Undergraduate Research (UPREP)

Description: The New Variorum Shakespeare (NVS), which began with the publication of
Romeo and Juliet in 1871, is now published in open-access in digital form, beginning with two
editions, The Winter’s Tale and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. King Lear and The Comedy of
Errors are currently in production. The digital NVS has been designed with three main goals in
mind: 1) to teach students and early career researchers the concepts behind variorum editing
through interface design as well as tutorials; 2) to enable searching across and within volumes
and variants using Modern English and major Act-Scene-Line numbers; and 3) to be
interoperable with, and allow access to, other major Shakespeare digital resources including
bibliographies of criticism, digital copies of editions published since Shakespeare’s time,
images, and videos (set for third-phase development). Following the practice of state-of-the-art
digital humanities projects, we aim to render Shakespeare’s texts and international criticism
available world-wide.

Student Involvement: The student researcher will work closely with me, Dr. Kris May (Associate
Digital Editor), Dr. Robert Stagg (NVS Director), Dr. Katayoun Tobari (Digital Editor) and NVS
volume editors to create and publish NVS volumes online at:
https://newvariorumshakespeare.org/. They will work on different aspects of the digital editing
process, including locating relevant historical editions of Shakespeare plays for individual NVS
volumes, performing optical character recognition (OCR) and transcribing editions for collation,
and maintaining documentation for training and workflow. Collation is the process of comparing
a large number of editions of Shakespeare’s plays for textual variants. Through the process of
transcription, the student researcher will prepare texts that can then be used in a digital collation
tool, which will automate much of the collation process. Volume editors will then use these
collations to inform the editorial decisions they make to produce New Variorum Shakespeare
editions.

Required Skills & Interest: The student researcher should have an interest in either
Shakespeare or Digital Humanities —preferably both. Previous experience with XML and/or
GitHub is desired, but not required. Project-specific training will be provided.

Description: The Beowulf's Afterlives Bibliographic Database (BABD) is the most comprehensive record of texts, representations, and adaptations of Beowulf from 1705 to the present, in all languages, genres, and media forms. It contains nearly 1200 entries and is growing continually. Work developing its content is ongoing, and a UPREP student may contribute both to this aspect of the project and to enhancing the data it already contains, as described below.

Student Involvement: The student’s work may include information-gathering, cataloguing, and fact-checking, as needed, but most of the job’s duties this semester would center on reading larger-scale Beowulf adaptations, such as novels, and distilling them into summaries. Most of these works are published by small presses and are not digitized, and even if they were, a human-generated rather than AI-generated summary will allow more knowledgeable interaction with the text’s themes and details as they relate to Beowulf itself.

Required Skills and Interest: The primary needed qualifications are diligence, attentiveness to detail, and skill as an active reader. Prior interest in medieval literature is helpful but not necessary; no prior knowledge of Beowulf is assumed, and we will begin the work by discussing the poem together (in Modern English translation) for orientation. An enhancing qualification might be competence in one or more non-English languages.

Description: The Digital Humanities (DH) Certificate Program offers students the opportunity to gain practical and theoretical expertise in digital tools, methods, and project design and management for humanities research, teaching, and practice. This program is a great way to build practical, in-demand skills while exploring the intersection of technology and the humanities. Open to graduate students across all fields at Texas A&M University, the Certificate Program helps students gain skills that are highly valuable in many careers. Students complete 12 credit hours and a hands-on digital project that demonstrates real-world experience and appears on their transcript. But the certificate is more than classes. Through workshops, events, and collaborative projects hosted at A&M, students join a supportive community where they can meet mentors, explore new ideas, and work together on creative initiatives. The DH Certificate offers a meaningful way to gain experience, expand professional skills, and be part of innovative, team-based work.

Student Involvement: The UPREP student researcher will work closely with me, the DH Certificate Program coordinator, to help expand the program through publicity and outreach. We hope to hire a creative undergraduate student to help share the story of the DH Certificate and connect more students and faculty with the opportunities the program offers.

After the DH Certificate Program moved into the English Department, we concentrated on getting the program assessed and on streamlining processes to support current students. Now we are turning our attention to growing the program by broadening the Certificate’s course offerings across STEM and humanities fields, encouraging greater participation from faculty interested in DH, and recruiting more graduate students. Increasing the program’s visibility and building strong networks will be essential to these efforts.

