UO Libraries' Award for Undergraduate Research Excellence (LAURE)

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1794/313

Undergraduate education at the University of Oregon occurs in an environment where teaching, research, and service are integrated and mutually enriching enterprises. Many undergraduates already engage in the UO's research processes by working in laboratories and in the field. The LAURE program (formerly the Undergraduate Research Award) is intended to recognize students who demonstrate extraordinary skill and creativity in the application of library and information resources to original research and scholarship.

Successful projects will:

Make extensive, creative use of library services, resources, and collections in any format.
Demonstrate effective application of information literacy and fluency principles:

determining information needs
evaluating and analyzing information
managing, organizing, and synthesizing information
applying information in the context of the research project
communicating information in formats appropriate to an academic audience
making responsible use of information by providing appropriate and accurate citations and credits

Show evidence of significant personal knowledge in the methods of research and inquiry.
Demonstrate originality of thought, mastery of content appropriate to class level, clear writing, and overall quality of presentation.

For more information, consult the LAURE Research Guide

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 50

Open Access
All-American Babyfaces, Un-American Heels: Race and Nationalism Inside the Squared Circle
(University of Oregon, 2014-06-11) Parry, Brandon
Open Access
Anything but Ringers: Historical Sketches of the Soccer Hotbeds That Produced the 1930 U.S. World Cup Team
(University of Oregon, 2014-06-11) Bigalke, Zachary
This project investigates the impact of four regions of the United States that were integral to the development of soccer in the United States in the early 20th century. During the period, soccer was second in popularity only to baseball in the parts of the country under investigation, and this widespread interest of both players and spectators would lead to the creation of the first professional soccer league in either North or South America in the 1920s. Utilizing newspaper reports from the period, census data, and secondary research from other historians, this project shows the demographic impact of immigrant populations and industrial development on the sport’s growth during the first decades of the 1900s. The data illustrates the rich history of the sport in the United States and shows how these developments helped contribute to the success of the U.S. national team at the first FIFA World Cup in 1930.
Metadata only
As trans as trans could be
(University of Oregon, 2004) Frye, Lezlie
Open Access
Assimilation and Activism: An Analysis of Native Boarding School Curriculum and Native Student Activism in the 20th Century
(University of Oregon, 2014-12-13) Megerssa, Ayantu
This paper will examine Native American student retaliation and activism in the face of assimilationist educational policies and curriculum at both the Warm Springs Boarding School on the Warm Springs Reservation, and at Chemawa Boarding School in Salem Oregon, from the 1930s to the 1970s. I will argue that through the use of vocational education, Christian ethics and citizenship training, and cultural “safety zones” (Ruhl), Oregon Native American boarding schools attempted to assimilate their Native American students by instilling belief in the ideals of American citizenship, Christian morality, and work ethic. I will demonstrate that over the course of the 20th century, student and community activism against these assimilationist policies took the forms of retaliation against school authorities, community legal activism on behalf of the Native American students, creative student activism through literary publications such as The Chemewa American, and finally through student legal activism in the form of the Indian Student Bill of Rights in 1972.
Open Access
Bamboo As a New Fiber Source in the U.S. Paper Industry: A Feasibility Analysis for Booshoot Gardens, LLC
(University of Oregon, 2011-03-21) Kallaway, Emma
This study is a feasibility analysis seeking to answer two questions: Can bamboo be used as a replacement fiber source for paper products, and do market conditions offer potential for a new supplier to enter the industry? Research came from working with scientists in paper engineering, as well as industry research to uncover the potential for a new supplier in the U.S. paper industry. Booshoot staff agrees that in order to succeed in the paper industry the company must supply full grown, chipped bamboo to manufacturers in the sanitary paper industry, a small niche in the larger U.S paper industry. Based on this research Booshoot Gardens, LLC has already begun to find investors and expand the business into the U.S. Paper Industry.
Open Access
Cattle Plague in NYC: The Untold Campaign of America’s First Board of Health, 1868
(University of Oregon, 2012) Erlandson, Erik M.
