Osmara Rodriguez Salguero

Osmara Rodriguez Salguero

History

Osmara was an outstanding History major who graduated in December 2022 and was a co‐winner of last year’s Gilbert L. Lycan History Award for Outstanding Junior. She also won a SURE Grant and a History Department Evans Johnson Research Grant. Her senior thesis, “Domesticity Throughout Nineteenth Century Etiquette and Social Class: Ideal vs. Reality,” offered a fluidly written and well-researched interpretation of etiquette manuals produced by women for women during the mid to late nineteenth century. She used compelling primary source analysis to explore the function of these manuals as teaching tools within and across class lines by focusing on the information these manuals provided and the varied advice that they gave women. Her senior thesis argued that these etiquette books created constricting standards by placing limitations on women’s futures through their rhetoric. Yet the manuals also gave women the ability to learn a new social language, thus offering opportunities for social mobility and increasing agency for some women. Professors have praised Osmara for possessing "an impressive intellectual range," for being "a true intellectual" and "skilled at connecting ideas across course topics and time periods" and for her "first-rate analytical mind."

Academic organizations: Phi Alpha Theta (the national History honor society) 

 Post-graduation plans: Law school