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Amara Bonilla Blends Literary and Historical Analysis to Receive 2025 Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award

Dec. 15, 2025
A person wearing a navy blue graduation cap and gown stands in front of a tan brick wall. They have long, wavy dark hair, round glasses, and are wearing a white honor stole and a black beaded necklace. They are looking at the camera with a calm, neutral expression

Amara Bonilla — an Arizona Online student who is graduating with a major in history and a GPA of 4.0 — is the recipient of the SBS Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award for fall 2025. The award recognizes a graduating senior in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences who has demonstrated academic achievement, originality and creativity in an independent undergraduate research project.

“Amara Bonilla took two of my courses over the past two years, and she was the standout student in both,” said Tyina Steptoe, associate professor in the Department of History. “She ended both semesters with the highest grade in the class. Bonilla not only produced excellent work, but she also developed a unique research agenda.”

For her senior thesis, Amara chose to examine the life and work of Shirley Jackson, a prolific essayist and novelist in the 1950s whom feminist Betty Friedan called a “housewife writer.” Amara crafted an essay that challenged that perspective and showed how Jackson’s work questioned the expectations of White, middle-class women after World War II. In her thesis, Amara included a unique historical element by studying Jackson’s work in the context of the social and political climate of Cold War America. 

"The result is a sophisticated blend of literary and historical analysis that also fuses the study of gender, politics, and popular culture," Steptoe said. 

Upon completion of the project, she was awarded the distinction for the best research paper from all sections of the Department of History’s senior capstone class during the entire academic year.

Outside academics, Amara works as a caregiver and previously held several instructional assistant roles in early childhood and K-12 educational environments.

“It is an honor to be a recipient of this award, and I could not have done it without the encouragement and support of my professors at U of A,” Amara said.

Of Amara’s work in his Communist China class, Fabio Lanza, professor in the Department of History, wrote, “Amara writes well, reads carefully, and is very analytical. It was quite simply a pleasure to read her work, which was a testament to a bright, inquisitive, and attentive mind.”

After graduation, Amara will continue working, fit in some travel, and pursue a graduate degree in history. 

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