Ahmanson Undergraduate Research Scholarships

Undergraduate scholarships are offered every year to support student research at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. These are intended for UCLA upper-division students who enroll in a designated course (usually open to undergraduate students from any department). Program details, seminar topic, and application guidelines are announced each year.

Sessions are held at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, located off campus in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles. For directions and additional information, please see here.

The seminars are limited in class size, and support is provided for student transportation to and from the Clark Library. Undergraduate students who successfully complete the seminar are awarded a $1,000 scholarship.


2023–24 Ahmanson Undergraduate Scholarship Seminars
The Wilde Archive

Spring 2024, English 184.2

Thursday 1:00–3:50 p.m.

Directed by Distinguished Professor Joseph Bristow

Seminar description:

Using the extensive resources of the Oscar Wilde archive held at the Clark Library, this seminar focuses on different ways of researching topics relating to both the writer’s controversial life and his links with other artists and writers of the 1880s and 1890s. The seminar draws on published and unpublished materials to consider such issues as Wilde’s income, his successes on the London stage, the trials of 1895, his prison years, his links with publishers such as John Lane and Elkin Mathews, his relations with the audacious artist Aubrey Beardsley, and his early death from encephalomeningitis in Paris on November 30, 1900. This seminar will be of particular interest to undergraduates who wish to acquire advanced research skills in the humanities. Course requirements include two research papers.

How to Apply:

On the morning of Friday, February 16, Professor Bristow will conduct interviews through Zoom with selected students who have expressed interest in enrolling the seminar. Prospective students should submit the following documents to Professor Bristow: a letter explaining their reasons for wanting to enroll in the course, a printed PDF of their DAR, and a resume containing contact information. The documents should be submited to Professor Bristow in the UCLA English Department Main Office (149 Kaplan Hall) by 5:00pm PST, Friday, February 9, 2024.


Poverty in Early-Modern England: Experience, Identity, and Image

History 191, Fall 2023
Thursday 10:00 a.m.12:50 p.m.
Directed by Professor Tawny Paul

Seminar description:

In early-modern England, poverty became more than a description of economic experience. Now, “the poor” were a permanent social class. This seminar addresses the question of what it meant to be poor during a period of early capitalism. How were the poor thought about, treated, institutionalized, and regulated? For mobile laborers, what did it mean to be unsettled? Perhaps most importantly, how can we access the voices and experiences of people who left very little behind? This seminar is held at the Clark Library, where students will work with archival materials.


For questions about the seminars, please contact the Center at c1718cs@humnet.ucla.edu or 310-206-8552.

Image: Caricature of Wilde in The Entr’acte, courtesy of Clark Library collections