Department: English
Professor Holly Dugan
Project Description: I am working on a short monograph, designed to provide an overview for advanced undergraduates of the fields of Shakespeare studies, performance history, and sensory studies. Sensory history is a burgeoning field: What was once thought too ephemeral, idiosyncratic, or subjective to historicize is now a rich and interesting field of historical inquiry about life in the past. This is especially true for early modern theatre history and Shakespeare studies. Recent work on the sensory worlds of early modern England, including its acoustic, olfactory, gustatory, haptic, and visual realms, offer new ways of engaging with Shakespeare’s plays and with early modern performance studies, particularly the overlap between the two, or what Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern have described as the “staged effects” of performance.
Malvolio’s yellow stockings; Fluellen’s Welsh accent; Juliet’s sweetly-scented roses; Katherine’s hunger for beef with hot mustard; Lady Macbeth’s overly-scrubbed hands: these sensuous details root his characters in their dramatic worlds and in our own. That interface—between the imagined sensory worlds of Shakespeare’s play and the material, sensory realm of audiences—is the subject of this book. In it, I explore how Shakespeare’s audiences might have perceived his plays by connecting early modern theories of sensation, the sensorium of London, and the space of theatres. Recent work in theatre history, sensory studies, and material culture offer a variety of new insights about how this interface may have worked in the past.
Duties: Working with me, the RA will generate relevant search terms, find published research, and synthesize critical arguments, compiling three annotated bibliographies (described below). The RA would meet with me bi-monthly to present the findings. If there is interest and if the RA has sufficient background in early modern literature and culture, there is an opportunity to engage in primary research (utilizing digital humanities databases such as EEBO TCP, artStor, Early Modern London Theatres, and the Map of Early Modern London.
Compile an annotated bibliography of recent works in the fields of sensory history, theater history, Renaissance history, and Shakespeare studies, organized around each of the five senses;
compile an annotated bibliography on scientific research on sensory modalities, including cross-modal perception, proprioception, extra-sensory perception, and synaesthesia;
and compile an annotated bibliography on recent research in Shakespeare Studies on audiences in early modern London.
Time Commitment/Credits: 4-6 hours weekly; 2 credits
To apply: Submit cover letter/resume to hdugan@gwu.edu
Category: Research Assistant Opportunity
Modern Art Worldwide [Research Assistantship]
Department: Fine Arts & Art History
Professor Bibiana Obler
Project Description:With Dr. Lori Cole (NYU), I am co-editing an anthology of primary sources, tentatively entitled Modern Art Worldwide 1900-50: A Reader. For about a century, the canon of modern art has been primarily European, with artists from other places slotted in here and there. This version of the canon has been under attack for quite a while, but it remains resilient. It is hard to imagine teaching a course on “modern art” without including Picasso, Matisse, and Mondrian, even if the temporal and geographical boundaries might otherwise be quite variable. This anthology does not aim to eliminate the canon but rather to participate in its ongoing revision and interrogation. We aim to provide a model for professors and students to think about modernism and the avant-garde as a global phenomenon. Instead of amending the canon by adding token figures representing the non-west, the female artist, and so on, we will bring attention to a history of cross-cultural conversations and active interchange between artists and thinkers.
I am looking for students to help us decide what to include in the anthology.
Duties: The research assistant/s will help research and compile a bibliography of primary and secondary sources—scanning articles that seem promising and writing short justifications for inclusion. The research project will ideally start in the summer and/or fall term. Much of the work can be accomplished independently, but students should be available for some in-person meetings. Candidates with a background in art history and language/s are especially welcome. Excellent research and organizational skills are essential.
Time Commitment/Credits: 4-6 hours per week; 2 credits (It is possible to work fewer or more hours for less or more credit)
To Apply: Submit Cover Letter/Resume to:bobler@gwu.edu
Research Assistantship: Byzantium in Paris
Department Art History
Professor Elizabeth Dospel Williams
Project Description
In 1931, the Musée des arts décoratifs in Paris coordinated one of the first international loan exhibitions on Byzantine art and culture. This exhibition featured over 750 objects borrowed from collections from North America and Europe. Over the course of its six-week run, thousands of people visited the galleries, qualifying the exhibition as an early international blockbuster. I am preparing a publication on this exhibition after conducting archival work in the US and France. I need help organizing photo documentation, which needs to be matched to written descriptions of objects published in the 1931 catalogue.
