Undergraduate Research

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Undergraduate Research

Jordan Larsen Receives 2016 Roland Lehr Phi Beta Kapa Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Research

Jordan Larsen, a junior history of science, technology and medicine major from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has been named the 2016 recipient of the Roland Lehr Phi Beta Kappa Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Research for an Honors research project she undertook in fall 2015 with Dr. Piers Hale, Professor of History of Science. The award includes at $200 stipend. In her project, she examined Arabella Buckley’s contribution to the late 19th-century evolutionary narrative. In Arabella Buckley’s Epic: Uniting the Evolutionary Epic & Spiritualism to Account for the Evolution of Morals from Mutualism, Jordan posited that although many of Charles Darwin’s contemporaries interpreted his theory of natural selection as evidence of competition ruling nature, science writer and popularizer Arabella Buckley was the first to characterize Darwin’s theory of the evolution of morals as mutualistic rather than materialistic, doing so through a unique consolidation of evolutionary epic and spiritualism. While scholars have stressed Buckley’s contribution to the evolutionary narrative as either driven by a maternal tradition or motivated by her spiritualistic beliefs, Jordan argued that the significance of her distinctive, mutualistic addition to the debate on the evolution of morals lies in her unifying theory of traducianism.

In addition to sharing the findings of her research at the department’s Undergraduate Research Evening last December, Jordan presented her research findings at the OU Undergraduate Research Day on April 2 as part of a panel with two other HSCI students, Brenna McCullough and Jon Self. For her presentation at Undergraduate Research Day, she received the Roland Lehr Phi Beta Kappa Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Research, which was formally presented to her at a reception at the Honors College to recognize all 2015-2016 Honors award recipients. The written portion of Jordan’s project was selected for publication in this year’s edition of The Honors Undergraduate Research Journal, for which she was also recognized at the Honors College reception. Jordan is the 2016 recipient of the History of Science Department Corliss E. and Esther C. Livesey Endowed Scholarship, and she has been elected to membership Phi Beta Kappa. Jordan hopes to attend medical school and become a physician.

Lauren Casonhua Receives Award at Rawley Conference

Photograph of Lauren Casonhua holding the Award at Rawley Conference

Lauren Casonhua (Junior in the College of Journalism and Mass Communication) presented a paper, “Defining the Medieval Self Through the Letters of Heloise and Abelard,” at the Eighth Annual James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities, “Public and Private Memory: Understanding Collective Past.” The conference was held on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus March 8 and 9. At the meeting Professor Catherine Medici-Thiemann, Co-Chair of the Rawley Conference, presented Lauren with the award for the best undergraduate-level paper presented at the conference, which also included a $100 honorarium. Lauren’s paper was written in the Presidential Dream Course, HSCI 3823, “Science in Medieval Culture” [Fall 2012], taught by Professor Steven J. Livesey.

The Charles Kingsley Correspondence Project

Photo of Abby McLean reading from the Charles Kingsley Correspondence

The Charles Kingsley Correspondence Project began in December 2011 under the direction of Dr. Piers J. Hale. The aim of the project is to accumulate, transcribe and publish a comprehensive correspondence of the nineteenth-century Anglican theologian, naturalist, novelist and science-popularizer Charles Kingsley (1819-1875).

Kingsley was a prominent and well-connected personality, and because he was outspoken on many of the most compelling issues of the day his correspondence give us a real insight into Victorian England. He not only received letters from scientists, Bishops, government ministers, lords, ladies and members of the Royal Household, but also from working men and women from around the country as well as from his own parishioners. The publication of Kingsley’s correspondence will be a valuable resource for professional historians as well as members of the public who have an interest in the Victorians.

Dr. Hale is currently assisted on this project by two students. Hillary McLain and Jared Curran. They are currently working to collect and catalogue existing letters. Hillary McLain is pictured with Charles Kingsley’s own copy of Darwin’s Origin of Species, which is currently on loan to the project by a private collector.

You can contact the Charles Kingsley Correspondence Project by email: phale@ou.edu
or by regular mail:

Charles Kingsley Correspondence Project
c/o: Dr. Piers J. Hale
Department of the History of Science
University of Oklahoma
PHSC. 601 Elm Avenue, Rm 610.
Norman, OK., 73019-3106
Tel: (405) 325-3392

“The Medieval Library of Saint-Bertin”

A black and white lithograph of the Abbaye Saint-Bertin

Faculty Supervisor: Professor Steven J. Livesey
Undergraduate Researcher: Kelsey Kolbe (Sophomore in International and Area Studies)

Founded in the mid-seventh century, the Abbaye de Sithiu, which subsequently took the name of Saint-Bertin, rapidly assumed an important position as a center of culture and influence as well as transmission of knowledge between the Continent and Anglo-Saxon Britain. Some indication of the scholastic culture of Saint-Bertin can be assessed by the surviving manuscripts of the monastic library. Like many religious houses, Saint-Bertin was suppressed in the French Revolution and its manuscripts dispersed, but fortunately the majority of them was distributed to two municipal libraries, Boulogne-sur-Mer (which received 81 manuscripts) and Saint-Omer (which received 549 manuscripts). Within these two collections, the manuscripts of Saint-Bertin are fairly easy to detect: most contain an inventory number in the upper-right corner of folio 1r, reflecting the last catalogue made of the monastic library in 1790 prior to dispersal. With funding from the Honors Research Assistance Program, Kelsey Kolbe is creating a database of information for the 630 extant manuscripts in the medieval library of Saint-Bertin. Ms. Kolbe is working through the catalogues of the Saint-Omer (1861) and Boulogne-sur-Mer (1872) collections, augmenting the information with material from the eighteenth-century inventory (Saint-Omer, Bibliothèque municipale MS 813), and entering data on the date and content of each manuscript as well as the physical description of the book. Once the database is complete, Ms. Kolbe and Professor Livesey will be able to analyze the content of the library by designing queries to check content of books acquired in successive centuries.