This is the archive of the annual Undergraduate Research Awards winners and finalists. The awards were established in 2011 for the recognition of exemplary student research projects completed in Hollins courses. These research projects showcase extensive and creative usage of the library’s resources; the ability to synthesize those resources in completing the project; and growth in the student’s research skills.

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Winners and Finalists from 2024

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"Nothing in America Would Outrival Such a Spectacle": The Contested Histories of Mount Rushmore, Western Tourism, and American Nationalism, Sophia Ciatti

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Framing Femininity: Opportunities for Gender Non-Conformity at U.S. Women's Colleges at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Natté Fortier

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A Competition Between the Economy and the Environment: An analysis on the impacts of the Olympic Games for host countries, Phuong-Anh Ha

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Krautrock, Kraftwerk, and Techno: The Transnational and Interracial Circulations of Electronic Music Genres Between Europe and America, Eleanor Robb

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Artlessness: A Disturbing Ideal in Fanny Burney's Evelina, Autumn Wille

Winners and Finalists from 2023

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The Forced Effeminization of Male Chinese Immigrants and the Consequences of This Process, Hailee Brandt

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Gold Nanoparticles and Liposomal Nanocarriers for Drug Delivery in Cancers, Ari Cogswell and Sylvia Guillet

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Jewish Pioneers in the Service of Christian Whiteness in the 19th-Century American West, Elizabeth Klein

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Impacts on Native American Literacy Throughout the 1800s, Alyssa Lawhorn

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“A Colony of Our Choice”: Black Baltimoreans and Emigration to Trinidad, Mars McLeod

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The Racial Inventions of Medieval Travel Writings, Paramita Vadhahong Painter

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

Winners and Finalists from 2022

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Snake Reciprocation in Terms of Classical Conditioning: Scent and Auditory Stimuli, Zeina Y. Ghanem

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Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve: Expressing Hecuba’s Emotions in Artistic Retellings, Marie Gruver

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Jewish People and Relationships with Christians in the Antebellum US, Elizabeth Klein

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Rabbits and Hogs and Bears, Oh My! Monstrous Births and Control Over Pregnant Bodies, Elizabeth Klein

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The Worth of the Black Disabled Body: An Excavation of Black Disabled Legal History, Alyssa McLeod

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“Their eyes met at the same instant”: The Queer Gothic and Triumphant Romance of The Price of Salt, Deirdre Price

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Communication of Values and Morals Through Andrea della Robbia’s Prudence, Caylin Wigger

Winners and Finalists from 2021

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Interpretresses: Native American Women Translators in Colonial America, Faith Clarkson

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John Andrew Jackson: Enslaved Resistance, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the Downfall of American Chattel Slavery, Alexander Ernst

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The Impact of Patriarchy on Stud Lesbians, Meilin Miller

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The Relationship Between Parasocial Relationships and Chronic Ostracism Among Differing Belongingness Needs, Kaitlin M. Mitchell

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The Creature in The Looking Glass: Miltonic Marriage and The Female Self in Breaking Dawn, Jay Wright

Winners and Finalists from 2020

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Sustainable Operations, Industry Performance, and Environmental Sustainability: A Case Study on U.S. Marine Fisheries and Pacific Bluefin Tuna, Kalyn Chapman

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The Effect of Long-term Stress on Hippocampus and the Involvement in the Pathophysiology of Psychological Disorders, Suicide, and Alcohol Use Disorder, Hinza Batool Malik

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Rejecting Bolivarianism: Political Power in South America, Jaiya McMillan

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The Practice of Clitoridectomies: Its Influence on the Gikuyu Tribe, Kenyan National Identity, Cultural Nationalism, and British Powers, Savannah Scott

Winners and Finalists from 2019

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Women as Agents and Beneficiaries of Autonomy: Case Study of a Brick-kiln Community in Bhaktapur, Nepal, Grishma Bhattarai

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Shaping Sexual Identity in Weimar Republic Germany, Megan Caldwell

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The Impact of Adequate Funding and Expenditures on Public Education and Standardized Test Scores: A Case Study, Uma E. Casey

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Social Influence on Pick-Up Truck Purchase: A Case Study, Sydney Clark

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A cup of colonialism: A qualitative analysis of Starbucks and Fair Trade Coffee, Katie Grandelli

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The Body Ecstatic: The Masochism of Devotion as Seen in Ritual Possession, Dean Symmonds

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Freedom to Fall: Milton’s Christ, Supernatural’s Castiel, and the Secularity of Choice, Cassidy Trudeau

Winners and Finalists from 2018

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The Refashioning of Gender Binaries within the Constructed Identity of Tomboy in Girlhood and Beyond, Maddie Clevenstine

