Summer Humanities and Arts Research Program (SHARP)

SHARP Independent Research Fellowships

In addition to the menu of SHARP projects presented by faculty or led by our institutional partners, this year SHARP is inviting students to propose their own independent research projects on topics in the arts and humanities, broadly defined. For SHARP independent research projects, applicants must describe the proposed research project in detail and the scope of the work for the 10-week summer research period, including specific information about the resources and materials to be engaged on campus. Students must also identify a faculty mentor for the research project. In the SHARP application, your independent project proposal will be included as your first essay response.

Please note: For students proposing independent research projects, the academic reference letter should, in part, specifically address the project and your preparedness to undertake it.

Research Mentor Confirmation Letter

Ask your research mentor to provide you with a brief letter (1-2 paragraphs) confirming the details of your proposed independent project and their involvement, support, mentorship, and availability over the summer. Upload this confirmation letter to your application in CARAT by the SHARP application deadline.

Caravaggio: Disturbing Naturalism and Double Entendre (Burgard)

Supervisor:

Peter J. Burgard, Professor of German

Project Overview:

This is a book project addressing the entirety of Caravaggio’s oeuvre with a focus on his supreme naturalism, but also the ways in which he at the same time attenuates or even undermines his own naturalism, i.e., disturbs it. At the same time, the book addresses how this disturbed naturalism is itself disturbing, particularly in his religious paintings, which constitute the 
majority of his work. The book will thus suggest a new way of understanding the work of Caravaggio, the father of modern art.

I have completed nearly all of the preliminary research for the book, i.e., studying Caravaggio’s works in person in Italy, England, France, Austria, Germany, Spain, and the United States and developing interpretations of the paintings; I have also completed a significant portion of the secondary research, i.e., studying the scholarship on Caravaggio; and I have drafts of several chapters.

However, a substantial amount of the scholarship is in Italian. I read Italian, but quite slowly, and this is delaying the progress and completion of the project.

Outcomes and Mentoring Plan:

The nine-week program will begin with readings and discussions of what I have written thus far on Caravaggio and of the detailed outline of the book. Once the Fellow has a good grasp of the project, the weekly work will entail reading Italian-language scholarship on Caravaggio (both what I have selected and what the fellow will find), excerpting it in line with the concerns of the project, translating the excerpts (possibly also with the help of AI, for the sake of speed, but depending on its accuracy), and discussing the scholarship with me in weekly, possibly twice-weekly meetings.

By the end of the ten weeks, the fellow will not only have significantly aided in the progress of the book, but will have developed advanced humanities research skills

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

I am therefore seeking a SHARP Fellow with advanced Italian reading comprehension who is interested in the project and in spending a summer studying a great artist.

The Meaning & Modality (M&M) Linguistics Lab (Davidson)

Supervisor:

Kathryn Davidson, Professor of Linguistics

Project Overview:

This is a project for students to gain direct experience carrying out linguistics research related to how different meanings are expressed across languages, using a combination of theoretical and experimental methods. The goal of this summer research project is for the student to design and begin to execute an experiment which fits into the lab’s larger efforts on cross-linguistic semantics.

Opportunity for the Fellow and Mentoring Plan:

Throughout the SHARP summer program, the student and mentor will meet once a week to discuss the student’s progress on this specific project, and another time in the week as part of our weekly lab meeting with a larger group (roughly 15 members comprised of undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs). Day to day work includes reading primary sources (journal papers) in Linguistics to situate the project and inform the design in the first couple of weeks, and then project design and implementation of surveys in Qualtrics, as well as statistics in R for data analysis, depending on how quickly the project progresses.

Outcomes:

Understanding of current open theoretical questions in the study of natural language semantics; research skills (data design and collection); analytical skills (analysis and writing); a lab community with members with a wide variety of academic experiences.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

A strong background either in Linguistics (a current Linguistics concentrator, or plans to be), ideally background in investigating theoretical linguistics questions using quantitative experimental methods from LING 132 (“Psycho-semantics’”) and/or a class in experimental semantics or psycho-linguistics. Experience in statistics using R or experience with Qualtrics would be a plus but definitely not required.

Sacred Geographies: An Audio Walk of Harvard’s Lived Religion (Davis)

Supervisor:

Rabbi Getzel Davis, Director of Interfaith Engagement

Project Overview:

This research project seeks to enrich the historical narrative of Harvard by mapping the campus through the methodologies of "Lived Religion" and "Spatial Justice." Rather than viewing the campus through a binary of insider versus outsider, this project interrogates how the physical landscape of Harvard is navigated and interpreted by students from a wide spectrum of traditions.

Moving beyond a singular official history, the project explores the campus as a layered text. We will examine how the university's historic Protestant foundations interact with the vibrant, contemporary presence of practicing Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Indigenous, and Humanist communities. We are interested in questions such as how a Catholic student experiences the Puritan legacy of the Yard, or how secular students find sanctity and respite in religious architecture. The goal is to lift up these distinct narratives side-by-side to reveal a complex ecosystem of meaning-making that highlights the university's evolution toward pluralism.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The SHARP fellow will serve as a public historian and digital storyteller. Their primary responsibility will be to research, script, and record 3–5 distinct audio tracks that guide listeners through specific campus locations. The fellow will investigate how architecture functions as an active participant in diverse spiritual experiences. They will explore the "Sacred Geographies" of the university by weaving together the stories of the Protestant establishment alongside the diverse traditions that now call this space home.

