to Maintain Ethnic Identity”
• Lucia Pugh-Sellers (Research completed by an undergraduate student outside of the University Writing Seminar), “Seeing Humans, Making Commodities: Slave Ship Rebellions on Film”
• Claire Ogden (Digital Research Project), “Funeral Care Work in Massachusetts: Community, Tension, and Change”
• Esther Bley (Research using materials from University Archives & Special Collections), “Calamity Jane: Ain’t No Buckin’ Around, the Woman Who Wore Buckskin. A Thesis on the Adaptations that Mythologized and Developed a Character’s Queerness”
• Alex Luu (research completed by a graduate student research), “Non-Topical Coherence in Social Talk: A Call for Dialogue Model Enrichment”

• Jacob Silverman (Research completed in a University Writing Seminar), “'The Most Dangerous Negro': Martin Luther King, Jr. and the FBI”
• Lynn-Tyia Porter  (Research using materials from University Archives & Special Collections), “The Exhibition of Blackness and the Role of Black Opera”
• Ona Wang (research completed by a graduate student research)
• Helen Wong (Research completed by an undergraduate student outside of the University Writing Seminar), “Forming Kraters in Cyprus: A Petrographic and 3D Scanned Exploration of Iron Age Cypriot Ceramic Continuity”
• Emily Glovin (Research completed by an undergraduate student outside of the University Writing Seminar), “Revisiting the “Three R’s:” Exploring the Effects of Religion, Race, and Regulation on America’s Public School Systems”

• Nakul Srinivas (Research completed in a University Writing Seminar), “Pugnacious Principals and Clever Kids: Child Dominance in Matilda and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”

• Benjamin Schwartz (Research completed in a University Writing Seminar), “Is the Book of Job Tragic?”

• Lucia Pugh-Sellers (Research using materials from University Archives & Special Collections), “Coalition Building, Allyship, and Solidarity: Exploring Different Realizations of Success Through the Brandeis Ford Hall Movements”

• Anne Kat Alexander (Research completed by an undergraduate student outside of the University Writing Seminar), “The Emotional Nadir in English Renaissance Poetry”

• Ezra Cohen (Research completed by an undergraduate student outside of the University Writing Seminar), “Shaul Shochet’s Tiferet Yedidya: Towards an Understanding of Mid-American Jewry in the Early Twentieth Century”

• Cynthia Cheloff (Research completed by an undergraduate student outside of the University Writing Seminar), “A Voice of Their Own: A study on the strategic development of Anglo-Jewry’s political strategies and rhetoric concerning immigration policy, 1902-1906.”

• Xinyu (Annie) Li, "The Legacy of the South China Sea Arbitration: An Introduction of PCA Ruling in a Historical and Political Context"

• Saren McAllister, "Visual Discourses of Colonialism, Interracial Sex, Resistance, and Nation-Building in Mexico, 1711-1810"