The UPREP student will help me promote the program through targeted communications, social media, event publicity, and outreach to departments, highlighting both the professional skills students gain and the collaborative opportunities the DH Certificate provides. Additionally, the UPREP student will have the opportunity to contribute to flyer design and distribution, and with recruitment efforts for the English Department. This role will support program growth by increasing awareness, encouraging early enrollment, and strengthening connections among students, faculty, and the broader DH community.

Although this role supports graduate students enrolled in the DH Certificate Program, it offers meaningful benefits for an undergraduate student. The UPREP student will gain valuable professional experience collaborating with graduate students and faculty, developing skills in outreach and academic communications, and learning more about the field of Digital Humanities. They will also become familiar with DH opportunities available to undergraduates, including several DH-related courses connected to the program. In this role, the student worker will help highlight what makes the DH Certificate special by spreading the word through social media, outreach, and event promotion, and helping others discover how DH can enrich their studies and research. The goal is to grow a welcoming, collaborative community by inviting more students and faculty to learn, create, and explore together.

Required Skills & Interest: Familiarity with Google Suite and Canva is desirable. The student researcher should have an interest in Digital Humanities, event planning, and/or professional networking. They should be detail-oriented, should follow with tasks in a timely fashion, and should demonstrate strong communication skills.

Description: This UPREP focuses on the development of multimodal assignments involving combinations of textual analysis, music/auditory imagery, and visual imagery with the aim of compiling these assignments and assignment samples in a developing OER focused on Open Educational Practices for use by Instructors of Writing and Literature.

Student Involvement: Students will meet weekly with Dr. Carly-Miles to discuss readings (chosen together; emphasis on 19th-Century literature, but scope could expand); outside of these meetings, students will read and annotate chosen texts (provided by Dr. Carly-Miles), assist in designing OEP assignments for English 203 and other literature courses, assist in designing student surveys for assessment of project,  and complete at least one major multimodal assignment to function as a student sample for future in-class use.

Required Skills & Interest: Music appreciation (i.e., you love music and listen to it a lot!), ease in using Google Docs, familiarity with Canva and iMovie, interest in stop-action animation (this is preferred but not required)

Description: The New Variorum Shakespeare (NVS), which began with the publication of
Romeo and Juliet in 1871, is now published in open-access in digital form, beginning with two
editions, The Winter’s Tale and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. King Lear and The Comedy of
Errors are currently in production. The digital NVS has been designed with three main goals in
mind: 1) to teach students and early career researchers the concepts behind variorum editing
through interface design as well as tutorials; 2) to enable searching across and within volumes
and variants using Modern English and major Act-Scene-Line numbers; and 3) to be
interoperable with, and allow access to, other major Shakespeare digital resources including
bibliographies of criticism, digital copies of editions published since Shakespeare’s time,
images, and videos (set for third-phase development). Following the practice of state-of-the-art
digital humanities projects, we aim to render Shakespeare’s texts and international criticism
available world-wide.

Student Involvement: The student researcher will work closely with me, the digital
editor (Dr. Kathy Torabi), the other associate digital editor (Dr. Dorothy Todd), the NVS
Director (Dr. Robert Stagg), and NVS volume editors outside of Texas A&M University to
create and publish NVS volumes online at: https://newvariorumshakespeare.org/. The
student will XML-encode physical volumes for online publication, locate and correct
XML errors that appear in the digital files of Shakespeare’s plays, assist in maintaining
documentation for training and workflow, and help editors and the NVS backend
developer think through the process of transforming physical editions into digital texts.

Required Skills & Interest: The student researcher should have an interest in either
Shakespeare or digital humanities—preferably both. Previous experience with XML,
TEI, and/or Gitlab is desired, but not required. Project-specific training will be provided.

Description: This project will explore the efficacy of semester-long genre-based simulations as a form of immersive, student-centered pedagogy in literature and film. It asks: How can sustained narrative immersion enhance student comprehension of genre theory, narratology, and sociocultural critique as opposed to traditional lecture-discussion-based models? Through the development of semester-long simulations that address science fiction and horror concepts, theories, and narrative frameworks, students will benefit from an active-learning practice that faculty will be able to implement into their courses to improve learning outcomes.

For this project, research will culminate in the creation of two simulations: one for science fiction studies and one for horror studies (directly applicable to ENGL-FILM 324 Science Fiction and Film and ENGL-FILM 366 Horror Studies, but expandable to other courses with any genre-study focus). The project will also design an assessment instrument (pre/post survey and reflective analysis rubric) to measure student engagement, genre comprehension, and collaborative learning outcomes.