The fellow will engage in three primary modes of research. First, they will conduct archival and material culture research to document the evolution of campus spaces. This involves tracking how buildings established for specific denominational purposes have been adapted, re-consecrated, or re-interpreted by new populations over time.

Second, the fellow will conduct ethnographic interviews to map ephemeral and shared spaces. Topics may include how Catholic students utilize the chapels, where Muslim students find prayer space, how Jewish students navigate ritual boundaries like an Eruv, or where Humanist students find places of ethical reflection. This work requires rigorous adherence to Massachusetts two-party consent laws, and the fellow will ensure all participants sign necessary media releases.

Finally, the fellow will engage in consultation and audio production. They will work with relevant departments and student groups, such as HUNAP and Natives at Harvard College, to ensure that stories of historical sites like the Indian College are told with appropriate protocol. The fellow will also record ambient soundscapes, such as the bell ringing or the silence of the library, to create an immersive listener experience while identifying safe and accessible listening points for the tour. 

A typical day might begin with three hours in the archives researching the theological history of Memorial Church. After lunch, the fellow might meet with a student leader from the Harvard Catholic Center or the Humanist Chaplaincy to record an interview about their personal connection to that same space. The afternoon would be spent editing the audio file to weave the contemporary interview together with the historical narration, effectively creating a dialogue between the past and present. 

Outcomes:

The fellow will produce a finalized Audio Walk series available to the public and incoming students. This will include 3 to 5 audio tracks accompanied by full written transcripts to ensure accessibility and ADA compliance. The project will be hosted on the Interfaith Engagement website. Materials will be prepared for potential long-term preservation with the University Archives.

The student will develop skills in research ethics and copyright compliance, sensory ethnography, soundscape mapping, spatial analysis, and audio storytelling. This work directly informs academic trajectories in Urban Planning, Anthropology, Religious Studies, and Media Studies. 

Mentoring plan:

I will meet with the fellow twice weekly to discuss their findings. I will provide mentorship based on Family Systems thinking applied to institutions to help the student understand how institutions function as complex emotional systems. We will utilize concepts like differentiation to help them hold multiple, sometimes competing, values and truths simultaneously.

I will also support the fellow in structuring their audio scripts for maximum impact and provide basic media training on how to discuss sensitive findings publicly. We will focus on handling distinct historical narratives ethically, honoring all voices in a non-hierarchical way, and processing the emotional weight of the stories uncovered. 

If I am away, a senior colleague in the Interfaith office will oversee daily logistics, but I will maintain virtual check-ins for editorial direction. 

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

We seek a student with an interest in Religious Studies, History, or Sociology. Strong writing skills and emotional maturity are essential. We explicitly encourage applicants with experience or interest in podcasting, audio editing, oral history, or archival permissions. 

Works in Progress podcast - ArtLab (Edwards and Nakaji)

Supervisors:

Bree Edwards, Director, Harvard ArtLab, and Kat Nakaji, Podcast Producer 

Project Overview:

Harvard ArtLab invites applications for a Summer Humanities and Arts Research Program (SHARP) fellowship to develop a new episode of Works in Progress, ArtLab’s conversational podcast exploring contemporary artmaking and arts-based research. 

Works in Progress examines the creative mind and the processes behind artistic research, highlighting artists, designers, scientists, and engineers whose work bridges disciplinary boundaries. Many episodes feature ArtLab artists-in-residence, offering listeners a behind-the-scenes view into how creative research unfolds at Harvard and beyond. Previous episodes are available at: artlab.harvard.edu/podcast. 

For Summer 2026, the SHARP Fellowship offers an exciting new opportunity for two fellows to collaborate on the creation of a single podcast episode focused on arts-based research at ArtLab and across Harvard. Applicants may apply with a collaborator or individually; individual applicants will be paired with another fellow.

Outcomes:

During the summer, the fellows will conduct research, propose episode outlines, develop a script, and produce a rough-draft recording. This fellowship offers hands-on experience in arts research, scriptwriting, interviewing, discussions of contemporary artistic processes, and podcast production. 

This episode for Works in Progress Season 4 will be recorded in the ArtLab’s audio studio in Fall 2026. Preference will be given to fellows who can return to the ArtLab in Fall to record this episode.

Mentoring Plan:

The SHARP Fellow will work with Bree Edwards, Director of ArtLab, who will guide the research and script-writing process, and Kat Nakaji, who will facilitate on-campus research and episode development. 

The fellowship will take place in two phases:

1. Research & Development Phase – culminating in a written proposal and episode outline
2. Production Phase – focused on preliminary interviews, scriptwriting, and a draft audio recording

Fellows will return to ArtLab in Fall 2026 for a one-hour professional recording session.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

We seek two creative, curious researchers with a strong interest in:

• Contemporary art and artistic research
• Storytelling, journalism, and/or media production
• Collaborative, interdisciplinary work

Applicants should demonstrate:

• Experience in research methodologies, art history, or working with contemporary artists
• Strong writing and communication skills

Prior experience with audio recording or editing is not required.

Propose Your Own Houghton Library Project (Greive and Spitz)

Supervisors:

Kristine Greive, Head of Teaching and Learning for Archives and Special Collections
Blake Spitz, Teaching and Learning Archivist

Project Overview:

Houghton Library is home to the world famous and the almost entirely unknown, the ancient and the contemporary, the enduring and the ephemeral; we want to know what you can do with these materials. We invite proposals for this summer on any topic or discipline supported by our collections. Creative, digital, research, and performance projects are all welcome, as are those we haven't thought of yet. For example, past fellows have written music, drafted scholarly articles, produced podcasts, created interactive fiction, composed poetry, made art, and created exhibitions.  

