APPRENTICESHIP ArchiveS

This project inquiries into the post-urban renewal landscapes of the American Midwest, particularly the plazas, fountains, and parks created to rejuvenate urban riverfronts and city centers in the face of declining residential populations, deindustrialization, and the growing civil rights movement. I seek a research apprentice to obtain literature on relevant sites in the architectural and popular presses, to identify and locate living members of the projects’ design teams, and to locate and request archival material related to their history. Applicants should have an interest in architectural and urban history, have experience with library research, and maintain organized, detailed records.

Seeking a research assistant to aid in a project examining the cybersecurity policymaking process in South Korea by reading and summarizing materials written in Korean.

Responsibilities include:

·      Working with me to identify promising Korean-language documents.

·      Reading and summarizing those documents.

Knowledge of both Korean and English is required (nativeKorean and good English, or excellent Korean and good English). Because I do not read Korean, the applicant must be confident in their ability to summarize documents on their own. An interest in cybersecurity, politics, or public policy would be a plus; however, no previous knowledge of these subjects is required.

I am seeking a research apprentice to aid in the development of a book manuscript examining the use and misuse of quasi-democratic forms of communication and participation in Putin’s Russia. Responsibilities include:

- Preparation of a detailed annotated bibliography and literature reviews.

- Description of case studies. The book also develops secondary case studies of participation opportunities in around the world. The research apprentice will be expected to develop detailed summary and description of the form and function of these participation opportunities using primary and secondary material.

- Reading the manuscript for clarity. The apprentice will be expected to read the manuscript and offer suggestions for how to make it more engaging for the intended audience.

I seek a Research Apprentice to assist with preparing my book manuscript for publication. Racing the Great White Way examines theatre’s centrality as a key cultural negotiator of identity, shaping attitudes toward citizenship, race, sexuality, and urbanization during the early twentieth century.  Racing the Great White Way shows how theatre (and, by extension, cultural practice) was changed by EugeneO’Neill’s plays as they were “raced” by actors of color, moved to alternate venues, and altered through performance choices and dramaturgical pairings. Applicants need to be able to conduct research, have a keen editorial eye, be organized, and self-driven.  

A research apprentice is sought to assist in organizing archival materials associated with the Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement in Cincinnati, OH. Work responsibilities include documentation and analysis of existing materials of the People’s Movement related social justice issues in the city. Specifically, this involves archival research and coding documents, as well as preparing content for production of a digital spatial humanities project tied to the Humanities Lab “Unpacking the Archive.” A background in visual design, history, or GIS mapping is preferable, though not necessary. Ideally, the apprentice holds an interest in civil rights history and the morphology of the city.

I would like to find a research apprentice with good knowledge of Chinese and English to help me check and edit Chinese translations of my scholarly works on the Kirghiz (Central Asian Turkic) epic tradition, which a scholar in China has produced with the intention of publishing them in an academic venue. Knowledge of both Chinese and English (native Chinese and good English, or native English and excellent Chinese) is required; some interest in literature, history, oral tradition, or the minority nationalities of China is desired. The work will probably not be ready to start until late in the fall semester.

A research apprentice is sought to contribute to the development of two related research projects on public opinion, media, and democracy in the former Soviet Union. These projects examine the development of public opinion as it relates to misinformation and support for democracy in Russia and Uzbekistan. Responsibilities include:

1. Analysis of focus groups and interview transcripts. The research apprentice will be expected to read Russian and English language focus-groups and interview transcripts. They will then analyze the tone and content of these transcripts along with a variety of predetermined themes. Intermediate to advanced knowledge of written Russian is required.
2. Preparation of a detailed annotated bibliography. The apprentice will be expected to read and synthesize academic books and articles on the themes laid out in the focus groups and interviews.

The project examines a series of trials of Russian Orthodox believers that occurred between 1918 and 1923 in the Soviet Union.
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The research apprentice’s responsibilities include:

1. Read and summarize archival documents from Russian archives.
2. Read and summarize printed Russian-language sources such as legal journals
   from the time, as well as some secondary literature on the topic, in order to better
   understand the legal context of these trials.

Qualifications: The applicant must have an advanced knowledge of written Russian.

This research project seeks to convert visual art forms into tactile sculpture objects.

The successful apprentice will have some familiarity with digital imaging software (e.g. Adobe Photoshop), using a camera, and some experience researching; mentorship will be provided where there are gaps in skills etc. Research apprentices will:

1. assist researching other artists who work in a cross-sensory manner
2. assist with the processing of images using Adobe Photoshop techniques developed specifically for this project
3. using writing and photography, assist with documenting the project

These are all skills applicable to any creative practice.

I seek an undergraduate Research Apprentice to assist with dramaturgical, social media, and archival work for the Humanities Center Teaching Lab, Performing Social Justice.

