UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Eberly Family Special Collections Library recently announced the winners of the 2019 research travel awards program. This annual program, now in its eighth year, offers travel awards to researchers whose work would benefit from accessing the collections at the Penn State University Libraries.
All seven winners will visit the Special Collections Library at University Park and give an informal one-hour lunchtime presentation about their research projects. Members of the public are encouraged to attend any or all of the “brown bag” sessions, which will take place in Mann Assembly Room, 103 Paterno Library. Individual presentations are listed below:
Thursday, June 20, 11 a.m. to noon:
Matt Dietz, winner of the Albert M. Petska Eighth Air Force Archives Research Travel Award, is a doctoral candidate from the University of North Texas. Dietz will examine records related to the tactical air power components of the Eighth Air Force in an attempt to show “the key role of tactical air power in the victory of Allied armies in Europe.” The primary aim of his work is to “add as complete a history as possible of U.S. Air Force Airborne Forward Air Controllers to the historiography.” Dietz will visit Special Collections from June 17-21.
Tuesday, June 25, noon to 1 p.m.:
Ian Gavigan, winner of the Dorothy Foehr Huck Research Travel Award, is a doctoral candidate at Rutgers University. His presentation, “Exploring the fate of urban socialism in the United States through the 1930s and early 1940s,” focuses on Reading, Pennsylvania, in an attempt to show how "the shifting structure of American federalism in the Roosevelt era directly undermined one of the few pathways to power for radical politics in the compound U.S. state, thereby foreclosing city-based challenges to the rise of New Deal liberalism.” Gavigan will visit Special Collections from June 10-18.
Thursday, July 18, 12:15 to 1:15 p.m.:
Tim Galsworthy, winner of the William W. Scranton Research Travel Award, is a graduate student from the University of Sussex. He will examine the “largely unexplored relationship between Civil War memory and the Republican Party during the civil rights period.” His research focuses on “how Republicans of all kinds used Civil War allusions to buttress their arguments, as they battled over the party’s ideological direction.” Galsworthy will visit Special Collections from July 8-19.
Friday, July 19, 10 to 11 a.m.:
Victoria Clark, winner of the Dorothy Foehr Huck Research Travel Award, is a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia. She will explore “how to decolonize the archive of the Indianist composers, white American composers basing their music on transcriptions of American Indian song, between 1900-1925.” Clark will be rereading composer and ethnographic archives to explore indigenous agency in both their resistance to and cooperation with transcription, composition and performance of American Indian song and Indianist music. Clark will visit Special Collections from July 15-19.
Friday, July 19, 11 a.m. to noon:
Lucy Biederman, winner of the Helen F. Faust Women Writers Research Travel Award, is an assistant professor in the English department at Heidelberg University. Biederman is working on a book titled “A Symposium. A Gathering. A Party: Joyce Carol Oates as Small Press Author (1973-1974).” Her goal is to examine the “avant garde contexts in which Black Sparrow published Oates’ 'A Posthumous Sketch' (1973).” Biederman will visit Special Collections from July 15-19.
Thursday, Aug. 1, noon to 1 p.m.:
Tamara Hauser, winner of the Mary Ann O’Brian Malkin Research Travel Award, is a doctoral candidate from Ohio State University. Her doctoral research focuses on the circulation of dance in late medieval Europe, as well as the implications of behavioral codes and laws on the performance of cultural identity. Hauser will discuss “the sources’ similarities in best practices, technical language, and visual aids as well as their similarities in packaging dance instructions, choreographies, and/or proper behaviour for circulation within the dance writing genres.” She will visit Special Collections from July 23-Aug. 1.
Friday, Aug. 23, noon to 1 p.m.:
Rodion Kosovsky, winner of the A Few Good Women/Barbara Franklin Research Travel Award, is a doctoral candidate from Yale University. In his dissertation, titled "Unsafe Homes: A History of Intimate Partner Violence in the US, 1900-1994," he examines the “changing social, political, legal, and medical perspectives on the causes and appropriate response to intimate partner violence in both heterosexual and LGBT communities from the start of 20th century until the Violence Against Women Act of 1994.” In particular, he draws attention to the importance of the administrations of former Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford who "embraced feminism for political reasons." Kosovsky will visit Special Collections from Aug. 12-23.
For more information about these “learn at lunch” programs or for questions about accommodations or the physical access provided, contact Julie Porterfield at jmp48@psu.edu or 814-865-1793 in advance of the event.