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The fellowship is driven by the fellow’s interests and goals for their work, with ongoing support and training from library mentors. The fellow will conduct their self-designed research project through use of collections in the reading room, secondary research, and library workshops.

Outcomes:

While the research output depends on what the fellow proposes, every fellow should walk away with a solid draft of their research project, a plan for how that output could be further developed and shared/published, and new skills in archival research that can be applied to upper-division coursework, theses, graduate school, or professional life.

Mentoring plan:

Fellows meet regularly with Houghton staff and attend tailored workshops throughout the program, building skills and knowledge in research project management, primary source research, and book/archival history.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

Successful proposals include concentrated work with Houghton collections. Previous experience with special collections is not required. Applicants should describe their proposed project, including specific information about the Houghton Library materials or types of materials the project would make use of as well as the medium or output of the project. While projects change as they develop, be as specific as you can be about your intended output and research materials. This proposal narrative is limited to approximately 500 words. In the SHARP application, this proposal will be included as your first essay response. To schedule a time to talk with a Houghton librarian about your project in advance, please email us at houghton_library@harvard.edu. 

Queer Archives Curatorial Fellows (Kaminsky)

Supervisor:

Lauren Kaminsky, Assistant Dean for Arts & Humanities Education and Associate Senior Lecturer on History & Literature, FAS; Jenny Gotwals, Curator for Gender and Society, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute

Project Overview:

Queer Archives is a spring 2026 course that culminates in an exhibition assignment that asks students to select, analyze, and contextualize objects that showcase the Schesinger Library’s collections. In summer 2026, 2-3 SHARP fellows will work with the project mentors to curate an exhibit focused on the class assignments. The exhibition will open in the Lia and William Poorvu Gallery on the first floor of the Schlesinger Library in early 2027. 

Opportunity for the Fellow:

By the end of the summer, the SHARP fellows will have played a key role in the creation of an exhibition. They will gain familiarity with standard exhibit practices, visit local exhibits, and learn from Harvard Library conservators and Harvard Radcliffe Institute exhibit curators. They will collaborate on conceptual framing, write exhibit labels, and develop programming around the exhibit. 

Outcomes:

The SHARP fellows will make creative contributions to the exhibit, acquiring skills such as archival research methods, gaining knowledge of gay, lesbian, queer, and trans histories and historiographies, and acquiring critical tools for responsible research that engage with community perspectives and the history and politics of knowledge production. The experience will be beneficial to future studies in the arts and humanities, with the potential to explore future careers that involve archival research and museum curation.

Mentoring plan:

Students will meet at least once a week with the project mentors, who are on campus all summer. Significant time will be spent doing research in the Schlesinger Library’s reading room.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

No prior knowledge or experience is required. To be an effective contributor to the project, a student should have a demonstrated interest in public history, gender and sexuality studies, or related fields.

Retrieving the Past to Imagine the Future: A Historical Mapping of Arts & Humanities at Harvard (Kelly and Kaminsky)

Supervisor:

Sean Kelly, Dean of Arts & Humanities and Lauren Kaminsky Assistant Dean of Arts & Humanities Education

Project Overview:

This project aims to create the first comprehensive historical map of the Arts & Humanities at Harvard, with particular emphasis on the histories of individual departments. This research will illuminate how these units emerged, shifted, and developed curricula that responded to intellectual, cultural, political, and demographic change. The ultimate objective is to build an annotated bibliography of published materials, to identify relevant archival materials, and to use those materials to capture the history of Arts & Humanities departments at Harvard.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The project offers students an immersive humanities research experience involving archival investigation, data organization, critical interpretation, and narrative building. It also advances a broader institutional initiative: strengthening the visibility, coherence, and historical awareness of the Arts & Humanities at Harvard. 

Outcomes:

By the end of the ten-week period, the Fellows will have uncovered key documents and generated a process for capturing oral histories of the departments, conducted several interviews of faculty members as appropriate, and drafted departmental history summaries. 

Mentoring plan:

The students will work under direct supervision of Sean Kelly, Dean of Arts & Humanities, and Lauren Kaminsky, Assistant Dean of Arts & Humanities Education. 

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

We seek 2-3 SHARP Fellows who are enthusiastic about the humanities and interested in intellectual history, archival research, and the institutional development of academic disciplines. Ideal candidates will demonstrate interest in American higher education history and the evolution of academic fields.

Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments Summer Scholar (Marcus)

Supervisors:

Hannah Marcus, Professor of the History of Science, CHSI Faculty Director 
Joshua Gorman, CHSI Executive Director 

Project Overview:

The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments is eager to recruit 2 undergraduates to join our team for summer 2026. CHSI fellows will learn about how university museums function and will participate in the following activities: 

• Learning how to handle historical scientific instruments
• Working with staff to curate a mini exhibition that will be on display in the front foyer of the History of Science Department
• Familiarizing themselves with the permanent exhibition in the Putnam Gallery in order to be able to give student-led tours and advise on visitor experience updates
• Participating in supervised cleaning, preservation, and documentation of objects in the collection 

Mentoring plan:

CHSI has a deep team of professionals covering different areas of museum work including: executive and faculty leadership, curation, collections management, operations, and preservation. Fellows will be mentored by different team members for the various aspects of their work, but they should plan on being present for weekly all-staff meetings, and M-Th daily check-ins with their assigned daily lead. The incoming Executive Director will be their primary contact though they will also work closely with the faculty director, collections manager, curators, and project manager. On Fridays, fellows will be encouraged to read about and conduct research on the subject selected for their exhibition, and to continue to familiarize themselves with objects in the galleries in order to lead tours. Throughout the summer, the interns will travel with Collections staff to area museums for behind the scenes discussions with colleagues about specific professional practices. 