America’s first health board has received ample attention from scholars for its unprecedented containment of cholera in 1866, but there is more to the history of New York’s Metropolitan Board of Health (MBH) than this campaign. In 1868, the nascent health organization faced its next big challenge, which has never been covered by secondary literature. In August, infected Texas cattle arrived at New York slaughterhouses, threatening the food supply of North America’s largest city. To fight the pestilence, the MBH adopted unprecedented policies for 19th century public health institutions, which had long been inclined toward local autonomy. During the cattle plague, however, MBH officers exerted their will outside their legal jurisdiction, and cooperated with other states on public health regulation in historically uncommon ways. This thesis explores how the MBH fought the epizootic, what impact the disease had, and why historically rare activism occurred.
Open Access
Cetacean Hunting at the Par-Tee Site (35CLT 20)?: Ethnographic, Artifact, and Blood Residue Analysis Investigation
(University of Oregon, 2014-01) Sanchez, Gabriel; Erlandson, Jon M.
Anthropologists have long believed that Native Americans on the Northern Oregon Coast did not actively hunt cetaceans; however, archaeological evidence suggests otherwise. My project utilizes ethnographic data, comparative artifact analysis, radiocarbon dating, and blood residue analysis to investigate whether whales may have been hunted during prehistoric times along the Northern Oregon Coast. An artifact from the Par-Tee site (35CLT20), a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) phalange with an embedded bone harpoon point, provides evidence of whale hunting. The dimensions of the embedded harpoon point were determined using computed tomography (CT) scanning in order to complete comparative analysis. Based on comparative analysis three harpoon typologies were selected for blood residue analysis. Blood residue analysis confirmed the use of the leister harpoon for trout, salmon, and steelhead fishing. In addition, future C14 dating will provide a time marker for active or opportunistic whale hunting within Oregon.
Open Access
Challenges to Democratic Inclusion and Contestation of Space: Contemporary Student Activists in Transforming South Africa
(University of Oregon, 2018) Wilms-Crowe, Momo
Twenty-four years into democracy, in a time marked by stark inequality and rising levels of political disillusionment, student activists are key players in the pursuit of a more just, more equitable, and more democratic South Africa. Using universities as spaces to contest, disrupt, and challenge the status quo, student activists challenge narratives of youth political apathy and act as agents of change, encouraging society to meet the goals established in the 1996 Constitution, the document enshrining the very promises they were born into believing would be their reality. Through mobilization and organizing, student actors boldly engage in questions of substantive equality and reveal the limits of South African democracy, highlighting especially how a hegemonic neoliberal framework has coopted radical transformation and maintained exclusionary principles. Yet, while #FeesMustFall protests in 2015-2016 temporarily garnered international media awareness and scholarly recognition, prolonged attention to student activism is lacking in the field of democratization and youth are often popularly conceived as apathetic or disengaged from politics. This study aims to correct this epistemological oversight by focusing on students as political agents and their contributions to the process of social transformation. This focus is especially important in Africa, the youngest continent on earth, where youth hold a key role in the process of development and democratization, but has global relevance. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus groups with student activists at the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN) and a review of secondary literature, this project reflects on the role that student activists and institutions of higher learning play in the larger project of transforming post-94 society and deepening South African democracy. Informed by the voices of student activists involved in #FeesMustFall and more recent campaigns against gender based violence, this study considers how student activists operate within and beyond the university to influence social change. Ultimately, I focus on how student activists conceptualize their role in creating a new social order and how that ideal translates into action. As student activists are often misunderstood, misrepresented or overlooked all together, this work fills a critical space and has important implications for our understanding of transformation in post-94 South Africa. Moreover, examining students and universities has critical significance to the larger field of democratization and international affairs as the parallels between the state and the university reveals compromised experiences of citizenship and the urgency in addressing democratic deficit at a global scale in all spheres of society.
Open Access
Common versus Differentiated Goals in the Face of Between-Country Inequities: Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Helsinki and Oslo Protocols on the Reduction of Sulfur Emissions
