Student Research Projects
The Maine Women Writers Collection has been the site of a number of student research projects, including these notable ones:
AMS 308 Women and the American Experience
The “Women and the American Experience” class, led by Professor Elizabeth De Wolfe, spent the Spring 2000 semester studying primary source material in the Maine Women Writers Collection. Students selected, researched, described, and transcribed original material from the Maine women Writers Collection for display and study on the University of New England Internet site.
American Studies Courses
Professor Elizabeth De Wolfe, Chair of the History Department and Co-Chair of the Women’s Studies Program, has used many resources from the Maine Women Writers Collection in her course syllabi. For example, some were used for her class about the American Best Seller. This course uses the best seller to track the rise of literacy and reading as a leisure pursuit, and to explore how social and cultural issues are illuminated by these reading patterns.
Environmental Studies/Women’s Studies Capstone Project
The Capstone Independent Study is the last and most important requirement for the Minor in Women’s Studies offered by the College of Arts and Sciences. Students can choose to do a conventional research paper or an internship summed up in an analytical paper.
Brady Potter (’06) developed an analytical annotated bibliography based on an internship she conducted in the MWWC. Her topic was women and the environment, focusing specifically on women nature writers.
English 310 Writing and Women’s Health
Professor Jennifer Tuttle (the Healy Chair and co-chair of the Women’s Studies Program) developed an assignment for her advanced humanities course on “Writing and Women’s Health” in which students would have the option of writing their analytical essay on primary sources in the MWWC, thus giving them the opportunity to do archival research. Students wrote about a variety of items, from Abraham Myerson's The Nervous Housewife (1920) to May Sarton's journals. Many of the students focused on artist's books in which Martha Hall explores various aspects of her experience with breast cancer.