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

• Willingness to come to work in person 4 days per week
• Enthusiasm about hands-on work with historical collections
• Interest in public history, museums, and the history of science
• Ability to think about and produce content for public consumption 

Spatially Visualizing Papal Correspondence: A Geodatabase of Communications to and from the Most Important Pope of the Late Roman Empire (McCormick)

Supervisor:

Michael McCormick, Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History; Chair, Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard; Director at Harvard of the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean; General Editor, Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations

Project Overview:

As the leader of Latin Christendom between 590 and 604, Pope Gregory the Great played a critical role in the transformation of not only the papacy but all Europe during the fall of the western Roman Empire. Gregory’s impact lay not only in his influential theological writings and liturgical reforms, but also in his administrative acumen and creativity. He was the first pope to come from Europe’s new monastic movement, but also an astute manager of church wealth and an experienced diplomat who had travelled to Constantinople before his reign and knew how to navigate court politics. Over 15 years at the head of the Roman Church, he maintained contacts across the entire Mediterranean and beyond, writing to emperors and empresses, kings and queens, bishops, monks and missionaries, powerful laywomen and nuns. Fortunately for historians, hundreds of these letters have survived in medieval copies known as the Register. In this Science of the Human Past project, students will work with the SoHP team to develop an existing geodatabase of Gregory’s contacts, mapping the human network that transformed the ancient world at the dawn of the Middle Ages. This will be done in the framework of Mapping Past Societies (MAPS), a Harvard-created digital resource which allows innovative spatial and temporal analyses of world civilizations from 1500 BCE to the present.

As part of this unique summer project, you will be involved in mapping Gregory’s letters (sent and received), as well as developing a means of visualizing the identities of his recipients and messengers. If this part of the overall project is completed speedily, the team will move backward in time to include papal correspondence earlier in the late Roman era. As such, you will learn much about the Late Antique papacy, as well as the political, social, and economic world in which it operated. You will have the opportunity to learn how the Science of the Human Past team uses and constructs its geodatabases, in combination with the most advanced scientific analyses of ancient genetics and environmental evidence, to make revolutionary new discoveries about ancient Mediterranean political and cultural patterns and structures. Additionally, as part of our work on recent discoveries in the Roman landscape, you will also have the opportunity to learn to use basic archaeological and historical databases of secondary sources, collecting and curating information in a database to understand the spatial patterns in our data. Previous participants in SoHP summer research projects have found them immensely enriching and extremely helpful in their future careers, whether as software engineers, entrepreneurs, or scholars and scientists.

By crossing disciplines and embracing innovation, this project pushes the boundaries of convention as it relates data from the social sciences and humanities to allow undergraduate researchers to reveal undiscovered facets of the human past and, especially, the networks of communication that served as engines of change. Students who contribute substantially to each database will be cited as co-authors of digital dataset releases as well as, potentially, research publications. The project will improve the contributor’s skills in data science, Geographic Information Systems (GIS, the technology behind all digital maps), and management of “big data,” to reveal revolutionary insights into the political strategies that shaped the ancient world—and which define ours.

Opportunity for the Fellow 

The fellow will participate in the following tasks:

• Reading historical sources and literature and translating them into data that computers and mapping software can understand. Locating unknown sites on maps and atlases.
• Deep reading of texts to understand overall context and meaning of historical circumstances in which documents were produced.
• Producing digital maps of letter correspondence.
• Reading scholarly research in history, archaeology, and several other disciplines and translating that information into maps or databases for additional research applications.

Mentoring Plan and Outcomes:

Selected student will meet weekly with faculty leads, and keep in touch with leadership team via Slack or email. Assignments will be made via a combination of in-person and Zoom tutorials. Ideally, you will learn the basics of GIS software and how to build digital maps. You will also learn how to create databases, how to coordinate work in a sizeable team, how to quality-check and deliver a finished, reliable research dataset. If warranted, you will be asked to develop basic analysis queries through GIS or other software that can reveal hidden patterns in big-data. Selected student may receive ongoing guidance when needed through email or Slack, in addition to in-person meetings with leadership. 

Possibility for 1 student; on-campus meetings and undergraduate research assistant team-building events will be planned, encouraged, and extremely helpful to the process, including outdoor meetings/fun events.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

The successful candidate will have familiarity with Microsoft Excel, PDFs, and will be able to learn quickly how to use Google Translate. Familiarity with foreign languages is a plus (especially Latin; Greek, French, or German also welcome) but not required. Familiarity with GIS and/or statistical software desirable but not at all required. Prior coursework in history or archaeology a plus, but not a pre-requisite. Discipline, enthusiasm and enjoyment of a team environment working closely with senior researchers are essential.

Profs and Politics: To Govern is to Educate (Sommer)

Supervisor:

Doris Sommer, Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies

Project Overview:

To develop research chapters dedicated to Latin American leaders for a book solicited by University of Oxford Press on the connection between culture and citizenship. The focus is on pedagogy as civic formation in Latin America, a parallel with the tradition of John Dewey. An introduction to the book is ready as a guide, thanks to our SHARP fellow in 2025, Ismail Assafi. The task now is to draft the chapters on particular countries and leaders.