(University of Oregon, 2011-03-16T20:38:06Z) Forster, Hale
In this paper, I will explore whether, and how the Helsinki and the Oslo Protocols influenced emissions behavior, and whether the use of differentiated targets increased the effectiveness of the Oslo Protocol. The data I will present suggests that while the existence ofthe Oslo Protocol was probably more likely due to its use of differentiated goals, differentiated goals in general did not have an appreciable effect on emissions reductions behavior because of the way in which the goals were set, and because of other variables which had a much stronger effect on the outcome ofthe treaty. I will conclude that while the overall amount of sulfur emissions decreased during the period in which the treaties were in effect, the treaties caused a portion of these reductions in only a limited number of countries, and other, unrelated factors likely caused the bulk of emissions reductions.
Open Access
Deconstructing the Novel: The Critical Function of the Artist’s Book
(University of Oregon, 2014-02-12) Swartzlender, Kyle
This essay explores how the genre of the artist’s book, especially the appropriative manner of artist’s book, may be used as a method of literary criticism. The central argument of the paper is that the book artist, when using a preexisting work of writing to form their own artist’s book, has the potential to not only create an object of interest and beauty, but also a work of intimate and scathing criticism. To demonstrate this point, the paper analyzes three separate artist’s books: A Humument by Tom Phillips, Tree of Codes by Jonathan Saffran-Foer, and Legendary, Lexical, Loquacious Love by Eve Rhymer, each of which represents a different method by which the book artist is able formulate a critique of the original text they have altered.
Open Access
Ecuador’s Yasuní-ITT Initiative: A Case Study on International Climate Change Mitigation Narratives
(University of Oregon, 2014) Peck, Mairin
In 2007, Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa presented a novel climate change mitigation plan to the world: Ecuador would leave 846 million barrels of crude oil untouched beneath the Amazon if the global community reciprocated with a contribution of 3.6 billion dollars – half of the oil’s market value (McAvoy 27). The Yasuní-ITT Initiative vowed to preserve immense biodiversity, protect indigenous groups, and prevent the emission of 410 million tons of carbon dioxide (Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues). In 2013, Correa abandoned the initiative, lamenting the lack of international support, and approved oil drilling in the Yasuní (Correa, “Anuncio a la Nación” 3). This analysis utilized Correa’s speeches and government documents to identify the prevailing narratives employed in the initiative. Those narratives – common but unequal responsibility for climate change, a reconceptualization of value, and Ecuador as martyr and revolutionary – reflect a framework that simultaneously criticized and sought authority from the capitalist ideal. The failure of the Yasuní-ITT Initiative to capture the hearts and wallets of the world provides insight into the dominant global forces and perspectives on climate change mitigation policy.
Open Access
Enemy in the Forests: Narratives and Fires in the Pacific Northwest
(University of Oregon, 2016) Beard, Augustine Schuller
Contemporary historians, ecologists, and foresters agree that the policy of all-out suppression of forest fires was misled and that it led to the proliferation of highly flammable fuels contributing to larger, more frequent fires over time and up to today. While historians have examined the role of science, the state, and capitalism in fire suppression policies, there is a need to turn to the use of narrative and discourse to better understand the motivation behind fire suppression. Using the Pacific Northwest as a case study, this article draws on sources from fire prevention campaigns that developed out of World War II and the fear that forest fires would threaten the war effort. It shows how organizations such as Keep Oregon Green, Keep Washington Green, American Forest Products Industries Inc., and the Cooperative Forest Fire Prevention campaign made fire a foreign enemy through racialized iconography and associating fire prevention with national defense. Then it demonstrates that the timber and wood products industries were portrayed as the heroes in the fight against fire, normalizing the presence of capitalism in the forests. In the end, the fire-enemy narrative that saw fires as foreign and detrimental to forests was as much concerned with protecting timber capital as it was with extinguishing flames. The article contributes to a larger body of environmental history concerned with the ways in which discourse and narrative undergird policy and action.
Open Access
An Environmental Anthropology: The Effects of the Yacyretá Dam on Communities in Misiones, Argentina in Comparison to the Economic and Environmental Well-being of the Pilcomayo River Basin
(University of Oregon, 2012-06) Brogan, Megan
