2021 Winners:
Undergraduate Student Winners
1st Prize
Adam Jackman
“Avarice and Ambition: John Adams’s Fight Against Commercial and Private Interest”
2nd Prize (4x)
Tiffany Chou
“Strategic Use of Patent Portfolios in Cloud Computing Enterprises”
Ayaka Kimura
“Representing Ūman Ribu Japan’s Radical Feminist Movement as seen through Print Media”
Ellen Minkin
"Jewish Childbearing in Ghettos During the Holocaust”
Abigail Rawlinson
“All ’Bout the Money: Governor Ronald Reagan & Higher Education”
3rd Prize
Brynn Sauer
“A Triple Threat: Investigating the Relationship Between Payment Schemes, Personality, and Performance”
Graduate Student Winners
1st Prize:
Saar Shahar
“Artistic Incentives and the Quest for Status: John Webber and the making of Captain Cook’s Death”
1st Prize:
Ann Tran
“USC in 1970: Politics, Race, and the Antiwar Movement."
2020 Winners:
Undergraduate prizes:
First prize: Christopher Aranda, a junior majoring in history, for “Mickey’s Army: Frontierland in the Creation of the American Western Myth,” written for History 457: The American West, taught by Alice Baumgartner
First prize: Sophie Hammond, a senior majoring in history and English, for the history honors thesis, “‘The Moral Regeneration of Civilized Humanity’: Bourgeois Women’s Movements in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna,” advised by Paul Lerner
First prize: Ryan Nhu, a senior majoring in Creative Writing; Law, History, and Culture, for “Compromising: On Richard Aoki, Midcentury Radicalism, and the Limits of Solidarity,” written as an independent research project in History for Professor Alice Echols
Second prize: Morgan Harler, a senior majoring in political science, for “Social Identity Theory Skews 27 Emotions Study: An Investigation of Political Polarization and Emotions,” an experimental honors thesis in political science
Second prize: Edward Mack, majoring in international relations, for “Of Millets and Murder: A Discourse on the Ottoman Genocides, From Cause to Effect,” written for International Relations 437: Comparative Genocide, taught by Patrick James
Third prize: Annie Li, a freshman majoring in Business Administration and Accounting, for “It's Not Just the Devil That Wears Prada,” written for Deborah Sims’ Writing 150 class
Third prize: Bridgett Purcell, a senior majoring in French and Communication, for “Of Myths and (Wo)men: The International Implications of the Enlightenment in “Voltaire to Jeanne Antoinette Pompadour—1750 August 20,” written for French 370: Equality and Difference around the Enlightenment, taught by Natania Meeker
Graduate prizes:
First prize: Judy Zhou, a first-year PhD student in Biokinesiology and a recent Doctor of Physical Therapy graduate, for “Infant reaching in the first year of life: a scoping review of typical development and examples of atypical development"
Second prize: Ryan Nhu, a senior majoring in Creative Writing; Law, History, and Culture, for "Violent Affect(ions), Queer Desires,” written for Viet Thanh Nguyen’s class English 504: Theories of Race, Class, and Gender
2019 Winners:
Undergraduate Papers
1. Place
Matthew Tomazic
Paper: The Hand That Signed the Paper: Treaty Breaking and Native American Legal Resistance to Genocide
Class: HIST 446: Resistance to Genocide, Fall 2019, Professor Wolf Gruner
2. Place
Shir Attias
Paper: The US-Russia BMD Confrontation: A study of American Perception of Russian Rhetoric on US BMD and the Implications for Future Arms Control
Class: IR (International Relations)494 Honors Thesis Seminar, Fall 2019, Professor Jacques Hymans
3. Place
Ashlyn Elliot
Paper: Shadow Couriers. The Dissemination of Information by Women as Resistance to the Third Reich
Class: HIST 446: Resistance to Genocide, Fall 2019, Professor Wolf Gruner
Graduate Papers
1. Place
Michael Anthony Turcios
Paper: Decolonial Expressions in Barrio Film of 1970s East Los Angeles
Class: CTCS 677: Colonialism, Cinema and Culture”, Spring 2019, Professor Priya Jaikumar
2. Place
Ryan Nhu
“Coming Out” on the Global Stage: Queer Theory and International Human Rights Law
Class: POIR 648: International Human Rights Law and Policy, Spring 2019, Professor Alison Dundes Renteln
Winners of the 2018 USC Libraries Research Award
Graduate Student Award:
1st prize:
Darshana Mini
Paper: “To Tame a Savage Land: Photographs, Documentaries, and Travelogues as Colonial Texts in the New Hebrides (1860s-1920s).”