“Profe” has a familiar ring in the political life of Latin America. The title for educators and, by extension, for political leaders, shows deference softened by affection for authorities who teach in classrooms and in public forums. Great leaders have, typically, moved from one space to the other. Shortening the term for teacher from the three syllables of profesor to two takes an edge off the divide between leaders and followers.

The casual, almost intimate, mode of address deployed by students, and by citizens, counts on superiors to reciprocate the people’s invitation to talk with a disposition to listen and to engage with the public. Those who lead and those who follow recognize one another as partners in conversation through this abbreviation of power that leaves room for students to sound smart. Commonplace on the continent but maybe remarkable elsewhere, judicious liberty with language establishes interactive roles for informal contracts meant to achieve good outcomes for all, despite the admittedly unequal distribution of resources and rights. To call a minister, a mayor, a governor, or even a president “profe” confirms admiration for his or her superior information and wisdom. But it also conscripts those advantages as resources to be shared with the public, because teachers don’t hoard erudition and good judgment. They measure their success by how great a legacy of learning they leave to students who take up the lessons as responsibilities for further development.  

Transmission is a teacher’s mission to multiply the learners, a mission made possible through the intimacy – call it trust -- that should bind public figures with the public. Together, teachers and students, elected officials and the citizens who elect them, can pursue personal and public goods.  

Opportunity for the Fellow:

Research can occupy several students, each dedicated to a particular country or region to 1. Identify key profe figures throughout Latin America by canvassing experts through emails and verbal consultations [zoom, phone]. 2. Collect relevant texts in Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, to track the primary writings and responses of other public figures and the general public – through magazines, newspapers, personal archives. 3. Arranging consultations between me, Doris Sommer, and scholars in literature, history, politics, cultural studies to test innovative readings of these materials. 4. Help to prepare drafts of chapters, in collaboration among students and identified experts before submitting full book draft.  

The “day in the life” will look different at different stages of the research. Some of the time will be dedicated to contacting experts, and more time to collecting documents and developing a rhythm with me about determining the pertinence of each text. So typical days will include reading and dialogue with me. 

Outcomes:

The outcome is clear, a draft, or several chapters of a book for OUP. And the skills to be developed are basic to our work in the humanities: close reading in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French; interviews with close listening; making connections among various genres of texts (fiction, legislation, memoirs, journalism); writing correspondences with experts; and writing reports on findings from research and correspondence, concisely and to the point.

Mentoring plan:

I will meet the students at least twice a week over the 10 weeks and dedicate my office to this research project, for us to collect materials, conduct zoom interviews, and to meet in a quiet space. I will personally accompany the students to meet with appropriate librarians to facilitate the retrieval of materials.

And I will carefully review communications and drafts of reports before they are sent out and filed for future use. This project is my priority for the summer and the following months. The mentoring relationship will continue with regular meetings to support the students in their own pursuits and take advantage of the skills we will have developed over the summer. 

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

Students should have good reading command of Spanish. Some French and Portuguese is useful but not required. They should also have a lively interest in the intersections between literature and history/politics in Latin America.  

Contemporary Methods and Tools for Digital Humanities (Stuber and Singhal)

Supervisor:

Tracy Stuber, Digital Humanities Specialist, Arts and Humanities Research Computing; Rashmi Singhal, Director of Digital Humanities, Arts and Humanities Research Computing

Project Overview:

The fellow will work with Harvard’s Digital Humanities unit, Arts and Humanities Research Computing (DARTH), to support the maintenance and renewal of a widely used online resource on digital methods and tools. This resource provides descriptions, software recommendations, and example projects for digital methods such as text analysis, spatial analysis, and digital collections. This information serves audiences at Harvard and beyond through library guides, course syllabi, and discovery via search engines and generative AI tools.

Because the resource was last comprehensively updated before 2020, many entries now require review, revision, or replacement. The fellow will work closely with the mentor to audit existing content, research current digital tools and methods, and update entries to ensure accuracy and relevance. They will also have the opportunity to do focused research with the DARTH team on methods relevant to their academic interests.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The primary goal for the summer will be to ensure the resource is accurate and up to date by:

• Reviewing the existing resource to identify outdated links, tools, and terminology
• Conducting online research to identify current tools, platforms, and workflows, including new AI approaches
• Identifying current and credible example projects for digital methods
• Creating bibliographies of influential and recent academic research in digital humanities

The fellow will also choose one topic from the guide to research and develop in depth, including:

• Writing concise descriptions of methods and summarizing projects
• Experimenting with a selected tool (in collaboration with the DARTH team)
• Writing blog posts about the topic and/or their experience with the tool

Outcomes:

The SHARP fellow will gain a foundational understanding of a breadth of digital humanities tools, methods, and research. They will also develop transferrable digital research skills with both academic and non-academic sources. The fellow will also work with the mentor and other experts in DH to consider how digital methods could be relevant to their academic interests.