Do large dam projects create a “sustainable improvement of human welfare” for those directly affected by a dam or not (WCD 2000, 2)? This question is central to a major debate in international development. This thesis argues that although there may be benefits of leaving a river to run its natural course, the economic gains associated with the implementation of a large hydropower dam bring greater socioeconomic benefits to the community in question. Despite environmental changes and economic obstacles associated with the Yacyretá Dam, over time, the people that depend on the Paraná River have experienced a significant “sustainable improvement of human welfare” compared to the residents along the Pilcomayo River (WCD 2000, 2). The benefits of allowing a river to run freely are the forgone opportunity costs that would be associated with the construction of a dam, such as dam-related downstream and upstream flooding. However, economic benefits such as job growth and access to electricity have the potential to outweigh these environmental costs.
Open Access
The Ethics of Developing New Treatments: A Case tudy of the West African Ebola Outbreak and the Use of Randomized Control Trials
(University of Oregon, 2019-04-29) Nouboussi Nkenfack, Nelly M.
The 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic was the most devastating Ebola outbreak in history which killed over 10,000 people. During the outbreak, the WHO led efforts to design the best method to test the potential treatments quickly. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were proposed as the best method, although many experts opposed their use, deeming them inappropriate in the context of an epidemic. Despite the long debates, RCTs were used to test the available treatments. This paper presents the arguments given in support of and against RCTs, and analyzes a few RCTs conducted to answer the following question: “were RCTs effective at helping researchers fight the epidemic?” This paper argues that RCTs were not the best approach for two reasons: the principle of equipoise requires that the available treatments be provided to patients; if RCTs were to be used, they should have begun earlier to ensure the validity of the findings.
Open Access
Exotic Sexuality: Examining the Effect of Exotic Dancing on Women’s Sexuality
(University of Oregon, 2014) Bryan, Amber P.
Exotic dancing has been studied widely throughout the social sciences. Many scholars, such as Bernadette Barton and Katherine Frank, have argued that women become exotic dancers because they are suffering from repetition compulsion, causing them to follow intimacy scripts in both work and personal relationships. However, these arguments have not adequately addressed the issue of how working as an exotic dancer may affect the sexuality of the dancers or their sexual interest in other women. This rarely acknowledged issue was of particular importance throughout this study, examining and comparing the participatory sexual encounters before becoming a dancer to the participatory sexual encounters after becoming a dancer. Through ethnographic and empirical research, I have determined that working as an exotic dancer does cause a change in the dancers’ sexual interest in other women, as well as the level of sexual encounters the dancers are involved in their personal lives.
Open Access
Finding “Home” as a Palestinian-American: An Oral History Project of One Man’s Life Story
(University of Oregon, 2015-12) Le, Dawn
For immigrants and refugees, the concept of “home” is seldom a concrete definition, as the question of where “home” is - either in the country of origin or the new country, activates a tension in self-identity. For the Palestinian immigration and refugee experience, the longstanding Arab-Israeli Conflict produces an even more complex tension. The purpose of this study is to explore this tension in a Palestinian-American context. To do so, the research project focuses on an oral history project about Ibrahim Hamide, a restaurateur and human rights activist in Eugene for the past 40 years. The project involved taking participant observation notes prior to the series of interviews, conducting the interviews themselves, coding the interviews for common themes, and then analyzing the information with other works about the Palestinian/Arab American experience. The primary findings of this study indicate that in addition to the challenges of migration, Orientalism, a term by Edward Said that means the representation of the Middle East in a stereotyped and colonialist manner, has a major influence on the tension of self-identity. For Hamide, this tension leads him to find solace in a “universal identity,” where spirituality and the learning that takes place after enduring years of displacement and Orientalism (“ethic of cosmopolitan care”) are two key components. Rather than choosing between his two “homes,” he finds a sense of home in a universal realm. The significances of this research are that it sheds light onto post-trauma resilience and serves as documented piece of history for the Eugene community.
Open Access
Freedom from Guantánamo: How the Court Curtailed Prerogative Powers and Increased Civil Liberties for Detainees