Undergraduate Student Awards:
1st prizes:
Nikhil Vettikattu
Griffin Hale Williams
2nd prizes:
Annie Ly
Ryan Kazemaini
Undergraduate Thesis Award:
Jacob Lokshin
Allison Smith
Undergraduate Research Papers
First place: Anna Lipscomb
Second place: Matthew Simon
First-Year Undergraduate Paper Award:
Rebecca Breitstein
Graduate Student Awards:
Emily Rauber Rodriguez
Michael Turcios
Winners of the 2016 USC Libraries Research Award
Undergraduate papers:
Tying for first prize:
José Alaras.
Brittney Kidwell.
Tying for second prize:
Roberto Nazario.
Rebecca Teper.
Graduate papers:
First prize:
Darshana Mini.
Winners of the 2015 USC Libraries Research Award
Tying for first prize in the honors thesis category:
Emily Hodgkins.
Paper: “Beat Music and the Politics of Youth Identity in the German Democratic Republic, 1949–1965”
Alexander Finkelstein.
Paper: “Los Angeles Transformation: 1863–1876,”
Undergraduate papers category
1st prize
Mahima Verma. Paper: “Unpackaging Life magazine’s photographic essay of the 1946 Calcutta Riots.”
Tying for second prize:
Sareen Palassian. Paper: “The Femme Fatale in LGBT Science Fiction”
Diana Kruzman. Paper: “Uncontacted No Longer: Globalization’s Impact on Kinship, Conflict and Ritual Cannibalism Among the Korowai of Papua.”
Honorable Mention
Sasha Pearce. Paper: “Mary Stuart in Letters"
Winners of the 2014 USC Libraries Research Award
First Place Graduate Student Winner:
Natalie Dame
Major: Slavic Languages and Literatures
Paper: Russia in Distress or the Tortured Virgins in the Russian Satirical Journals of 1905-1906
First Place Undergraduate Student Winner:
John Merritt
Major: History
Paper: South Tyrol, Südtirol, or Trentino? National Community on the Linguistic Frontier of Austria and Italy, 1848-1945
Second Place Undergraduate Student Winner:
Leslie Chang
Major: History
Paper: Charles Dickens and the Ethics of Accounting
Winners of the 2013 USC Libraries Research Award
First Place ($500):
Nitya Ramanathan
Major: International Relations, minor- Human Rights, Resistance to Genocide
Semester in which the Research Paper was written: Fall 2013
Academic Class Level: Junior
Title of paper: How do We Put Ourselves Back Together? An Analytical Comparison between Transitional Justice in Rwanda and South Africa
Second Place ($200):
Diem-Tran Nguyen
Major: History (Minor: Natural Science),
Semester in which the Research Paper was written: Fall 2013
Academic Class Level: Senior
Title of paper: The Paradoxical Treatment of Male Homosexual Prisoners During the Holocaust
Jury Members Research Award 2020
USC Libraries faculty and staff Anthony Anderson, Amy Chatfield, Lisa Marie Crow, Nora DeVita, Elizabeth Galoozis, Sandra Garcia-Myers, Samir Ghosh, Cari Kaurloto, Eddie Loh, Sophie Lesinska, Sue Luftschein, Suzi Noruschat, Michael Oliveira, Bree Russell, Linda Truong, Michaela Ullmann, and Ruth Wallach; Jennifer Sopchockchai Bankard of the USC Dornsife Writing Program, Joan Flores-Villalobos of the USC Dornsife History Department, Carmen Lee of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Cory Nelson of the USC Dornsife Writing Program and the Writing Center, and Ashley Uyeshiro of the USC Chan Division of Occupational Therapy; along with last year’s student winners Matthew Tomazic and Michael Anthony Turcios.