This experience is especially valuable for humanities students interested in “alt-ac” career opportunities in education, technology, and non-profit organizations. Furthermore, the fellow will contribute to the digital humanities community

Mentoring plan:

The fellow will meet with the mentor weekly in-person. Research and writing can be done anywhere on campus, with between-meeting contact via email and Slack. The fellow and mentor will collaboratively review each section so the fellow can ask questions prompted by their research. The mentor will also set up informational interviews with relevant faculty members. The mentor will work closely with the student to identify potential skill sets and career paths relevant to their work.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

The fellow should have a background in a humanities discipline (a current or prospective concentrator) and be curious about digital technology, including AI. Familiarity with Google Suite (Docs, Sheets) is required; experience with digital humanities or coding is welcome but not necessary

Latin Meets The Last Kingdom: An Epic Wiki for The Poem of Walter (Ziolkowski and Barthelmy)

Supervisor:

Jan M. Ziolkowski, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin and William Barthelmy, Senior Technical Architect, Academic Technology, Harvard University Information Technology

Project Overview:

The Poem of Walter, to put Waltharius into English, is a short, ninth- or tenth-century German epic … but in Latin. The piece is a dream for learning about the literature and history of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Think the fall of Rome and its aftermath. An action movie featuring the Huns and all sorts of Germanic peoples, it tells of exile and longing for home, explores tensions when friendship is pitted against work, and offers romance to boot. Though filled with classical allusions and dappled with Christian references, it has much to say about barbarians—the landlocked equivalents of Vikings—and pictures gore galore.  

The best resource in the world for the study of this Medieval Latin epyllion was produced at Harvard by a small team associated with the project director to facilitate access for those learning Latin. Though wonderful, it has become technologically outmoded and rickety, needs expansion, and would benefit from updating in both textual and visual materials. It cries out for new eyes to make it seductive to new worlds.  

One part of the project requires collaborating with the project directors to migrate the old and invaluable but ever less functional and visible Wiki to whatever promises maximum access and longevity. The site is far too good to let slide into obsolescence: it has the potential to be the single best teaching tool online for those with intermediate Latin who want to move into early medieval culture.  

This leg of the work could benefit from someone with computing skills and familiarity or a willingness to acquire them. The initial step will be to figure out to what the Wiki should be transferred.  

A second aspect of the SHARP proposal is to translate great commentaries from the early twentieth century. These stand clear from copyright concerns but are in German. Thanks to AI, it will now be possible to have translate their contents. Students involved with the project will compare and reconcile them and fold the resulting insertions into the existing materials on the Wiki as soon as a new platform has been determined for what is already there.

This type of work would require knowledge of Latin and interest in learning about what goes into interpretative work and online publications.

A third stage of the project is to enhance visual resources. Much more is available now than was the case in the last iteration, and students with a flair for the visual will be able to enhance considerably the experience for learners.

The fourth and final task is vital clean-up. Some mistakes, not a lot but enough to warrant a closer look, were already there in the first round.  

All three team members would need to pitch in.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The ideal would be a team of three students, one with computing skills, another with a strong inclination toward the humanities but interest in close textual work, and a third with attraction to the past (perhaps just ancient Rome, maybe the Middle Ages) who could bring strengths with visual materials. The dream would be three people who had some exposure in high school to Latin or ancient/medieval history and culture and who wanted to learn more, by getting a “behind the curtain” view of ways to make a text come alive.

The project will offer great freedom for creativity. At the same time, the deadline is real. The new site or platform must be ready by the end of the project, so that it may be usable in a fall course. That use will put the work on display before the students enrolled, which will enable a final road test before the results are made available to the world at large.

Outcomes:

Many students acquire skills now from courses in their education, but the skills are very narrowly framed and ultimately vocationally driven. A surprising number of students profess to going through years of courses without experiences that live up to visions they had of intellectual life before entering college. I am not going to pretend that those involved in this enterprise will come out of it having done the kind of work that requires years of learning and practice. At the same time, I am confident of having achievable results that will be a point of pride to the participants in the future, since they will know that the project is used in a class at Harvard and will (I predict confidently) have usage data that will show it becomes a resource for people worldwide. 

Mentoring plan:

Team meetings will take place at least once and probably twice a week, probably on Tuesday and Friday mornings. 

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

Classics is a healthily large concentration. At the same time, I regularly meet students in SEAS, Economics, and other areas far removed from the humanities who have fond memories of high-school Latin or AP history. They could make wonderful candidates for this undertaking.

To return to an early point, I am convinced that this project would benefit from a team. Having three participants would bring together a variety of aptitudes and personalities. In effect, they would form a small class or seminar—student-facing, because they would be students, but joined together, with the reliefs and pressures of being a team that has to accomplish a large but specific set of interlocking tasks. 

SHARP Independent Research Fellowships

In addition to the menu of SHARP projects presented by faculty or led by our institutional partners, this year SHARP is inviting students to propose their own independent research projects on topics in the arts and humanities, broadly defined. For SHARP independent research projects, applicants must describe the proposed research project in detail and the scope of the work for the 10-week summer research period, including specific information about the resources and materials to be engaged on campus. Students must also identify a faculty mentor for the research project. In the SHARP application, your independent project proposal will be included as your first essay response.

Please note: For students proposing independent research projects, the academic reference letter should, in part, specifically address the project and your preparedness to undertake it.

Research Mentor Confirmation Letter

Ask your research mentor to provide you with a brief letter (1-2 paragraphs) confirming the details of your proposed independent project and their involvement, support, mentorship, and availability over the summer. Upload this confirmation letter to your application in CARAT by the SHARP application deadline.