(University of Oregon, 2013-04-29) Thane, Lindsay M.; Tichenor, Daniel J.
During the post 9/11 era the President made claims to expansive Commander-in-Chief Powers, yet the United States’ functioning as a constitutional democracy necessitates a sharing of power among all three branches. Executive claims to prerogative powers were scrutinized by the Court for disregarding the civil liberties of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, an unprecedented step which led to this inquiry of whether the Court’s post 9/11 decisions curtailed unilateral Executive policy making and safeguarded the civil liberties afforded to detainees at Guantánamo? This study analyzed the Court’s decisions in the terror cases and their effect on Executive policies, as well as Congress’ activeness in shaping detainee policy and placing checks on the Bush Administration’s prerogative powers. The Court’s decisions were effective in restraining Executive power, but they only somewhat protected and restored the detainees’ civil liberties. This study provides a framework which outlines how civil liberties can begin to be restored.
Open Access
From Voluntary to Monitored: The Development of the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna
(University of Oregon, 2017) Dorning, Sandra
The nature of high seas fisheries as a common pool resource necessitates international agreements to regulate fishing behavior to preserve commercial fish stocks. The Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT) is an international fisheries agreement that began as a voluntary agreement in 1985 between three major fishing nations: Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. In this paper, I assess changes in state fishing behavior as the CCSBT progressed through three different stages: the voluntary fishing agreement in 1985, the formalized CCSBT treaty implemented in 1994, and the subsequent addition of stricter monitoring provisions beginning in 2008. My counterfactual analysis shows that while the CCSBT’s specific goal for Southern Bluefin Tuna stock recovery has not yet been achieved, the treaty has effectively reduced Southern Bluefin Tuna catch below what member states would have caught otherwise, promising results that can inform the crafting of future international agreements.
Open Access
Fugitive Queens: Amakhosikazi and the Evolution of Gender and Power in KwaZulu-Natal (1816-1889)
(University of Oregon, 2015-12) Morrissey, Caellagh
Amakhosikazi (elite women) played a vital role within the social, economic, and political reality of the Zulu pre-colonial state. However, histories have largely categorized them as accessory to the lives of powerful men. Through close readings of oral traditions, travelogues, and government documentation, this paper discusses the spaces in which the amakhosikazi exhibited power, and tracks changes in the social position of queen mothers, as well as some members of related groups of elite women, from the early years of the Zulu chiefdom in the 1750s up until the 1887 annexation by Britain and their crucial intervention in royal matters in 1889. The amakhosikazi can be seen operating in a complex social space wherein individual women accessed power through association to political clans, biological and economic reproduction, manipulation, and spiritual influence. Women’s access to male power sources changed through both internal political shifts and external pressures, but generally increased in the first half of the 1800s, and the declined over time and with the fracturing of Zulu hegemony. As a result, elite women became marginalized in both Zulu and colonial political structures. This study raises questions about the character of women’s shared experiences, and those of other categories of women within the Zulu polity.
Open Access
Genocide Prevention in the 21st Century: the Central African Republic
(University of Oregon, 2015-06) Weil, Claire
The purpose of this research is to explore how genocide prevention has progressed in the 21st century with an in-depth examination of the crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR). The goal is to show that tools created to prompt prevention and reaction to genocide have been effective in particular in the CAR but that the frameworks through which the international community addresses genocide must be enlarged for true effectiveness in the long run. This has been done by examining the different international and African legal and institutional structures to handle situations devolving into genocide. The first phase of the project involves an analysis of the mechanisms to prevent genocide and how these played out in the CAR. Upon examination of the current situation, it becomes clear that contemporary instruments to prevent genocide have truly progressed but that they are somewhat inadequate for long term visions of peace, stability and security. The final phase involves the search for different ways of framing genocide prevention. Through showing that genocide prevention in the CAR has been effective, this research highlights the importance of continuously adapting our methods of prevention to create durable visions of peace.

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