 The research apprentice can contribute to the Teaching Lab in two ways:

1. spear-head dramaturgical work
2. create a social media plan and archive of the performance

As dramaturg, the student will assist those in the Teaching Lab to devise an original performance piece. The apprentice will research the topic, educate the cast and audience about the topic, make textual and staging suggestions, supervise script revisions and provide editorial assistance, help facilitate conversations between the cast and community, and stage manage rehearsals.  S/he will also create a social media platform to document the rehearsal project, market the project, and archive the work of the Teaching Lab.  

The ideal candidate will have an interest in social justice, performance/theatre, and research.  S/he needs to be able to conduct research, write clearly and compellingly, collaborate with others, and be organized and self-driven.

Performing Social Justice Humanities Teaching Lab in Spring 2020 will culminate in a short collaborative performance. This research assistant will contribute to this performance in two ways:

1. serve as stage manager
2. provide design expertise

As stage manager, the assistant will reserve rehearsal space, take notes on blocking, and maintain the prompt book. S/he will also become the designer, creating a visual treatment, such as a projection design as well as other supporting elements. During the final performance, the stage manager/designer will call the show and co-ordinate various elements with the help of the ensemble. The ideal candidate should have an interest in social justice, performance/theatre, design and/or management. S/he needs to be able to communicate clearly, be organized and self-driven, and have familiarity with relevant technology.  An interest in exploring visual concepts and team work are a must. Some experience in technical theatre is helpful.

The apprentice will assist with the gathering, cataloguing, and analyzing information regarding specific letters. They will track the addressee and available data regarding the most important personalities (the Popes, the Queen of Naples, other ecclesiastic and imperial dignitaries etc.) mentioned in the documents. S/he will draft short index cards with brief explanatory annotations that, once revised, will be included in the Story Map Cascade. The apprentice will discuss with Professor Righi and the other student the various cases s/he discovers along the way. Additionally, the apprentice will be asked to proofread all the content that will be published in the digital project.  Advanced knowledge of Italian is required.

This project explores the historical roots of the American “road trip” genre, and that of American journeys more broadly. I am seeking an undergraduate research assistant to join me on a bibliographic adventure investigating this genre: to compile, summarize, and categorize all manners of road-trip journeys throughout American history. Applicants should have a general interests in U.S. history, American studies, and/or English, and should feel comfortable reading and analyzing fiction, memoirs, and journals. Ideal candidates will have a passion for exploratory reading and following references to forgotten texts.  

A research apprentice is sought to conduct research to attempt to trace survivors from Pompeii and Herculaneum from the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. This project involves using Latin inscriptions to search for Pompeian or Herculanean names in other communities in the post-eruption period. Responsibilities include:

1. Working with me to identify the most-likely names and then searching the online Latin inscription databases by Roman family names known from Pompeii and Herculaneum for possible survivors. Careful record keeping and attention to detail is essential.
2. Meeting regularly, we will review results and make any necessary adjustments in the process. The final product of the research will be a database of survivors.
   

This research focuses on identity politics and sociocultural relations in Asheville, North Carolina. A mid-size Appalachian town, Asheville has undergone rapid change in recent decades as amenity migrants seeking retirement or vacation homes and Latino migrants seeking work settle in a city with an already complicated history of race and ethnic relations between blacks, whites, and indigenous peoples. Asheville navigates this evolving socio-cultural terrain just as the city confronts the vagaries of a shifting global economy that rewards some economic sectors and disadvantages others.  

An undergraduate student interested in migration, identity politics, and narratives of place and community is sought to assist with online searches of three local newspapers. Specific foci will include: Latino immigration into the New South, and its implications for race and ethnic relations in Asheville, the politics of queer identities in a southern Appalachian town, narratives of place-making and community belonging, and the gentrifying effects of a growing population of“lifestyle migrants”settling in Asheville.

The candidate should possess strong organizational and information literacy skills: the ability to identify information needs, search for and retrieve appropriate sources, evaluate information critically, synthesize information gained, and present ideas clearly.

The goal of this project is to survey Chinese-language research on the Kirghiz (Central Asian Turkic) epic tradition. I have a general sense of the field in China, but lack the linguistic skills necessary to form a detailed view of the scholarship. The apprentice or apprentices will help me survey the literature, then work on their own to produce English translations and/or summaries of key works. These will typically be articles in Chinese academic journals and monographs published by Chinese presses. Other tasks may arise as the work progresses. Knowledge of both Chinese and English (native Chinese and good English, or native English and excellent Chinese) is required; some interest in literature, history, oral tradition, or the minority nationalities of China is desired.