Duties
The research assistant will be provided with photographs of objects and a copy of the exhibition catalogue. The student will match (labelled) photographs with the catalogued objects. I will work with the research assistant to identify the current location of the objects, some of which have changed hands since the exhibition in 1931. I would like this list to be compiled in a shared Google Doc, which the assistant and I will edit together.
The research project will ideally start in the summer or fall term, but it is also possible to begin immediately as long as the candidate is available for weekly meetings on Monday mornings. Candidates with a background in art history, archaeology, history, French, and/or museum studies are welcome. Excellent organizational skills are essential. Basic French is required.
Time Commitment/Credits
1-3 hours per week (1 credit)
To Apply
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to williamse@doaks.org
The Boston University Twin Project [Research Assistantship]
Department: Psychology
Professor Jody Ganiban
Project Description: The Boston University Twin Project is a longitudinal study focusing on early childhood development, with the specific goal of examining temperament and parent-child interactions. Children and parents are recorded in laboratory tasks, and these interactions are later coded and analyzed.
Duties: The research assistant (looking for up to four) would be responsible for aiding in the coding of parent-child interaction videos with a team of coders, supervised by a coding manager. The team would meet weekly to discuss results and challenges, while most of the time commitment would be independent.
Time Commitment/Credits: 7-9 hours per week (average); 2 credits
To Apply: Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: ganiban@gwu.edu
Knot Theory: Editing and Programming [Research Assistantship]
Department: Mathematics
Professor Jozef Przytycki
Duties: Students under my supervision will be involved in tasks as below:
1. Student would assist in preparing/editing research paper for arXiv submission (and eventual publication). Student has to learn LaTeX and how to draw figures in xfig or other similar
program.
2. Many invariants of graphs and knots require pattern testing which require to wrote simple (or not that simple) programs. Also programs are needed to analyze simple algebraic structures related to knots.
I assume student would assist me 4-6 hours a week (2 credit) but I am flexible, so more, or less is possible.
Time commitment/Credits: 4-6 hours per week (average); 2 credits
Send Cover Letter/Resume to: przytyck@gwu.edu
The Rise of Unskilled Poor Mega-Cities in Developing Countries [Research Assistantship]
Department: Economics and International Affairs (ESIA)
Professor Remi Jedwab
The Project: I’m a specialist of urban issues in developing countries. In various papers, I have studied the causes and consequences of fast urbanization in Africa, focusing on demographic and economic factors. You can find my research here: http://home.gwu.edu/~jedwab/
I would like to keep working on this topic, and I hope that you are also interested in the topic, and the following project.
Urbanization and economic development have been coupled throughout history. However, post-war developing countries have urbanized in a fundamentally different manner than the historical experience of developed countries. The post-war period has witnessed the rise of poor mega-cities in developing nations. Kinshasa, Karachi, and Lagos comprise some of the largest agglomerations on the planet today. The prevalence of poor mega-cities today counters historical experience. In the 19th century, the largest agglomerations in the world were exclusively located in the most advanced economies (e.g. London, New York, and Paris). The mega-cities of today’s developing world are also unlike their historical counterparts in that their massive size does not indicate higher living standards. Developing countries today are urbanizing into poor mega-cities that appear unable to capitalize on the externalities of their rich-country peers.
Our aim in this project (my co-author is Dietrich Vollrath from the University of Houston) is to document the rise of these poor mega-cities, exhibit their structural features, and explain why they differ from the historical experience of urbanization and rapid economic growth. In particular, we will use various historical and contemporary sources to recreate the “skill” structure (education and occupation) of today’s 300 largest cities over the past 30-200 years (depending on data availability), in order to show that many cities of today’s developing world are not particularly skill-intensive (think of Dhaka, Kabul, Kinshasa, Nairobi, Ho Chi Minh City, etc., where most people have petty jobs in the service sector), unlike most cities of the Industrial Revolution era (in the UK, the US, France, etc.) and most cities of today’s “successful” developing countries (China, India). In other words, many mega-cities in poor countries only create jobs in low-skill sectors, which challenges the theory that cities necessarily act as centers of human capital accumulation and promote knowledge spillovers. Using economic theory and descriptive evidence, we will investigate how various demographic (e.g., high fertility rates) and economic (e.g., a specialization in natural resource exports) factors may explain the disconnect between urbanization, human capital accumulation and development.