The Platinum Age of Gospel Music (Barron)

Supervisor:

Charrise Barron, Assistant Professor of Music

Project Overview:

This public humanities project explores gospel music since the 1990s and develops ideas connected to the book project The Platinum Age of Gospel, which both surveys the American national gospel music scene from 1993 to 2013 and points to contemporary trends in the gospel music industry. This summer research project is deeply rooted in ethnomusicology, the study of religion, and the study of African American culture and history. The project seeks to engage in and present research for gospel scholars, practitioners, and fans alike through a podcast series and interactive website. The project will involve podcast series design and developing content for an interactive website on gospel music of the platinum age and beyond. The podcast will discuss current trends in gospel music as well as interview contemporary artists about their experiences in the platinum age and beyond.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The SHARP Fellow will assist Prof. Barron in research by engaging in some combination of following activities:

• Help strategize web/podcast series, interviewees, and interview schedule.
• Research and summarize historical narratives, biographies, and other information that can be referenced for interviews or interactive web content. This includes reading and summarizing gospel scholarship as well as magazines, e-zines, and other forms of online content.
• Study prominent churches and popular gospel artists to identify and summarize trends and innovations in gospel music performance.
• Support web and podcast development, such as supporting recording and editing audio and/or video footage for web/podcast/social media

Outcomes:

The SHARP fellow will develop research skills using primary and secondary sources and strengthen project planning skills. The fellow will develop understanding of contemporary gospel music and the music industry. Further, the fellow will gain hands-on experience implementing a public humanities project, including development of online content for both scholarly and general audiences.

Mentoring plan:

In the first meeting, Prof. Barron and the SHARP fellow will develop a timeline and set of expectations for the summer that can be adjusted as needed. During weekly meetings—usually in person, the team will talk through new discoveries, review accomplishments, troubleshoot problems, confirm details concerning remaining deliverables, and engage in recording. While regular meetings, interviews, or other recordings usually take place in person, research and writing can be done remotely. When needed, additional meetings via Zoom may be scheduled. In all, Prof. Barron aims to provide an environment in which the SHARP fellow can ask questions and explore not only gospel music research, but also learn about engaging in research in the Humanities and academia more broadly.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

The SHARP fellow should be self-motivated, detail-oriented, and interested in gospel music. The fellow should also have proficiency in using computers and the ability to learn new technical skills quickly. Experience with or ability to learn graphic design, audio editing, and/or video editing is very helpful. Experience with Keynote, OBS, HTML, WordPress, or Python is also helpful but not at all required.

Newtowne: Unearthing the Early History of Cambridge (Blier)

Supervisor:

Suzanne Preston Blier, Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies

Project Overview:

In 2030 Cambridge will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the establishment of a Puritan settlement in land long held by the indigenous Massachusett Tribe, and their powerful female chief, Sqa Sachem. This project explores the early history of this city (1500-1800) from the indigenous pre-puritan period, with a special focus of our indigenous roots, early settlement disputes, and issues around enslavement and plantation settlements. The end project will be a set of materials that may be used in the context of our 400th year centennial celebration. 

Opportunity for the Fellow:

This project addresses Harvard Square, its history, and its ongoing economic and cultural vitality.  Goals for the summer: I am looking for an individual who will help undertake research at the Cambridge Historical Commission, the various local libraries and museums, the registry of deeds and court and other archives, as well as interviews with area knowledge-holders with an eye towards creating map-linked overlays and story boards to address various aspects of this early history. I am looking for someone with a deep interest in contributing to the understanding and vitality of early Cambridge History. This person will help to build new content and visualizations featuring historical events or cultural issues. A typical day might include an investigation of early local newspapers on references to indigenous people in the Cambridge Library, a 2-hour interview with a local person knowledgeable in the history of the period, scanning a set of early maps, transcribing the interview, and helping to plot the location of the first fortifications (a protective fence) in Cambridge.

Mentoring plan:

I will meet with the student twice a week (in some cases with other or individuals) and we will map out a work schedule for the week with specific goals. Through this project the student will learn important skills of, local research, effective community engagement, online mapping, title examination, and well as other skills important to developing projects that emerge through this summer program. These skills will be important in terms of larger academic trajectory in areas ranging from history, anthropology, early city planning, architecture and the environment. I do not plan to be away during the summer, but if it should happen, I will ask the student to meet by zoom.  

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

I am looking for a self-starter who is willing to do detailed archive investigation and work with a diversity of others, someone who listens and is also able to provide new insights and is results oriented. No specific academic background per se is required, although a deeper interest in cartography and historical legal questions will be important. Basic data gathering and analysis skills (including statistical analysis) are required, including basic proficiency in MS Office Suite (excel included). Visual art skills and/or knowledge of GIS mapping are a real plus.

Caravaggio: Disturbing Naturalism and Double Entendre (Burgard)

Supervisor:

Peter J. Burgard, Professor of German

Project Overview:

This is a book project addressing the entirety of Caravaggio’s oeuvre with a focus on his supreme naturalism, but also the ways in which he at the same time attenuates or even undermines his own naturalism, i.e., disturbs it. At the same time, the book addresses how this disturbed naturalism is itself disturbing, particularly in his religious paintings, which constitute the majority of his work. The book will thus suggest a new way of understanding the work of Caravaggio, the father of modern art. I have completed 95% of the primary research for the book, i.e., studying Caravaggio’s works in person in Italy, England, France, Austria, Germany, Spain, and the United States and developing interpretations of the paintings. I have also completed a significant portion of the secondary research, i.e., studying the scholarship on Caravaggio. However, a substantial amount of the scholarship is in Italian. I read Italian, but slowly, and this is delaying the progress and completion of the project.