A research apprentice is sought for an ongoing project on the discursive construction of the migration imaginary in Spain (1880-2015). I have a collection of different materials (newspaper articles, personal narratives, pictures, creative writing) that need to be uploaded to NVivo, a software used to store and organize data from different audiovisual and textual sources for qualitative and mixed-methods analysis. My goal during the next year is to transfer my data to the program and conduct an analysis of personal narratives and experiences of migration. The research apprentice should have an advanced level of Spanish, some course work on linguistics, and the ability to pay attention to details and make connections. In the process of this apprenticeship, the student will:

1) Transfer data into the NVivo software.

2) learn to apply a mix-methods approach to the analysis of discourse.

3) Take reflective notes on the ongoing categorization and analysis of the data, and the research process itself.

An undergraduate research apprentice is sought to help frame a textbook overview of Germany’s Weimar Republic (1918-1933, ending with the Nazi regime) for an audience of undergraduate students who may have little or no familiarity with this period in German history.  The Research Apprentice would serve as a focus group for my manuscript and need not have any familiarity with German history at all, since most of the book’s ultimate readership will not, either.  

 Above all, the apprentice must be someone with an eye for clear writing and a willingness to point out its opposite.  The Research Apprentice would assist with the following: 

1) Reading the manuscript for clarity and offering suggestions for making it more engaging to novice audiences as well as more comprehensive, within the strict word limit set by the publisher

2) Assisting in the completion of the“Chronology” and the “Glossary,” which would entail highlighting important dates, names, events, pieces of legislation, regions, and terms that appear in the manuscript and might. warrant inclusion in these separate sections.

3) Advising on the selection and editing of the“Primary Documents” section, which would entail reading through a number of possibilities that I have compiled and ranking them by relevance and interest.

4) Reading my translations of primary documents for clarity.

The project involves the writing a biography of Patriarch Tikhon, who became head of the Russian Orthodox Church at the same time that the Bolsheviks seized power. The Bolsheviks were militant atheists who sought to turn Russia into a purely secular society by both propaganda and persecution. An apprentice is sought who will examine a concrete body of sources primarily in English, produced by Americans who were in Russia during the Revolution. These Americans were representatives of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) who were sympathetic to and developed close relations with the Russian Orthodox Church. They were in Russia in 1917-1918 during the Revolution, and some returned again as part of the American famine relief to the Soviet Union in 1922. They paid close attention to the Soviet persecution of the Church. These individuals, such as Donald Lowrie and Ethan Colton, wrote reports back to the central YMCA on what they observed of the situation in Russia and the Soviet Union. Moreover, they also wrote diaries and personal letters and, later, memoir accounts of their experiences. These materials, which remain unpublished, are held in the Kautz Family YMCA Archives of the University of Minnesota Libraries. I was able to spend several days researching in this archive, and during that time made over 800 digital photographs. The majority of these materials are in English, a few are in Russian; most are typed, some were printed for internal circulation, a few are hand-written. The apprentice will be one of the first persons to read these documents and gain access to a valuable but as yet virtually unknown witness to one of the twentieth century’s most important events.

The research assistant’s main task will be to read through these materials and provide summaries of their contents, paying particular attention to the topics and people that are most directly relevant for my research project. Knowledge of the Russian language is preferable. Students with an interest in Russian studies, religion and/or history will benefit from this project by learning how to do original research with primary sources consisting of archival documents.

Pop Islam: American Muslims andPopular Media is a book project which explores recent positive representations of Muslims inAmerican media. Historically, Muslims and Islam have been framed as threats toWestern societies; Pop Islam considers how the representation of Muslims in media such as the Ms. Marvel comic book series, women’s popular magazines, and sports reporting challenges that framing.

An ideal research apprentice would be interested in questions of representation and have enthusiasm for media studies, though would not necessarily need experience in producing academic research. An apprentice would help gather background research for several chapters, monitor news reporting about Islam and/orMuslims, and help choose images and figures to illustrate important points in chapters. As I hope at least one of the chapters will become a conference presentation, an undergraduate apprentice who contributes to a chapter accepted or presentation will be listed as a co-author in recognition of their work.

This project involves collaboration with a visiting artist, Tiffany Carbonneau, to produce an original public artwork on campus in May 2019. Carbonneau’s practice employs projection mapping, a technology that projects a clear image onto an irregular surface, to illuminate and animate architectural facades with material gleaned from local histories and archives. The Research Apprentice will conduct research in relevant university archives and assist in the projection of the work at the upcoming ARTECHA festival on campus in May and engage viewers and passersby during the run. The Research Apprentice should be familiar with archival research, interested in contemporary or public art as well as Miami and Oxford history, and available to help with the projectors and equipment for the completed artwork during the festival on May 5-7. The Research Apprentice does not need to have specific knowledge in studio art or media production, but an interest in media art and a willingness to learn new programs and adapt as the project progresses would be appreciated.

