Undergraduate Research Aides

Research Aides (RA’s) work directly with Humanities Center faculty fellows on faculty-led projects and build up skills to conduct humanities research. The application calls for a CV/Resume and a letter of interest, which should include a list of courses relevant to the project. Please send your application materials directly to the faculty mentor leading the research project. If you have questions, email Svetlana Turetskaya, International and Academic Programs Manager, sturetsk@stanford.edu. 
 

Current RA Opportunities for 2025–26

Laura Wittman

Project Title: Death on TV: Unconventional Experiments with Grief and Mortality

Faculty Leader: Professor Laura Wittman, Department of French and Italian/SHC Faculty fellow, lwittman@stanford.edu 

Project Description: Ghosts, suicides, zombies, vampires, mediums, demigods, and otherworldly hallucinations appear in unprecedented numbers in contemporary American and international TV series, starting with Six Feet Under in 2001. The book explores how these series articulate a search for a new relationship to death and dying in the context of secularization and medicalization. Breaking with an older tendency of TV to frame violent death with institutional stability, be it in criminal investigations or medical thrillers, these series make our imagination of death psychologically provocative and philosophically enriching. They explore the return of the dead among us in uncanny, graphic ways to speak to the failure of institutions to frame death meaningfully, opening us to new possibilities. Countering modern medicine’s framing of death as its outside—the ultimate failure, but also that which cannot be understood by medical tools—the series resonates with medical humanities, addressing the need for patients, caregivers, and families to develop an active relationship to death through the creation of personal and collective myths.

Research Assistant (RA) Responsibilities and Learning Outcomes: The RA will work on bibliographic research on literature as well as media studies and input findings into a database. The RA will gather information from TV shows, writing reports on the shows to be discussed with the faculty leader (usually based on watching the opening episode and some selected others) and gathering other information as needed. 10 hours per week. The student will gain experience in media studies research (including how to use databases to keep track of information), as well as as television/film analysis (via direct mentoring with faculty). The student will also learn to synthesize findings into broader trends.