Each simulation will represent a full 15-week semester calendar that promotes collaborative learning, research and writing, personal responsibility, and critical thinking and decision-making. The simulations will allow students to engage with course material by placing them directly into a semester-long genre-study scenario in which they work with their teammates to problem-solve technological, environmental, medical, sociocultural, and governmental challenges typically present in science fiction and horror narratives. During the simulation, students are provided weekly prompts and artifacts specific to the genre to make team decisions by conducting research into genre concepts. For example, a scenario might present a “shelter in place” directive action within a speculative environmental crisis, prompting students to analyze how scarcity, governance, and survival function within genre conventions to determine strategic next steps. By participating in the simulation, students actively gain an understanding of foundational genre elements to enhance their knowledge acquisition immersively instead of passively. 

Student Involvement: The selected student will work with the faculty member to develop a standard genre narrative framework of science fiction and horror from which to base the simulations. The student will conduct narratological research into the two genres via library databases, foundational genre texts, and reading/screening representative texts to determine genre concepts, elements, and theories to factor into the simulations. In developing the simulation scenarios and their weekly updates, the student will consider possible decision-making avenues for participants and possible outcomes in order to ensure a unique experience filled with a variety of outcomes and progression for the simulation. The student will also select written narratives and films to serve as artifacts for students to engage with in the simulation (exploring specific excerpts and/or clips that can be utilized as historical documents). Testing simulation outcomes via GenAI will be an optional avenue for review and revision of the simulations. Throughout the semester, the student will participate in weekly research meetings with the faculty member to discuss simulation updates toward the completion of the simulations.

At the end of the semester, the student will have produced two 15-week simulations—one in science fiction and one in horror—to implement into ENGL courses that embody a focus on students acquiring knowledge of genre functionality (written and visual).

Required Skills and Interest: The student should have a general interest in pedagogical practice and basic knowledge of genre studies. Standard research methodologies and ethical protocols in using library and online databases, engaging in personal communications, reviewing primary and secondary source materials, etc. are required. Furthermore, the student should have a proficient level of experience with research, writing, and professional communication with an attention to detail and organization. Use of email, Google (shared drive and documents), and Zoom are required for communication, documentation, and recordkeeping.

Description: This project seeks to provide a response to the question: How does horror cinema geographically spatialize fear, and what do the spatial patterns within and/or across specific time periods reveal about the historical and sociocultural movement of fear?

As Horror Studies continues to develop at a rapid pace in being recognized as a critical interdisciplinary field of academic study, one emerging area for the discipline is digital humanities (DH), and this project seeks to answer its research question via GIS (geographic information system) mapping. Geography of the Living Dread: Mapping a Spatial History of Horror aims to launch a GIS foundation of visualizing how fear as a concept and human emotion moves. By mapping the real-world locations where horror films are set in their diegetic space (not filming locations, which can be different)—paired with their production-year releases—this project will allow an examination of the genre in a manner that can reveal how fear is generated and travels through time and space based on a combination of film content and sociocultural, historical influence. If “1973” represents a production-release year to investigate via GIS visualization, we would find that William Friedkin’s The Exorcist is set in Washington, D.C. and George Romero’s The Crazies is set in Evans City, PA. This pairing could prompt investigation into regional and national anxieties regarding mental health, demonic possession, religious fragility, biological warfare, and martial law—raising questions about whether such fears were geographically specific or nationally shared in 1973. On a much larger scale, such as GIS interface with a dataset of 200 films (their years of production, diegetic locations, subgenres, character archetypes and genre tropes, directors, etc.), the data mapping would reveal more easily the connections between time and space to illustrate how fear moves historically and culturally.

As a start to the project, the student and faculty member will work together to create a base dataset of films and select criteria that can be implemented into and visualized by a GIS platform. They will establish a primary set of U.S.-based films for the project’s foundation, organized by decades starting with the earliest texts in the 1890s to the most recent in the 2020s. By the end of the semester, the student and faculty member will have finalized the dataset and criteria, explored the basics of GIS to comprehend its use for the project’s intended scope, and set plans for future applications of the project.