A research apprentice is sought to aid in the development of a book manuscript entitled Russia on the Verge of Politics: Public Opinion during the Putin Era. This book examines the development of public opinion during the first decade of Putinism: from Vladimir Putin’s initial ascendancy to power in 2000 through the tumultuous election season and subsequent protests in 2011-2012. The book manuscript will be based on original focus group and survey data collected by one of the authors. Responsibilities include:

 1) Analysis of focus groups transcripts. The research apprentice will be expected to readRussian-language focus-group transcripts and analyze their tone and content along a variety of themes laid out by the author. Intermediate to advanced knowledge of written Russian is required.

2) Preparation of a detailed annotated bibliography. The book examines public opinion along a variety of themes. The research apprentice will be expected to read and synthesize academic books and articles on these themes.

Seeking a research apprentice to collaborate in the development of an annotated bibliography on religious dress bans targeting Muslim girls and women in Western Europe. The research apprentice selected will read and annotate a list of recent secondary sources in English and will search scholarly databases for newspaper articles and government documents to add to the bibliography.

The assistant selected will know the difference between primary and secondary sources, will be able to identify and summarize key ideas clearly, will have strong reading comprehension of primary source materials (in English) and interdisciplinary secondary sources, and will be familiar with standard databases in relevant fields such as the ATLA religion database.

The project is an ongoing monograph, Masquerade Currencies: Performing Space, History and Money in a Nigerian Metropolis. The book is an effort to examine the broad masquerade culture by exploring the six prominent masquerade societies currently thriving in Calabar, an emerging city located in southeast Nigeria.

This project seeks an undergraduate research student to help with 1) qualitative analysis of extensive field notes, interviews, and recorded songs sung during performances as well as digitalizing these materials, and 2) analysis and editing of a portion of HD video footage of masquerade events, rituals and ceremonies for the production of digital scholarship for teaching purposes as well as creating online, multi-media videos to accompany the monograph. Students interested in Art History, Anthropology, and for the research concerning digital scholarship, those with knowledge of Adobe Premier Pro and video editing, are encouraged to apply.

This apprenticeship will contribute to a book to be published by Oxford University Press in the series Classical Presences.  The book, Cothurnus in the Snow: Russian Mythological Tragedy and the Emergence of the Lyric Consciousness, explores how Russian writers’ use of Greco-Roman mythological tragedy contributed to the creation and development of Russian lyric voice and poetic vernacular. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that as Russian national literature started to take shape, the Russian mythological tragedy served not as an imitative tool to provide the new literary canon with legitimacy but also to form and develop the articulated lyric consciousness, a phenomenon in which Russian literary output has few rivals.

Some knowledge of Russian is required for this apprenticeship.  The apprentice will:

1. Help translate significant parts of several mythological tragedies from Russian to English (none of this works have been translated into English previously). The fluent knowledge of Russian is desirable but not necessary since I will do the translation myself and then ask the student to proofread the English translation.

2. Prepare detailed annotated bibliography of the books and articles written on the subject both in Russian (if possible) and English.

3. Locate all the primary sources for the project and find any existing English translations.

Students with interests in literature and cultural studies will benefit from this apprenticeship by developing and honing their research skills and learning how to conduct serious research both online and in the library.  

The project is the revision of my dissertation, “Tough on Dope: Crime and Politics in California’s Drug Wars,” into a book manuscript. The book covers the state-level drug wars from the turn of the 1900s to 1968, with an emphasis on the immediate postwar period. I seek an apprentice with excellent Spanish reading fluency and, ideally, an interest in modern U.S. history. The apprentice will read the relevant portions of my manuscript (about 40 pages) and the entire Spanish-language book Drogas sin Fronteras, noting parts of the book that are germane to my timeline and argument. Using this knowledge, the apprentice will compile a list of relevant State Department records for me to look at during a planned research trip to the National Archive at College Park, Md., in late December. If this trip nets Spanish-language sources and the apprentice has more time, I will also request translation of these sources. In addition, time permitting, I have a handful of letters written in Spanish by Mexican-American residents of Los Angeles in the 1950s, which I would like the apprentice to read and briefly explain.

I am seeking a research apprentice to help me manage the Environmental Archaeology Laboratory where I conduct research on ancient plant remains from the Neo-Assyrian empire (ca. 900 – 600 BCE) in the ancient Near East.  In this lab (UPH 056) I analyze the carbonized remains of seeds that have been recovered from several different excavations throughout the Middle East (Turkey, Israel, and Iraqi Kurdistan).  As laboratory manager, the research apprentice will assist me in managing and organizing this archaeobotanical collection.  Responsibilities include:

-Cataloging and curating the archaeobotanical collection.

