I would like to begin by thanking Mr. Eric Maldoff, Mr. Gerry Maldoff, Mrs. Barbara Maldoff, and the late Mrs. Betty Maldoff for funding my ARIA research internship through the Charles and Betty Maldoff Family Arts Research Internship Award. This award allowed me to have a thoroughly fulfilling internship experience that will positively impact my future academic career.
This summer, I was fortunate to work on a project entitled 鈥淲hat Is a Political Imaginary?鈥� This project is centered on the political imaginary and social imaginary, which are widely used concepts in the humanities and social sciences. Despite their frequent employment, there is little consensus among scholars about the concept鈥檚 meaning. Supervised by Professor Yves Winter, I researched the theoretical and historical usage of the concept of imaginary. In doing so, I was tasked with conducting bibliographical research, creating a digital citation manager, and tracking conceptual shifts of the imaginary. Initially, I was interested in applying for an ARIA project to develop my research skills and spend my summer maintaining a connection with my academic interests. Through this project, I set out with several learning objectives in mind: to understand how different scholars use and define the imaginary, to clarify this conceptual ambiguity, to hone my personal abilities to do academic textual analysis, and to develop skills in writing literature reviews.
One highlight of this project was the relationships I was able to build with fellow ARIA award recipients. Throughout the summer, a group of my colleagues and I met once a week after completing our respective daily research tasks and held a political theory book club. Each week, we completed a pre-determined section of Utopia by Thomas More and held a meeting to share our thoughts and analyses. I am grateful that I got the opportunity to not only pursue my interests with others but also gain a sense of camaraderie during my ARIA project.
In virtue of the ambiguous concept of the imaginary and its pervasive, diverse use, my database searches often yielded an overwhelming amount of results. I would often be faced with over 5,000 hits per academic database, of which I searched several. This made it difficult to determine which sources were helpful and worth pursuing. I overcame this challenge by meeting with the liaison librarian for political science, who helped me refine my search terms and showed me how to set effective filters. After her help, I was able to successfully minimize unnecessary sources and effectively manage my results.
As I am preparing my law school applications for the Fall 2026 cycle, I am grateful for this research project. This ARIA project has greatly shaped my abilities to sift through large amounts of complex information and consolidate key points within it. I will carry these habits of critical thinking and working with abstract ideas that I have enhanced during my ARIA project into my future legal studies.
Once again, I am very grateful to Mr. Eric Maldoff, Mr. Gerry Maldoff, Mrs. Barbara Maldoff, and the late Mrs. Betty Maldoff for their generous award. The Charles and Betty Maldoff Family Arts Research Internship Award supported my internship, allowing me to pursue a research assistantship as opposed to a traditional student summer job. I am grateful for the opportunity to spend my summer doing what I love most and getting funding to do so. Lastly, I am thankful for Professor Winter鈥檚 mentorship and for giving me the chance to participate in this project.
