English graduate student, Carlee Migliorisi ’24, was recently awarded a travel grant from Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library to visit and conduct research for her graduate thesis at the Franklin Research Center. Migliorisi’s thesis focuses on the last 50 years of Asbury Park’s history, including the riots that took place in 1970 that induced a downward spiral for the city.
While a majority of her research material comes from conducting oral histories and researching media coverage from the last 60 years, one essential piece of her work resides at Duke University: former Asbury Park Mayor Joseph F. Mattice’s personal papers. Mattice was elected mayor of Asbury Park in 1969 and held office during the riots. The collection at the Rubenstein Library contains more than 90 letters, postcards, and telegrams sent to Mattice in response to the 1970 Asbury Park riots.
To prepare to write her thesis, Migliorisi has been making weekly trips to Asbury Park to interview individuals who experienced the riots and has connected with additional people who have a piece of history to contribute to her project. She has also referenced the holdings related to Asbury Park within the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music and the Guggenheim Memorial Library.
Migliorisi plans to travel to Duke this summer, completing a majority of her research in time for the Fall 2025 semester when she will be writing and defending her thesis.
Migliorisi was also recently the recipient of a Library Research Awards, sponsored by the Guggenheim Memorial Library, which annually recognizes Monmouth University undergraduate and graduate students who demonstrate exceptional skill and creativity in using library and information resources for research papers completed to fulfill a course requirement.
Her award-winning paper, “The Double-Edged Dream: Cutting Through the American Dream in Colson Whitehead’s ‘Harlem Shuffle,’ a Race and Gender Study,” analyzes the concept of the American Dream in “Harlem Shuffle,” examining how various characters embody different versions of the dream. She evaluates the novel’s place within the racially biased crime fiction genre and argues that Whitehead critiques the American Dream’s promise of equal attainability, highlighting racial and gender biases that render success elusive for his characters. The paper was written for a class taught by Susan Goulding, Ph.D., associate professor of English.
Migliorisi’s most recent work, “Navigating the Ties That Bind: Nostalgia, Bruce Springsteen, and the ‘Long Walk Home,’” examines Springsteen’s discography and will appear in the forthcoming anthology “Nostalgia, Song and the Quest for Home,” to be published by Bloomsbury in September 2025.