-Keeping track of laboratory supplies and placing orders as need.

-Assisting with the maintenance of lab equipment.

Prior experience is not required (training will be provided), but a scientific background is helpful, and attention to detail is a must.  This apprenticeship is ideal for a student interested in humanities-based laboratory research, as well a student interested in the study of ancient history or the environment. 

I am currently working on a book-length project titled Neoliberal Sexuality: Limit, Ubiquitous Computing and Neoliberal Reason. This study offers a broadly conceived gender-based critique of recent neoliberal transformations in the political, symbolic, and social domains by looking at the relationship between digital technology and sexuality. Presently, I am working on a chapter, titled “Quantifying the Captive Self,” that discusses the meanings and emotions that self-tracking media users attach to their lived-experience, and the ways in which they represent them through online narratives. 

Under my guidance, the apprentice will assist with the gathering, cataloguing and analyzing of narratives by locative media users that deal with digital representation of selfhood. In particular, the apprentice will: 

1. search online narratives

2. archive them in usable files with brief explanatory annotations so that I will later carry out close readings of the most significant ones

3. discuss with me the various cases the apprentice discovers along the way.

My current research investigates the history of the body in a time period (1350-1650) that witnessed a shift, in some sectors of care and cultural production, from a body conceptualized through the four humors to a body conceptualized through solid structures and (eventually mechanical) parts. In the domain of medicine, for example, the seventeenth-century medical marketplace featured not only potions and elixirs that claimed to purge the body of malevolent humors but also wigs and other prostheses that, quite literally, added parts to the body. My research explores the actors involved in these conceptual and practical shifts: philosophers, anatomists, surgeons, barbers, artists or artisans (instrument makers, wig makers, etc), patients (where possible), and the marketplace. Why did people begin to accept, in a more fundamental sense, that the body was solid rather than fluid, built of parts rather than coursing humors? The research apprentice for this project will focus on creating a visual archive for surgical instruments, on reading and annotating a range of neoplatonic texts about love (including a number authored by women), and on developing an understanding of the history of prosthetics. In addition to taking an interest in the early history of the body and the interdisciplinary study of the history of medicine, the apprentice should be organized and capable of systematically searching databases and collecting materials, and a careful reader. Under Professor Klestinec's guidance, the apprentice will be asked to do some of the following:

1. Instruments: Search online databases and digitized collections of rare books for illustrations of instruments and build an annotated bibliography of these sources (especially important here is to identify the instruments that were designed for specific procedures)

2. The Body in Literature: Read and annotate a list of sources on neoplatonic love, including works by Plato, Pico della Mirandola, Castiglione, and Italian women writers in this tradition (all are available in translation).

3. The Mechanical Body: Compile a bibliography of images and texts on prosthetics, emphasizing the period of 1350-1650. Especially curious are mechanical hands that were illustrated in books and made to fit soldiers returning from war, who had lost limbs.

*From this experience, the apprentice will gain an understanding of how to constitute an archive, how to pursue an investigation of a topic, how to integrate visual and textual sources, and how to do the nuts and bolts of research (collecting, organizing, storing, annotating, and analyzing).

This is a study of East German cinema during the Cold War in the context of its various exchanges with other cinematic traditions. The dialog between film and genre traditions; motion picture production studios; and politicians and cultural mediators who exchanged films across the Iron Curtain are at the center of my argument. The monograph relies to a large extent on new and unpublished archival research. For the project, I would like to work with an undergraduate research assistant who has advanced or excellent reading skills in German, as well as very good writing skills in English. I will offer guidance in the following tasks:

• Translating quotes and short texts from German into English;
• Proof-reading of already completed translations;
• Compiling of a bibliography and a list of relevant film co-productions and archival sources.

This new research project explores heritage claims of Indigenous ancestry from the perspective of heritage tourism.  I take as a starting point the argument that Indigenous is a legal and political designation and is a fruitful analytical category describing culturally distinct groups impacted by colonialism.  I am interested in sites of heritage tourism where claims of a particular ancestry are the impulse driving what Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett refers to as a “mode of cultural production in the present that has recourse to the past.” I am interested in studying this phenomenon at the local, national, and global levels and from the tourist and institutional perspectives. 

I seek an undergraduate researcher to create an annotated bibliography of resources on the topic of heritage tourism.  The apprentice will assist with bibliographic research, compiling a literature review and providing brief annotation of the sources broadly in terms of tourism and specifically in the area of heritage tourism. The candidate should possess basic research skills; have the ability to find and evaluate relevant academic sources; be detail-oriented; have strong organizational skills; and be able to identify and articulate key ideas/points. Candidates for this apprenticeship should send a resume and a paragraph of introduction that addresses their interest in this position to Professor Garner.