The results of this research will develop the understanding of the factors underlying urbanization in developing countries and the factors affecting urbanization’s contribution to development outcomes. This research will be useful to economists, geographers and historians, as well as to organizations that advise governments on urban policy. Specifically, we will present some of these results at the 2016 World Bank-GWU Urbanization and Poverty Reduction Conference (Theme: “Sustainable Urbanization”) and in the 2016 African Economic Outlook (Theme: “Sustainable Cities)” published by the African Bank of Development (AfDB), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Tasks: You will be the one collecting the data for us. In particular, you will use various historical and contemporary sources to recreate the “skill” structure (education and occupation) of today’s 300 largest cities over the past 30-200 years (depending on data availability). (1) We will first identify the 300 largest cities that will comprise our sample. (2) You will use two main sources of data to recreate the skill structure of each city (using various decompositions of skills: based on education, based on technical occupations, etc.) for as many different years as possible as far back as 1800 when possible. The three main sources that we will use are:
- Demographic and Health Surveys Stat compiler http://www.statcompiler.com/ This compiler is very to use, so the skill structures of each city-year observation can easily be generated and then pasted into an excel file
- IPUMS International (Census Data): https://international.ipums.org/international/samples.shtml
This website also has a data compiler, so the skill structures can easily be generated and then pasted into an excel file - IPUMS Usa (Census Data for the US from 1850 to date) https://usa.ipums.org/usa/
This website also has a data compiler, so the skill structures can easily be generated and then pasted into an excel file
We will also various (historical or contemporary) population census reports available online to complete the data set.
Once we have the data for as many city-year observations, we will be able to analyze how the distribution of skills has evolved over time between the cities of today’s developed countries when they were still developing countries, and also how the distributions vary across space today between the successful and the unsuccessful developing countries. As such, in terms of tasks, you will mostly use these online stat compilers and excel, and help me find more sources available on the internet.
I also have a couple more projects on urbanization, natural resource exports, ethnic politics, Sub-Saharan Africa, etc. for which I may also sometimes need help. I would then also ask you to help me with some tasks, depending on the progress you’re making on the main project.
Time Commitment/ Credits: 7-9 hours per week; 3 credits
Contact Email: jedwab@gwu.edu
To Apply: I’m flexible, but I’m looking for either 7-9 hours or 4-6 hours a week (Students seeking three credit hours should expect to dedicate an average of six to nine hours a week. Students seeking two credit hours should expect four to six hours a week). I’m rather indifferent.
Please send me a CV with a short paragraph on why you’re interested in the project. It’s not the first time I supervise undergraduate students from the University Honors Program, and I have had in the past good students as well as bad students. I would like someone who is very committed (because it is costly to train someone), and that I would also mentor (I could write your letters of recommendation, eventually help you get admitted to a master’s program or get a job in development, etc.). This past year, one of my students from the Honors Program obtained a grant of $1500 from GWU thanks to me, whereas I found a short-term consultancy at the World Bank for another student. In other words, if you work well, I will help you as much as I can.
American Muslims: History, Culture, and Politics [Research Assistantship]
Department: Religion
Professor Irene Oh Koukios
The Project: The project involves both research on the topic of American Muslims, and translating that research into a multi-media online format. The research is an extension of a Summer Institute sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities that centers around two important questions: What impact has American culture had in shaping the religious identities of American Muslims and in the creation of a uniquely American Muslim identity? What impact have American Muslims had on the religious, cultural, and political life of the United States? We probe the experiences of individuals and communities, using their journeys to illustrate wider trends in the American Muslim population.
The goal of this project is to catalyze the study and teaching of the Muslim presence in the United States. We provide college faculty with ideas and tools for developing new courses or revising existing courses on Islam in America; and second, create a multimedia website offering extensive pedagogical resources for educators in the United States and abroad. The Institute itself draws upon the collaboration of 25 faculty from around the country, sponsored by the NEH, who have been selected to contribute to this exciting endeavor.
Tasks: The research assistant will prepare research and materials on the topic of American Muslims generated by the NEH Summer Institute for online presentation. This will involve collating, organizing, and fact-checking research developed by teams of faculty on topics ranging from Muslims and the American slave trade to Muslim Hip-Hop to Islamic feminism. The student will help to think about presenting the material online in the most effective way possible, and then help with the design of the online resource.
