UNE students present on digital humanities, Sherlock Holmes, wartime comics, and suffragette bicyclists at NURDS 2014

Students majoring and minoring in humanities programs at UNE – including English, History, Liberal Studies, and Philosophy --- presented their projects at the sixth annual Northeast Undergraduate Research and Development Symposium (NURDS) hosted by UNE on March 8, 2014.  They joined undergraduates from Acadia University, Dartmouth College and Worcester State University on two panels that explored the literary, historical, and social dimensions of diverse cultural practices spanning the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries, both chaired by Susan McHugh, Ph.D., professor and chair of the department of English.

English major and philosophy minor James Muller (’13) and marine science major/English minor Meghan Danley (’14) co-presented “Digital Estuary: Exploring the history and biology of the Saco River.”  Together they explained how a research project begun in an English course titled Doing the Humanities Digitally taught last fall by Michael Cripps, Ph.D., associate professor in the English Department, has become a fully funded internship for both of them this spring.

English major/history minor Hillary Cusack (’14) presented “Magnifying Transatlantic Relations: Twentieth Century Stereotypes in Sherlock Holmes Novels.”  Funded by a Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) grant last summer, Cusack did archival research in Boston under the direction of her adviser Cathrine Frank, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of English, to uncover the politics behind the representations of UK, US, and Irish peoples in Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective fictions.

History/ business administration double major and political science minor Dylan Wing (’14) presented “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words,” a senior capstone project on the World War II cartoons of and by soldiers that were published in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes presently being directed by Rob Alegre, Ph.D., assistant professor in the History Department.

Liberal studies major and education minor Kathleen McGrath presented “Two Wheels Towards Equality: Women and the Bicycle Ride into a New Century,” a senior capstone project examining the role of bicycle technology in advancing physical as well as social mobility for women coming of age at the turn of the twentieth century and its consequences for suffragette politics, directed by Elizabeth De Wolfe, Ph.D., chair and professor of the Department of History.