Department: English
Professor David Mitchell
Project Description: This course uses influential U.S. minority fictions in order to retrieve lost histories of those populations enslaved, endentured, and exterminated as part of the settlement of the United States after 1492. An Honors assistant would help to research, collect, collate, and prepare for digital viewing key images, maps, visual/audio artifacts to help bring these materials to life. This will also assist the professor in the ongoing preparations of a book on the topic. Minority communities represented include: African American, Asian American, Mayan/Aztec, Native American, Latino/a, disabled and queer lives.
Duties: Assistant will work closely with the instructor to prepare materials particular to the teaching and research of the following works throughout the fall: “The Conquest of New Spain”, “Ceremony” by Leslie Marmon Silko, “Hawaii” by James Michener, “China Men” by Maxine Hong Kingston, “An Atlas of the Difficult World” by Adrienne Rich. The materials gathered regarding the settlement of Hawaii and Asian diaspora to Hawaii in the 19th century will also serve to begin drawing together materials for a new study abroad class on Hawaii history, culture, and literature. Skill in preparing powerpoint, video projection, and presentations are necessary.
Time Commitment/Credits: 7-9 hours per week; 3 credits
To Apply: Submit resume and cover letter to dtmitchel@gwu.edu
Tag: Fall 2016 Research Assistantship
Children's Music and the Politicized Child [Research Assistantship]
Department: American Studies
Professor Gayle Wald
Project Description: I am beginning a project about children‘s music in the United States. I am interested in particular in music that addresses children as political subjects. Artists and/or albums that interest me include: Ella Jenkins (a black women who pioneered children‘s music and who is on the Smithsonian Folkways label); Johnny Cash (“The Johnny Cash Children‘s Album,” 1975); They Might Be Giants (“Here Comes Science,” 2009), “Free to Be You and Me” (feminist album from Ms. Foundation in 1972), and others.
Duties: I need help assembling a bibliography of what has been written on the subject; I also want someone who can help me assemble a list of potential albums and artists.
Time Commitment/Credits: 4-6 hours per week (average); 2 credit hours
To Apply: Submit Cover Letter/Resume to gwald@gwu.edu
Noah's Arkive [Research Assistantship]
Department: English
Professor Jeffrey Cohen
Project Description: I am working on a co-authored book on the long history of Noah’s ark type stories, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to movies like Snowpiercer. The book is about the intimacy of the Genesis Flood narrative to the stories we tell about climate change.
Duties: The research assistant would confer with me regularly to track down primary and secondary sources and create an annotated bibliogaphy. I can be flexible about the amount of time if a student would like to do this for more credit. Anyone interested in the environment or in the humanities would be good for this.
Time Commitment/Credits: 1-3 hours per week (average); 1 credit hour
To Apply: Submit Cover Letter/Resume to jjcohen@gwu.edu
Shakespeare and the Senses [Research Assistantship]
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
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
