The USC Libraries announced the winners of the annual Research Award competition at a reception on Tuesday, April 29. The award honors exceptional student research completed at USC.
Dean Melissa Just described the award in her opening remarks to the attendees: “Each year, we invite our Trojan students to submit course essays or research papers they completed thanks to our research collections and services at the libraries. We also ask them to submit reflective essays on the research process and their journeys as critical interpreters of primary sources, databases, and other resources we offer them via our libraries.”
First prize in the graduate category went to Xiangyi Hou for “Becoming the King of Japan—Diplomatics Between Japan and other East Asian States, 1268–1368.” In the accompanying reflective essay, Hou noted how having access to Diaolong, a database featuring more than 30,000 digitized classical texts from China and Japan, was instrumental in writing the paper.
Second prize went to Misha Kouzeh for “Closing the Gender Divide: How Social Status, Connections, Media, and Culture Relate to Public Attitudes toward Female Social Entrepreneurs.” Kouzeh thanked the libraries for the interdisciplinary databases made available to students and researchers as well as workshops on citation management and research ethics.
First prize in the undergraduate category went to Hudson Bishop Fey for “Disaster’s Silver Linings: Mineral King, Community, and Environmental Justice.” Fey thanked Special Collections faculty members Suzanne Noruschat for her expertise with the Mineral King archive and Derek Quezada for additional research assistance. Jurors were unanimous in their hope that Fey turn his research about public action in the face of potential environmental destruction into a thesis or dissertation.
Isabel Jansen-Montoya, Alexis Mesa, and Victor Zhang all tied for second prize. Montoya’s “Out of the Closet: National Expansion and Queer Identity in Community Based Organizations During the AIDS Crisis” made use of the collections and staff knowledge at the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. Mesa’s “Postpartum Nightmares: Jewish Motherhood as a Source of Oppression and Defiance Under Nazi Persecution” utilized video testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive as well as photographs, books, and artwork from Special Collections. In Zhang’s “Beyond the Ghetto: Jewish Refugees in Interior China During World War II” he credits both the USC Holocaust Collection and Special Collections librarian Taylor Dwyer, who assisted him with isolating the critical resources he needed to conduct his research.
Jordan Ferdman’s “‘Better Dead Than Coed’: Turning Back to Coeducation’s Early Implementations to Look Forward” and Parenda Foroghi’s “Deepfake and Gender Representation in Media” tied for third prize.
The judges for this year's awards included USC Libraries faculty and staff Joanna Barry, Mats Borges, Amy Chatfield, Minyoung Chung, Lisa Crow, Taylor Dwyer, Sandra Garcia-Myers, Marta Golbano, Noah Hernandez, Cari Kaurloto, Jane Lah, Sophie Lesinka, Tang Li, Eddie Loh, Micaela Rodgers, Karin Saric, Ruth Wallach; and last year’s student winner Emily Varley.
The USC Libraries Research Awards are generously supported by AM Digital and Johnson Rare Books & Archives.
To learn more about the USC Libraries Research Awards, visit libguides.usc.edu/researchaward.