Materializing the Bible is a one-of-a-kind project of public digital scholarship. Launched in July 2015, the site curates an interactive catalogue of attractions throughout the world that transform the written words of scripture into physical, experiential environments. It is intended for both popular audiences and fellow scholars in anthropology, religious studies, and related disciplines that examine issues of materiality, the senses, globalization, entertainment, tourism, and pilgrimage. The undergraduate apprentice who is selected will help design and implement at least one new component for the site. Possible additions include:

• Creating virtual tours of attractions using photography and video;
• Creating an interactive timeline to illustrate when attractions opened to the public;

These are examples; part of the initial work will be to propose further possibilities by researching other examples of digital scholarship. Students with particular interests in the study of religion, as well as students with general interests in public scholarship, are welcome to apply!

I am seeking one or two research apprentices to help prepare an innovative textbook that presents the religious history of the United States through the thematic lens of empire. My immediate goal is to complete, by the end of spring 2017, a book proposal and two sample chapters to submit to publishers.

The research apprentice(s) will

• pursue leads for historical documents to excerpt for inclusion in the textbook.
• compile historical data for timelines and maps.
• compile comparative data on leading textbooks in U.S. history and U.S. religious history.
• offer feedback about the readability of the sample chapters.

This apprenticeship would be ideal for a student of history, American studies, or international studies who wants to place U.S. history in global contexts. Experience with desktop publishing (Microsoft Publisher, Adobe Photoshop, etc.) would be a plus, as would an interest in cartography.

This project aims to identify and create a provisional inventory of parish documents in the area of Belém do Pará, Brazil. These parishes hold baptismal, marriage, and marriage related documents, and other kinds of ecclesiastical sources, particularly from the end of the 18th to the 19th century and are extremely important for the history of colonial Brazil, specifically the history of the old state of Grão-Pará, which constituted one of the most important regions of the Portuguese Empire during the 18th century.

The inventory will comprise information from at least two books, the book of slaves and the book of deaths.  It will contain the name, date, place of birth, race and civil state whenever provided for each entry of these books – an average of three entries per page on a total of 283pp. I expect to use these records in order to study the specific role of indigenous women in the family, be it through numbers of mixed Portuguese-Indigenous marriages, the ratio of Portuguese husbands/wives vs indigenous husbands/wives and the concomitant alteration of social and political practices that accompanied the phenomenon as time went by.  This inventory will be shared with the British Library and made available to all researchers.

The research apprentice will help create the inventory both in English and Portuguese. He or she should speak Portuguese and should have an interest in Brazilian history as well as an excellent academic record. 

The goal of the project is a textbook on religion and human sexuality. The textbook will focus on sexual practices within religious communities and among mythic figures. Each of the book's seven chapters will begin with a case study grounded in a sacred text or interpretive writing. Under Professor Wilson's guidance, the apprentice will gather English translations of seven primary sources (e.g., sacred texts). Using a sourcebook of primary sources (The History of Sexuality Sourcebook[Broadview, 2006]) and standard databases in religious studies, the apprentice will help build a bibliography of secondary source literature related to the translation case studies. If the apprentice has web design and content management skills, s/he will be asked to build a database that Professor Wilson and her co-authors can access. This will help us to keep track of source materials and share our interpretations of these materials.  The apprentice must be able to do bibliographical research (including finding primary source material) and will ideally have web design and content management skills.

The end goal of this project is to complete and publish a scholarly monograph tentatively entitled Russia’s Italy: Inspired by the Sun. Some of the most quintessentially Russian works of literature were in fact written on the Italian soil.  This book project examines the reasons for this unusual phenomenon, focusing on the relationship of famous Russian intellectuals with Italy and the role of that relationship in inspiring such famous literary works as, for example, Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls.  The research apprentice for this project will need advanced reading comprehension of Russian and knowledge of Russian history and culture, as well as excellent writing skills in English. Under Professor Torlone’s guidance, the apprentice will do some of the following:

1. Translate parts of the correspondence of Nikolai Gogol, Vyacheslav Ivanov and Maxim Gorky into English.

2. Prepare an annotated bibliography of the books and articles written on the subject both in Russian and English.

3. Write some explanatory notes to be included in the endnotes.

4. Make a list of archival sources to be used in the research

5. Proofread.

The City Aroused is a book project that maps out the intersections of urban redevelopment and sexual subjectivity in San Francisco in the 1950s and 1960s. The transformation of San Francisco from an industrial port city into the urban core of an expanding metropolitan region disrupted and dispersed established patterns of queer sociability. Rather than simply undoing or relocating queer life, however, urban redevelopment aroused a cultural response that included new forms of social organizing around sexual identity, new vocabularies for understanding sexual difference, and new topologies of sexual subjectivity. Working with planning documents, city directories, real estate transaction records, and gay newspapers, the undergraduate research apprentice will collaborate with faculty to produce a series of maps suitable for publication using Excel spreadsheets, ArcGIS, and image files. The apprentice will gain research skills that include how best to abstract locational information from primary sources, how to interpret the social and political significance of past places through contemporary popular media, and how to best represent spatial information cartographically to support evidence-based claims in scholarly writing. Ideally applicants will have experience with ArcGis and/or graphic design. Must be detail oriented and willing to develop and manage databases with minimal errors.