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Cultural Effects on Mental Health in Dreaming in Cuban Christina, E’vaan Duncan

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The Turkish Embassy Letters and the Development of Discourse, Meaghan Harrington

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Shakespeare’s Zombies: The (un)Dead, the Contagious, and the Resistant, Kelli Hyre

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Caliente, Crazy, and Conveniently Marketable: Latinx Female Bodies in American Media, María Fernanda Junco-Rivera

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Between Heaven and Earth: Collective Memory Across Time and Place in the Quilts of Harriet Powers, Ariel Rudy

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The Western, Violence, and Queer Expression in Red River, Brokeback Mountain, and Thelma & Louise, Dean Symmonds

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Ces Enfants Bizarres: Exploring Music as a Space of Resistance for Queer Women in France, Rachael Walker

Winners and Finalists from 2017

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Discursive Mapping: Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and Thomas Jefferson’s Construction of Selfhood and Otherness, Monica Doebel

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Spiritual Essentialism at Standing Rock, Yitazba Largo-Anderson

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The Role of Trade and Renewables in the Nexus of Economic Growth and Environmental Degradation: Revisiting the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), Nguyen Thi Ngoc Lan

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An Impossible Standard: The Virgin Mary and the Construction of Southern Womanhood, Dean Symmonds

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An examination of medicinal ethnobotany and biomedicine use in two villages on the Phnom Kulen plateau, Taylor Walker

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Coming Together as ONE: How a Los Angeles Magazine Fostered the LGBT Community, Gina Wiese

Winners and Finalists from 2016

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Feminism in Revolution: Women of the 19th Century Anti-Tsarist Movements, Kayley DeLong

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Nasser of Egypt and the Egypt of Nasser, Pria G. Jackson

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Art as Propaganda in Ancient Greece: The Feeding of the Greek Soldier’s Ego, Judith M. Lamb

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A Quandary of Errors: The Problem of Innocence in Paradise Lost, Mandy Moore

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A Matter of Class: Sin Yun-bok’s Depictions of Kisaeng as Participants of Everyday Life, Abigail Sease

Winners and Finalists from 2015

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The Feasibility of a Terraforming Expedition, Maura Lydon

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Darlings In Love: A History of Romance Between Women at Hollins University in the Early 20th Century, Antonia Nagle

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The Case for Women in Financial Services, Thao Thanh Nguyen

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Healing Through Hope: A Rhetorical Analysis of Barack Obama’s National Eulogies, Victoria West

Winners and Finalists from 2014

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Higher Education, Higher Costs: An Income-Contingent Approach, Catherine Hensly

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Female Activism: Reevaluating Traditional Buddhist Patriarchy in Chinese Occupied Tibet, Mikaela Murphy

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Advice or Consent: The U. S. Senate's Role in Confirming Supreme Court Nominees and the Robert H. Bork Confirmation Hearing, Marjory O'Leary

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Anxiety of the Unknown in Art: Xu Bing's A Book from the Sky, Abigail Sease

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A Style of His Own: A Rhetorical Analysis of President Barack Obama's Inaugural Addresses, Victoria West

Winners and Finalists from 2013

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Madame Tussaud and the Women of the French Revolution, Leah Craig

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Playing Politics with Rape: Republican Apologia in the 2012 Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization, Kelsey DeForest

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Proceed to Olympus: The Iconography of the Return of Hephaestus, Catherine Hensly

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The Beginning of the End: A Look at the Causes of the Schism in the Methodist Episcopal Church, Rebecca Rowe

Winners and Finalists from 2012

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Kalligeneia: Fertility and Feminine Focus on an Athenian Bell Krater, Suzanne Allison

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Decision Height: a Three-Act Play with Music, Meredith Levy

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The McVitty Book of Hours; Finding a Link to the Illustrations, Ashton Little

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"Gone but not Forgotten": A Study of Gravestone Imagery and Iconography in Southwest Virginian Cemeteries, Amanda Marcus

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The Complexity of Kadmos, Abbey Minor

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Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Leader of the Constitutional Women's Suffrage Movement in Great Britain, Cecelia Parks

Winners and Finalists from 2011

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Imperial Performativity: the Life, Transgressions, and Writings of Isabelle Eberhardt under the Lens of Queer Theory, Kelsey DeForest

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Absurdity as Resistance in Arab Literature, Melissa Hammond

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Living in the Dark in Nepal, Raisha Kasaju

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"We Endure Around Truths Immemorially Posited”: a Dramaturgical Research Analysis on Brian Friel’s Linguistic-Historical Drama “Translations”, Meredith Levy

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A Unique and Mysterious Shahnama Miniature, Sarah Mirseyedi

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Why God, Why? A Defense of the Contradictory God in Paradise, Amber Rambharose