Stanford Undergraduate Fellowships

• Eligibility[+]
  Undergraduates writing honors theses, students who intend to write honors theses, and/or students who are interested in pursuing research beyond their course requirements would be good candidates to apply for these fellowships. Ideally, undergraduate fellows are majoring in a humanities department. However, the program may also include majors from any department as long as they are working on a humanities-related project. Each Humanities Center Fellow may only sponsor one undergraduate fellow.
• Stipends[+]
  Undergraduate fellows receive a stipend of $1,400 per quarter; they are expected to perform up to 10 hours per week of research work for the Humanities Center Fellow. No course credit is allowed for work done as part of this fellowship.
• Application Process[+]
  Undergraduate applicants must identify a faculty member from the list below with whom they would be interested to work. Students should contact the fellow directly to discuss the possibility of a collaboration. The applicant and faculty fellow should discuss the key research questions and materials they intend to examine, their methodology, and the research product the undergraduate will be expected to complete by the end of their fellowship. Once participating fellows have chosen an undergraduate research assistant, the completed and signed application form should be submitted to the Fellowship Program Manager.  The application form is available as a pdf by clicking on the "Apply Now" link on this page.  
  
  The list of available fellows for 2012-13 are:
  
  Oksana Bulgakowa
  
  “Recorded voices create an archive of the time past, of the individual and cultural memory, and it is only recently that we have started to explore and develop an analytical apparatus for our listening experience. Many disciplines -- linguistics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, ethic, history of technology, musicology, literary studies, drama and performance studies, film studies and communication studies – have been engaged in elaborating their approaches to the cultural aural memory. In my new book, I intend to explore the recorded vocal memory of Russian society, the genesis and change of vocal stereotypes in national theater, radio, film and TV, thus bringing together the historical evolution of the speaking norms, vocal fashions, and preservation technology. I will try to analyze the voice in its many aspects: as an aesthetic experience, a means of indoctrination, or a trace of neurosis. My project is situated in the field of film and media studies but it also engages aspects of comparative cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, and gender studies. I compare Russian voices and the way of their analysis with American, German and French approaches. My research assistant will check novels, read the critical studies, see and analyze films, listen to the old records”.
  
  
  Jim Campbell
  
  I am working on a project entitled "Freedom Now: History, Memory, and the Mississippi Freedom Movement." As this rather inelegant title suggests, I am interested not only in the history of the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi -- what actually happened -- but also in the ways in which these events are remembered and represented by different people at different times. What happens as an historical event like the Civil Rights movement passes from living memory of surviving people into that realm we call history? What stories become enshrined in our national narrative and what stories do we forget? What are the political implications of these processes of selective remembering? I have been working on this project, off and on, for more than a decade now, scouring archives, interviewing movement veterans, attending memorial services, observing the creation of curricula and museum exhibitions, and so forth. During my year at the Humanities Center, I will be begin writing in earnest on what I hope will become a book. As I do so, I am looking for an undergraduate assistant who not only has the research skills to gather new materials but who can also serve as something of a sounding board as I try to make sense of the materials I've already gathered.
  
  
  Bruce Hall
  
  I am working on a project about a trans-Saharan trade firm that operated in the 19th century, carrying out commerce that connected North African centers such as Ghadames, Tripoli and Tunis with the West African town of Timbuktu (in modern Mali). Based on a collection of Arabic letters exchanged by members of one firm, I hope to be able to explain how merchants in this case managed to carry out trade across such difficult territory, without the institutional structures provided by modern states to enforce contracts and punish commercial transgressions. The problem of trust between distant commercial partners is a major puzzle in the literature on pre-modern long distance trade. I seek an undergraduate interested in commercial structures and behavior in contexts where state control was/is weak. My preference is for those interested in Africa or the Muslim World, although I am open to other geographical possibilities. Disciplinary specialization is open.
  
  
  Matthew Kohrman
  
  I am looking for an undergraduate research assistant to help me as I produce a book manuscript. Cigarettes and the politics of life and death . . . how do they influence one another? In recent years, I have carried out ethnographic research in China on how the cigarette is configured within two seemingly contradictory socio-political processes: protecting and destroying human life. Based on this research, I will write a book – Clouds: Making Life and Death in China’s Urban Cigarette Market – during academic year 2012-2013. This volume will be the first anthropological monograph examining the cigarette in Chinese contexts. It will contribute in innovative ways to knowledge within the humanities and beyond regarding uses of life and death to mobilize human action. Would you like to help with the production of his book? I seek an undergraduate assistant who feels comfortable working on subject matters having political, sociological and historical content, and enjoys digging around libraries, proofing manuscripts and organizing bibliographies. The optimal candidate will also have some Chinese-language proficiency, particularly in reading.
  
  
  Barbara Kowalzig
  
  My project, entitled Gods around the Pond: Religion, Society and the Sea in the Early Mediterranean Economy concerns the interface of religion and economy in the ancient Mediterranean, developing a picture of ancient Greek religion emerging out of transcultural economic mobility by sea. The project has a distinct long-term Mediterranean perspective, integrating materials from all periods of Mediterranean history. It is multi-disciplinary, applying both the methods of historical anthropology and, in particular, approaches from the social sciences, such as economics and politics. Undergraduates interested in any aspect of the interaction of religion and economy in world history are welcome to join the project. Research topics could be formed around topics such as religion and cross-cultural trade, contemporary economic theory, or the philosophical debate surrounding the juxtaposition of religion and economy in intellectual history. Students with a specialization or interest in Classics, ancient history or archaeology could equally choose to work up a set of evidence from the ancient world. The research assistant will also be engaged in editing work of forthcoming publications. There is also scope for the Digital Humanities: in particular, I would be interested in collaborating with a student keen on developing dynamic mapping techniques and/or quantitative research methods for the Humanities.
  
  
  Padma Rangarajan
  
  For my project, Thug Life: The British Empire and the Birth of Terrorism, I’ll be considering the ways in which a history of colonial policing might very well be a history of terrorist and anti-terrorist activity. Specifically, how was terrorism, both state-sponsored and anti-state, the result of and a response to new systems of collecting, archiving, and producing knowledge of and literature about colonized territories? Along with reading nineteenth century literary about thuggee, incendiaries, and religious fanatics I will be working with archival materials as well as recent collections like the Guantánamo Docket.
  
  Deadline is October 15, 2012 for fellowships starting in the Autumn Quarter. Apply Now.