Time Commitment/ Credits: 4-6 hours per week; 3 credits
Contact Email: ireneoh@gwu.edu
To Apply: Please send me an email explaining why you are best suited for this research assistantship, and include both your resume and your GPA. Students with an interest in Islam, American history, teaching, and with experience in website creation are especially encouraged to apply.
Gender, War, and History: Women Fighters and Victims in World War II and the Holocaust [Research Assistantship]
Department of Sociology
Professor Daina Eglitis
The Project: “Gender, War, and History” is a historical and sociological project that focuses on women volunteers in the Red Army in World War II and women victims of Nazi Germany in the Holocaust. The project highlights the idea that women’s particular motivations and experiences have been obscured by larger, male-centered narratives of the past. For instance, few people know that women comprised about 8% of the Soviet Red Army and many of these women served on the fronts, engaged in violent and dangerous tasks. The work focuses on developing two women-centered case studies: (a) the motivations and experiences of Jewish and Latvian women volunteers of the Red Army’s Latvian division, who served on the Eastern Front ; (b) the particular experiences of women in camps and ghettos and at liberation and how those experiences have been represented historically.
Tasks: I am seeking a well-organized and meticulous RA who can work independently and is a good, clear writer. Language skills would be valuable: there are materials in Russian, Latvian, German, Yiddish, and Hebrew in this project. These skills are, however, less important than commitment, interest, and a strong work ethic. Ideally, the student will have some background knowledge of World War II and the Holocaust and a desire to learn more.
I am looking for someone who can do both on-line database research and spend time at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum library looking at materials. The student researcher will be responsible for gathering and checking historical data, researching specific names for case studies, gathering and summarizing secondary literature on topics related to the project, and looking into photo and video archives for related materials. Some more mundane tasks, such as preparation of bibliographies, will also be required.
The student is encouraged to use the opportunity to gather data that he/she can also use for a research or writing project.
Time Commitment/ Credits: 7-9 hours per week; varies
Contact Email: dainas@gwu.edu
To Apply: The applicant should send Professor Eglitis his/her resume and a cover letter describing briefly his/her academic achievements, interests, and ambitions, as well as why this project is of interest. Potential applicants are welcome to send emails with questions before making the decision to apply.
Gun Control, The Empirical Controversy [Research Assistantship]
Department: Sociology
Professor Robert J. Cottrol
The Project: For this I would want an undergraduate familiar with basic social science research techniques including the ability to do basic literature reviews. The student should also have a knowledge of elementary statistics such as might be gained from the undergraduate statistics course in sociology, political science or other social science disciplines. Student would review literature from a variety of disciplines, criminology, economics, sociology, public health and public policy, among others. Review would also include student’s critical examination of the literature and discussion of whether there are different perspectives on topic depending on discipline. An examination of the extent to which scholars in this field look at each others work, particularly across disciplines would be important
Tasks: Literature reviews summarizing and critiquing empirical studies on gun control.
Time Commitment/ Credits: 4-6 hours per week; 3 credits
Contact Email: bcottrol@law.gwu.edu
To Apply: Email your undergraduate year, major, career interests, and resume.
Regulatory Policy: Understanding the White House's Office for Regulatory Oversight [Research Assistantship]
Department: Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration
Professor Chris Carrigan
The Project: This research project is aimed at understanding the impact of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) on the regulatory review process. We are analyzing both how OIRA’s preferences shape regulatory outcomes and when the agency is most influential in impacting the content of government regulations submitted by agencies. We will see when OIRA has the biggest impacts on new regulations and when it acts more as a pass-through. The student will also gain a familiarity with the federal legislative and regulatory processes and learn about the available public sources for information on federal regulations and legislation.
Tasks: The student’s work would assist this project by examining the underlying legislation upon which the regulations are based. The student would use legislative data sources and do “content analysis” on the bills, such as word counts of sections of the legislation as part of an estimate for the complexity of the underlying legislation.
Time Commitment/ Credits: 4-6 hours per week; 1 credit
Contact Email: ccarrigan@email.gwu.edu
To Apply: email resume with relevant experience
*Looking for a summer assistance. 1-2 credits possible