The Ophelia Studies Reader is an exciting book anthology/textbook project, bringing together 400 years of literary and visual media resources into a single volume focused on an enduring figure of unparalleled literary-cultural fame. From her origins in the Danish chronicle sources reshaped by Shakespeare to her still-flourishing afterlife in 2015, Ophelia’s character has never been a more vibrant cultural nexus, a unique subject of fascination for high-art, academic, and popular culture. More tellingly, Ophelia has become a key site for negotiating cultural identity, gender roles, and female agency, and she is perhaps the most recognizable character in Western culture to translate transnationally, from Cuba to China to Iran. She has also been a major source of inspiration for centuries of creative artists and scholars exploring constructs of feminism and gender roles in Shakespeare studies and the world of theater. The volume will include literary criticism, a gallery of artworks on Ophelia, excerpts from novels, plays and other works, and a comprehensive bibliography. 

Research apprentices will assist with the researching and gathering of literary and visual/audio materials. Ideally, apprentices will have an interest in at least one of the following areas—Shakespeare studies, art history and/or the visual arts, creative “rewritings” of literary characters—and enjoy independently tracking down new images and material for Dr. Peterson to review. Apprentices should also be comfortable working across a range of historical periods that reflect the 400 years of Ophelia’s reception as a cultural and literary subject. We will cover two key areas:

1.  Literary material: Focused on gathering a range of journal articles, book chapters, creative reworkings, etc., using MLA and other library databases; copying of longer book excerpts and creating PDFs; reading some longer/creative works and occasionally writing brief summaries.

2.  Visual material: The “Gallery” of artworks will involve researching images, investigating where artworks are held/where permissions might be obtained (if necessary, calling museum curators, contacting private collections, etc.), and cataloguing images and placing clearly titled JPEGs on a thumb drive. Apprentices will also gather a history of film clips and musical tracks for a “webography” of online material/placing on DVD.

Apprentices should be detail-oriented, with good writing skills; familiar with doing deep bibliographic searches using a full range of Miami Libraries materials and databases, especially the MLA International Bibliography; and comfortable creating accurate, detailed MLA-style bibliographies/works cited for all materials, some with brief annotations.

The end goal for this project is to complete a book-length study of disability in Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur (1485). Using contemporary and medieval studies of disability in addition to studies of Malory’s depictions of violence and injury, this project seeks to bring the disability perspective to one of the most studied Arthurian texts in order to better contextualize the role of wounding and healing in medieval conceptions of knighthood. The student apprentice selected for this project will gather secondary research on Malory’s text, medieval knighthood, and medieval disability. In addition, the student may conduct preliminary studies of fifteenth-century sources written about chivalry, cataloguing when and where combat injuries are mentioned and how they are described. Depictions of disability in the Morte can then be measured against these more general depictions in order to contextualize the unique intersection between disability and knighthood in Malory’s text. The ideal apprentice should have an interest in medieval literature and critical theory, be able to conduct work on the Hamilton campus, and possess strong reading, writing, and research skills.

This project examines U.S. immigration policy and current national discussions on the topic as they relate to the upcoming 2016 General Election. The student apprentice selected for the project should have some experience in literary, rhetorical, or discourse analysis; knowledge of the U.S. political process, including the rhetoric of presidential campaigns, would be welcome. The assistant needs to be detail-oriented, and s/he should have the research and technical skills necessary for locating and archiving print and video sources that include discussion of immigration reform.  Sources will include peer-reviewed journal articles, newspapers and other periodicals, public opinion surveys, written campaign materials, presidential debates, and political advertisements. The apprentice should also be willing to learn how to utilize the qualitative data analysis tool NVivo in preparation for the organizing, coding, and analyzing of the data; s/he will need to become familiar with APA citation style. By participating in this project, the assistant will gain first-hand experience of qualitative and mixed-methodology research, as well as knowledge of an important sociopolitical issue of our time.