Student Involvement: The selected student will work with the faculty member to develop a dataset of 150-200 U.S.-based horror films from the 1890s-2020s to create a foundation for the project’s objective to create a geographical visualization of horror by time (production year) and place (diegetic setting). Online inquiry will serve as a primary research method, complemented by library records, possible filmmaker interviews, and screening establishing shots and noting expository storytelling to determine narrative locations for the films. The student will help implement the dataset (via Google Sheets, Excel, or other spreadsheet platform) to organize entries and create subsets based on additional criteria (subgenre, director, diegetic time, etc.). The student will also explore the basics of GIS mapping and spatial analysis to assist in the planned development of the project’s full scope which includes future objectives to expand into international horror cinema and formulate dataset entries for character types/tropes, historical events, and franchising productions (sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots). By the end of the semester, the student will have contributed to the creation of a functional GIS prototype set to visualize at 150-200 films with searchable metadata. Throughout the semester, the student will participate in weekly research meetings with the faculty member to maintain a consistency of goal markers toward the progress and success of the project.

Required Skills and Interest: The student should have an interest in visual horror literatures, active research for data compilation, and learning GIS applications for digital humanities; however, they are not required to have a high level of expertise in the horror genre and/or DH field. Basic research methodologies and ethical protocols (using online databases, conducting personal interviews, performing internet searches, etc.) are required. Furthermore, the student should have experience with research, writing, and professional communication at a proficient level with an attention to detail and organization. Knowledge of Google Workspace—particularly Drive, Docs, and Sheets—is necessary for research documentation and data collection.

Description: Between 600 and 800 students enroll in ENGL 104: Composition and Rhetoric each long semester. As genAI becomes more ubiquitous and students become more comfortable using it, I believe it is part of the responsibility of writing instructors to teach students to use genAI as a writing tool critically — that is, to use it appropriately, in ethical ways, and to engage with thinking through long term consequences and impacts of genAI use and development. Therefore, I believe that we need to develop more robust instructional strategies related to genAI instruction and tools and to determine or measure the effectiveness of current strategies. To this end, I have enrolled in Cohort 3 of the CTE Generative AI Learning community, and plan to collect data in the Fall (and potentially future semesters) regarding the impact of ENGL 104 instruction on student attitudes toward genAI use.

Student Involvement: This UPREP seeks to hire a student as a project assistant regarding research, curriculum development, and implementation. Students may contribute to forming theoretical frameworks, practical data collection and analyses, reiterations and revisions of instructional materials and strategies, and other tasks relevant to establishing a healthy strategy for encouraging students into critical engagement with genAI.

Students may participate in gathering data from surveys of ENGL 104 students (and others) and organizing the results, as well as finding and organizing secondary research related to genAI use, instruction, and impact. Students also may compile primary data from other universities and departments regarding their approaches to genAI. Students may also have the chance to contribute to study designs and instructional material development.

Required Skills and Interest: Students should be interested in research related to genAI as a writing tool, in curriculum development and instructional strategies, and in interrogating some of the dominant narratives regarding genAI.

Required skills include attention to detail; ability to find, read and summarize academic articles; and an ability and willingness to conduct research and organize information.  Interest in the teaching of writing and pedagogy would also be useful. Any student interested in genAI as a writing tool, in writing instruction, and in performing research tasks is encouraged to apply. 

Description: More than 1000 undergraduate students take ENGL 210, Technical and Professional Communication, each semester. Emerging shifts in asynchronous approaches and AI technologies have expanded possibilities in both course design and curriculum, and this project is geared toward exploring how our Technical and Professional Communication class might better implement new technologies. This UPREP seeks to hire a student as a project assistant for research and implementation of AI Ethics and curriculum development in our Technical and Professional Communication course. Work in the course’s curriculum development is ongoing, and a UPREP student may contribute to research in curriculum development and asynchronous course design, data collection, and/or research pertinent to technical and professional communication and AI technologies in the classroom.

Student Involvement: The student’s work is expected to focus on research surrounding technical and professional writing studies and asynchronous course design. The student might participate in gathering data regarding assignments and/or organizing results from data collected from departments who require 210 in their degree plans. The student may also participate in document design, research on AI technologies in the classroom, and resource planning.

Required Skills and Interest: The primary qualifications are an interest in and enthusiasm for research and curriculum development. Required skills include attention to detail and an ability and willingness to conduct research. Interest in practices of technical and professional writing and AI technologies is useful. Any student interested in curricular possibilities in the technical and professional writing classroom is encouraged to apply.