Browsing Friends of Fondren Library Research Awards by Issue Date
Now showing items 1-20 of 96
-
Re-membering Veracruz: A Decolonial Reading of Regional Colonial Cartography
(2020)Upon the so-called discovery of the American continent, the Spanish crown wanted the means to document and surveil its new lands from afar. For this reason, the Relaciones Geográficas—questionnaires about the physical description of each colonial settlement in New Spain—were distributed, filled out, and sent back to the crown with the purpose of ... -
Organized Labor and Faction in the United States, 1930s and 1940s
(2020)During the New Deal in the United States (US), labor unions began to accrue substantial membership and stepped, for the first time, into the realm of political activism. Key arenas of involvement included Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s multiple re-election campaigns, the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the passage of the National ... -
Literary Landscapes: A Future for Post-Frontier Regionalism in Literature of the American West
(2020)Landscape portrayals—literary, visual, or otherwise—serve as recognizable features at the core of American Western iconography and aesthetics. Renderings of landscape point to an implicit gaze appraising the land—a gaze which often communicates its idealization, condemnation, or contemplation of the American West through physical and metaphorical ... -
Middle-Class Culture in Cairo Under Ottoman Rule – Perceptions of Power and Knowledge
(2019)This paper focuses on the emergence of a middle-class culture in Cairo under the Ottomans from the 16th to the 18th century… -
Disability, Love, And Limitation: A Response To The Mere-Difference View
(2019)Elizabeth Barnes’ argues that physical disabilities have no impact on how well someone’s life goes since disabilities are not negative difference makers to one’s life. I analyze Barnes’ position and tease out three background theses she utilizes in order to argue her position. The most significant of these theses (I call T2) suggests that the kinds ... -
Exchanges: Artistic Dialogues Between Tibet and China
(2019)In a dynamic exhibition, Exchanges: Artistic Dialogues Between Tibet and China explores hybridized Sino-Tibetan and Tibeto-Chinese styles from the Tang to the Qing Dynasty. China and Tibet have engaged in an iconographic dialogue, facilitated through Buddhism, for a period of over a thousand years, and a survey of this convergence of styles will ... -
Houston 311: An Analysis of Citizen Satisfaction and Engagement
(2019)Houston, like any other metropolitan area, has thousands of public issues that affect its economy and citizens each year. In 2001, a program named Houston 311 was developed to aid the city’s customer service. It allows Houston citizens to report non-emergency issues easily via telephone, email, smart phone app, or the 311 website. Most importantly, ... -
Acknowledging Impostor Phenomenon: How Does It Affect and Individual's Likability?
(2019)The impostor phenomenon (IP) is the feeling of being an intellectual fraud regardless of any external evidence of incompetency. Research on the effects of IP on mental health is important in understanding how to nurture positive experiences through the duration of undergraduate life. However, the social interactions of individuals who experience IP ... -
Power in a Union? German Organized Labor and Hitler's Rise to Power
(2018)Traditionally, many historians have viewed the German working class as being instrumental to Hitler’s seizure of power and the electoral success of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in the 1930 and 1932 German Reichstag elections. Although some blue-collar workers did, in fact, support the NSDAP’s rise, most union members and industrial workers were mostly ... -
John Saunders Chase: The Politics of a Black Architect in Postwar Houston
(2018)John Saunders Chase (1925-2012) was an African American architect in Houston, Texas. As a student and architect, he broke a color line, becoming the first black graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and later to become the first black registered architect in Texas. Chase went on to establish a career of distinction and to lead an office of ... -
Recovery of Post-Civil War Vicksburg, Mississippi
(2018)Two decisive battles came at the turning point of the American Civil War in July 1863: the Battle of Gettysburg and the Battle of Vicksburg. While Gettysburg followed the traditional mode of a short engagement between the colliding Confederate and Union armies, Vicksburg represented a military, economic, and strategic stronghold. With the topographic ... -
Adaptation of the Samson Narrative in The Simpsons
(2018)Samson, the Nazarite Judge of the Judahites, is a character who has been widely discussed among biblical scholars. Scholars’ conclusions range from Samson as a hero, to Samson as a moral lesson, from Samson as a tragic character, to Samson as a literary device. There is no one view of Samson that is overwhelmingly more popular among scholars. ... -
How to Build a Villain: Aurangzeb, Temple Destruction, and his Modern Reputation
(2018)This paper is a study of the spatial relationship between temples destroyed in the reign of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb (1618-1707) and other significant spatial characteristics of the Mughal Empire in his time, including its southern border and the geographic distribution of religious groups. It also places these relationships in the context of the ... -
Poe's Paradox of Unity
(2018)This essay is an analysis of some of Edgar Allan Poe’s artistic works through the lens of his empirical, but often very pedagogical works. In many ways, his later texts, namely “The Philosophy of Composition” and “Eureka” serve as a guideline upon which to evaluate Poe’s poems. This essay explores the degree to which the “rules” postulated in both ...