Medieval Studies and the Ghost Stories of M.R. James is a book project that seeks to understand a group of famous horror stories in light of the author's work as a professional academic medievalist. Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936) is the author of some of the most highly-regarded ghost stories of all time, thrilling fictions that have never passed out of print or lost their popular appeal. But James was also the Provost of King's College, Cambridge and a legendary and influential scholar, whose name is still well-known among academics indebted to his pioneering research, particularly in the study of biblical texts, medieval art and architecture and, above all, medieval manuscripts. This project, then, is about how detailed attention to James's creative "medievalisms"—the often-overlooked scholarly inspirations behind his fiction—can provide considerable insight into a formative moment in medieval studies, as well as into his methods as a master stylist of understated and influential horrors. The work of the apprentice will involve examining, noting, and at times transcribing digital images of original documents in James's own hand, including academic lectures, speeches, sermons, and personal correspondence. The successful candidate should be curious, detail-oriented, persistent, and prepared to struggle a bit at first with James's notoriously "spidery" handwriting. Ideally, too, he or she would have some background in medieval studies, literature in particular.

The Other Side of Broadway is a book project that shows theatre’s centrality as a key shaper of attitudes about national identity, immigration, sexuality, race, and urbanization during the early twentieth century. The apprentice will gather and summarize historical materials, including published reviews, memoirs and diaries, magazines and newspapers, advertisements, historical periodicals, and digital cinema and theatre archives.  The successful apprentice should be detail-oriented, persistent, able to work independently (with clear guidance), and interested in making discoveries. She or he should be familiar with researching on standard databases in film studies and American culture (such as MLA Bibliography; Film, Television and Literature Database; International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance; Gender Studies Database; etc.

Film and Fashion Amidst the Ruins explores East and West German film productions of the immediate postwar years within the broader context of the long 1940s and with a particular interest in the discourses and practices of fashion. By analyzing fashion in a selected corpus of ‘rubble films’ (Trümmerfilme) as well as in newsreels and press accounts of fashion shows and trends, the project recreate an interdisciplinary account of the tension between post-war politics and aesthetics, between the burden of the past and the aspirations for the future, the pressures of guilt and the desire for survival. The book relies on many original archival sources (magazines, newspapers, film trade press, diaries, correspondence, memoirs, interviews) that need to be included both in English translation (within the body of text) and in German (in the book’s endnotes). An undergraduate research assistant with advanced reading (and listening) comprehension in modern German, as well as excellent writing skills in English, will complete the following tasks under Professor Ganeva’s guidance: 1) translate the quotes from German into English; 2) transcribe and translate some audio material (quotes from films and newsreels); 3) compile a bibliography, filmography, and lists of archival sources used in the project; 4) crosscheck or double-check the use of terminology; 5) write some explanatory notes to be included in the endnotes.

This project will result in a book-length spiritual biography of the Gabonese Bwiti priestess and healer (nganga), Mme. Fabienne Ngoungou.  Through life history, personal narratives, and detailed case studies of her healing practice, this book seeks to provide insight into the contemporary Gabonese healing imagination.  Mme Ngoungou resides next to her Bwiti temple on the outskirts of Libreville, Gabon and who received the call to heal at the age of three. Bwiti is a southern Gabonese initiatory religion that spread to northern Gabonese Fang speakers during the colonial era. The apprentice will need strong French-language skills and some familiarity with African studies.  He or she will help translate and transcribe, encode, analyze, and edit a number recorded interviews with Mme. Ngoungou.

The end goal for this project is to complete and publish an ethnographic monograph tentatively titled, Creative Creationists: Making a Biblical Theme Park.  The book is based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork with the creative team in charge of designing a creationist theme park in Kentucky. The undergraduate apprentice selected to work on this project will assist with data management, analysis, and critical discussion about the project.  The student might organize and analyze fieldwork photographs; transcribe interviews and field recordings; read and analyze primary source literature; review bibliographic notes and research relevant literature; and/or read and comment on draft materials for the book project.

Since the late 1960s, Brazilians seeking sex change therapies also pursued active political and civic lives. As a result of their struggles, in 2007 Brazil’s public health system began providing free sex reassignment surgeries and hormones therapies for transgender people.  Changing Sex: A History of Transsexuality in Brazil will answer two related questions: 1) How did the biomedical possibility of sex change and transgender activism turn an individual need into a universal right? and 2) How did transsexuals, and the doctors who treated them, change cultural understandings of sex, sexuality, health, and citizenship? To help answer these questions, the research apprentice will perform three main tasks. First, the apprentice will look closely at medical journals, newspapers, and popular magazines to track frequency of occurrence of the terms “transsexualism,” “transsexuality,” “transsexual,” and “sex change.” Second, the student will build a bibliography to situate the history of transsexuality in Brazil in global context. Third, he or she will follow the transgender violence tracking portal to monitor what is happening to transgender people in Brazil in terms of violent acts against them.