Jury Members Research Award 2019
Undergraduate Student Papers
Special Jury French language:
Danielle Mihram & Olivia Harrisson
General Jury undergraduate students:
Alyssa Elaine Brissett, Suzanne Noruschat, Eddie Loh, Nikhil Vettikattu (student winner 2018), Tang Li, Andy Rutkowski, Prof. Lindsay O’Neill, Griffin Williams (student winner 2018), Javier Sepulveda Garibay, Melissa Miller, Annie Ly (student winner 2018), Tyson Gaskill, Prof. Christopher Smith
Graduate Student Papers
Jury graduate student papers:
Sue Luftschein, Anthony Anderson, Stacy Williams, Darshana Mini (2018 Graduate student winner), Alyssa Elaine Brissett, Suzanne Noruschat, Eddie Loh, Nikhil Vettikattu (student winner 2018)
2017 Research Award Jury:
Jose Alaras, student, biochemistry major (2016 Research Award winner)
Rebecca Corbett, Japanese Studies Librarian, USC Libraries
Elizabeth Galoozis, Head of Information Literacy, USC Libraries (lead)
Karin Huebner, Director of Programs, Harman Academy for Polymathic Study
Kevin Klipfel, Instructional Design & Assessment Librarian, USC Libraries
Sue Luftschein, Head of Special Collections, USC Libraries
Danielle Mihram, Reference and Instruction Librarian, USC Libraries
Darshana Mini, Ph.D. student, School of Cinematic Arts (2016 Research Award winner)
Suzi Noruschat, Southern California Studies Specialist, USC Libraries
Andrea Parra, Associate Professor (Teaching) of Spanish
Eimmy Solis, Social Sciences Data Librarian, USC Libraries
Shalini Ramachandran, Science and Engineering Librarian, USC Libraries
2016 Research Award Jury for undergraduate student papers:
Sean Nye, Assistant Professor for Practice in Musicology
Emily Hodgkins, USC History, 2016 & 2015 USC Libraries Research Award winner
Melanee Vicedo, Head, Education and Social Work Library Services
Andrew Justice, Head, Music Library
Special jury for Spanish-language papers:
Liana Stepanyan, Associate Professor, Spanish & Portuguese, Dornsife College
Maria Mercedes Fages Agudo,Senior Lecturer, Spanish & Portuguese, Dornsife College
2016 Research Award Jury for graduate student papers:
Kristin Diehl, Associate Professor of Marketing
Helga Haraldsson, Head, Business and Accounting Libraries
Sue Luftschein, Head, Special Collections
2015 Research Award Jury:
Carolyn Caffrey Gardner (USC Libraries)
Jack Merritt (1st place undergraduate student winner 2014)
Rotem Gilbert (USC Thornton Music School)
Natalie Dame (1st place graduate student winner 2014)
Elizabeth Galoozis (USC Libraries)
Michaela Ullmman (USC Libraries) (ex officio)
Sue Luftschein (USC Libraries) (ex officio)
2014 Research Award Jury:
Nitya Ramanathan, 1st Place Winner, USC Libraries Research Award 2013
Glenda Goodman, Postdoctoral Fellow, History Department
Gian-Maria Annovi, Assistant Professor of French & Italian
Elizabeth Namei, Assistant University Librarian and Reference and Instruction Librarian
2013 Research Award Jury Members:
Leo Braudy, University Professor and Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature and Professor of English and History
Tyler Cundiff, USC Sophomore, Political Science, Communication, Human Rights
Joseph Hawkins, Director, ONE Archives at the USC Libraries
Lindsay O'Neill, Lecturer, USC Dornsife, Department of History