Undergraduate Research Projects

NLUS students pursue independent research projects using the primary-source materials in the Newberry archives.

Past Student Research Presentations

Watch student presentations from the 2021 NLUS Seminar, entitled “Chicago: City of Art, Industry, & Labor.”

Annie Lemieux, Loyola University Chicago, “From Baseball to the Bible; Ruth Page’s Ballet Portrayal of Billy Sunday.”
Nathan La Mantia, University of Illinois Chicago, “The World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893: Colossal Success or Grand Failure?”
Jasmine Reed, University of Illinois Chicago, “The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters: Crossroads of Labor Unionism and Civil Rights.”

Watch students from the 2020 NLUS Seminar, entitled “Shakespeare’s Afterlives: Literature, Philosophy, Politics, and the Visual Arts, 1623-2020,” present their research.

Lily Cate Gunther-Canada, Loyola University Chicago, “‘To Be or Not to Be’: The Lady Hamlets of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”
Emma Mares, DePaul University, “Alterations, Recreations, and Parodies of Macbeth from 1650-1850″
Brea Williams, University of Illinois at Chicago, “Facing Othello: Ira Aldridge’s Role in the Evolved Representation of Shakespeare’s Moor”

Past Student Research Topics

  • “All You Need Is Lust, Mistrust, and a Little Pixie-Dust: An Analysis of Magical Representation in A Midsummer Night’s Dream during the Victorian Era,” Morgan Kail-Ackerman, DePaul University, 2020
  • “The Envy of Less Happier Lands: Shakespeare, English National Identity, and Colonialist Apology in World War I-Era Britain,” Isabel Zuniga, Loyola University, 2020
  • “Tyranny and Regicide Through Time: Shakespeare, Davenant, and Eustis on Julius Caesar and Macbeth,” Leah Frank, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2020
  • “The Subject on Trial: Oscar Wilde and the Queer Borrowing of Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” Colin O’Connell, Loyola University, 2020
  • “Expanding Shakespeare’s Audience Through Radical Inclusion,” Bonnie Breyer, Roosevelt University, 2020
  • “Identity: A Biography of Chicago’s Native American Activism,” Jessica Xi, Loyola University, 2019
  • “100 Years Later: Racial Unrest, Social Accountability, and the Chicago Race Riot of 1919,” Carlos Catalon, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2019
  • “Chicago Modernity and Poetry at the Dil Pickle Club,” Aidan Falk, DePaul University, 2019
  • “Cloyd Head’s The Grotesques: A Study of Early Little Theatre in Chicago,” Amber Barkes, Roosevelt University, 2019