Collaborative discovery: Sociology in action

Working as Anne Taylor’s research assistants this year was a great way to get more involved with the Sociology department, as both of us are interested in attending graduate school or engaging in other professional opportunities related to sociology. Neither of us knew what qualitative sociological research looked like in practice, and our experience working for Taylor, an assistant professor of sociology at Mount Holyoke College, helped us gain an understanding of what our possible futures as sociological researchers could look like. Our research with Taylor examines collective imaginations of the “sacred nation” mediated through television guidebooks and lectures by popular travel writer Rick Steves. Taylor is currently working on a book about Steves, which studies travel as a resource for moral formation through the lens of cultural sociology. On a weekly basis, we assist Taylor with research for her book, as well as for a paper project — on which we are her coauthors — about depictions of nationalism in “Rick Steves’ Europe: A Symphonic Journey” — an orchestral event that combines music and history, and as Steves says, celebrates “nineteenth-century nationalism and romanticism.” 

We engaged in many different forms of qualitative research during the project, such as data collection, data analysis, and gathering academic articles and books to start formulating a literature review for the paper. For this, Eva reviewed literature on cultural sociology and nationalism, while Aleena gathered sources and wrote memos synthesizing scholarship on music from a cultural sociological perspective. Since audience interpretation of social performances is a key focus of Taylor’s sociological research, we also pulled data from Facebook, Reddit, YouTube and Instagram, and collaborated to create a list of data codes that reflected prominent themes in audience commentary about Rick Steves and his “Symphonic Journey” event. This data was incorporated into the final version of the paper that we cowrote with Taylor on the performance.

We also focused on professional development during the research assistant experience. This spring, we also had the opportunity to attend a meeting of the weekly workshop at the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology. We were invited to participate in a constructive seminar discussion about a work-in-progress paper, which we and the other participants read in advance, and had the opportunity to meet the Yale CCS fellows, including the director, Philip Smith. Recently, our paper, titled “Performing the Sacred Nation: Travel, Music, and Ambivalent Nationalisms in ‘Rick Steves’ Symphonic Journey,’” was accepted for presentation at the 2026 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, which we will attend with Taylor in New York City in August.

Being Taylor’s research assistants helped us with our own academic research. For instance, Eva presented her senior thesis, titled “Undoing the Pipeline: Analyzing Narratives of Deradicalization From Extremist Alt-Right Communities in the United States,” at the 2026 Mount Holyoke Senior Symposium on April 24. For Eva, the research assistant experience was integral to strengthening her writing skills and learning more about sociological research methods. To analyze her data, she used similar methods to those the research team implemented in the “Symphonic Journey” paper, creating her own set of data codes based on themes she identified within transcripts of deradicalization narratives pulled from social media. She hopes to continue this research in future academic endeavors after graduating from Mount Holyoke.

Over the summer, Aleena will continue her research with Taylor, supported by the Mount Holyoke Lynk program, focusing on a paper project with Taylor titled “The Aesthetics of Settler Secularism.” During this time, as a junior who is planning to write a senior thesis, Aleena will also conduct her own preliminary research on how the historical periods of settler colonization and Westward expansion have contributed to the deep story of the United States. She hopes to incorporate the skills and methods that she is continuously developing through her experience as a research assistant into this project.

Both of us have enjoyed our time working with Taylor, as students in the social sciences often don’t have a conceptualization of what social science research can look like at the undergraduate level. With Professor Taylor’s new presence in the department, we hope that future students will be able to utilize professionalization opportunities like these to prepare for careers in the social sciences.