Outcomes and Mentoring plan:

The program will begin with readings and discussions of what I have written thus far on Caravaggio and of the detailed outline of the book. Once the Fellow has a good grasp of the project, the weekly work will entail reading Italian-language scholarship on Caravaggio (both what I have selected and what the fellow will find), excerpting it in line with the concerns of the project, translating the excerpts (possibly also with the help of AI, for the sake of speed, but depending on its accuracy), and discussing the scholarship with me in weekly, possibly twice-weekly meetings. By the end of the program, the fellow will not only have significantly aided in the progress of the book, but will have developed advanced humanities research skills.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

I am seeking a SHARP Fellow with very advanced Italian reading comprehension who is interested in the project and in spending a summer studying a great artist.

#HarvardLore: Tradition as Rhetoric and Process at Harvard University (Craycraft and Brower)

Supervisors:

Dr. Sarah Craycraft, Head Tutor and Lecturer, Folklore & Mythology (primary); Dr. Lowell Brower, Teaching Faculty in Folklore at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Harvard alumnus, and former F&M Head Tutor (collaborator)

Project Overview:

What is the role of culture, in particular traditional expressive culture, in group belonging? As Stephen Mitchell (2000), writes, “folklore's role at Harvard not only rises considerably above the level of the trivial but is in fact at the heart of what it means to become a Harvard student.” This project, titled “#HarvardLore: Tradition as Rhetoric and Process at Harvard University,” will document, catalogue, review, interpret, and in due course present a book-length edited volume of the traditional expressive culture, or “Harvard Lore,” through which actors define and redefine what it means to belong to the Harvard community. Tradition is one of the central rhetorics and processes through which meaning is made. For the Bachelor student—newly departed from hometown, family, and familiar surroundings—traditions are one of many tools for (re)building community and establishing, as well as communicating or contesting, belonging. As an expert in the lived realities of contemporary undergraduate student life, the selected student fellow will play a central role in the review and collection of traditional expressive culture from start to finish.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The role will be primarily archival. We begin by reviewing already-catalogued Harvard Lore collected from decades of Harvard students through introductory folklore courses offered F&M, as well as university archives and news reports that tell the stories of everyday life at Harvard. The student fellow will be tutored in archival accessioning processes and methods of “reading” archived materials: locating primary sources, cataloguing and categorizing the genres of community lore (such as legends, narratives, jokes, and festive performance like the Harvard-Yale game, Housing Day, etc.). A secondary task is the collection Harvard Lore from current students and alumni. This may involve documentation of contemporary Harvard Lore or collecting memories of Harvard Lore from alumni (an excellent opportunity to further strengthen one’s network). This process will be flexible and open to the student’s interests and will include hands-on training in ethnographic methods: interviewing and participant observation techniques, fieldnotes, and data management and interpretation—all useful, transferrable skills that the student can carry forward into their own later research and professional practices.

Outcomes:

The student fellow will be invited to contribute a chapter to the edited volume, under my guidance. This write-up portion may exceed the summer period, and I will commit to overseeing the student’s continuing work, should they wish to contribute a chapter to the volume. They will also be invited to continue working with Dr. Brower and I as editorial assistant for the full book project past the summer period.

Mentoring plan:

Through weekly in-person meetings, we will discuss task assignment, research methods, content review, and process reflection. The student fellow will have access to a shared workspace in Warren House, in the F&M rooms, and will be expected to complete readings on existing college lore as part of the foundational background for the project. While structured, this project is also emergent; the student will have a collaborative role in deciding the trajectory of the project at all stages, treated as a junior colleague rather than a research assistant. The ideal student will be interested in everyday, informal expressive culture as well as Harvard practices, and will be curious, organized, and detail oriented. Experience (coursework, internships) working with archives and qualitative research methods are a plus. However, we welcome students brand-new to such methods, which are best learned through hands-on practice.

Massachusetts Prison Activism: Digital Archives, Public History (Dichter)

Supervisor:

Thomas Dichter, Lecturer in the History & Literature

Project Overview:

The undergraduate fellow will engage with archival materials, prison activism, digital humanities, and public history. The fellow will assist with the ongoing development of two digital public history projects on imprisoned activists in Massachusetts: 

1. Norfolk Inmate Council History Project: This project, begun by students in fall 2024 in collaboration with leaders inside MCI Norfolk, tells the nearly century-long story of the Norfolk Inmate Council, a self-government and mutual aid organization that has existed since the prison’s opening in the early 1930s. The website will host archival documents from the Council’s files as well as articles on specific eras and historical topics written by students in conversation with Council members.
2. The Walpole 1973 digital archive will make publicly accessible the surviving records of a remarkable episode in the history of prison organizing. The National Prisoners Reform Association (NRPA) - Walpole Chapter was a prisoners’ labor union formed in 1972. In March of 1973, when the guards at Massachusetts Correctional Institution-Walpole went on strike, the NPRA took over the operations of the prison and ran it successfully and peacefully for two months. The Walpole 1973 digital archive project is making the records of the NPRA publicly accessible for the first time.  

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The student will assist with scanning and cataloging original archival documents. In addition to building the digital archive, the student will also help develop the user interface, including curation of collections, timelines, and/or narrative presentations through which the public can access and explore the materials. The student will gain skills working with archival documents, with the Omeka platform, and with public-facing historical scholarship. The fellow will have the opportunity to collaborate with incarcerated leaders in MCI Norfolk on telling the history of the Norfolk Inmate Council. The student may also assist in expanding the oral history component of the Walpole archive, identifying and interviewing participants in these historical events to supplement the documents with personal narratives. The day-to-day of the position will involve both hands-on work with archival sources to create digital images and records, choosing materials to highlight in the collection, and developing ways to share the story of the NPRA and the NIC with the public through the website through narrative and visual forms.

Mentoring Plan and Outcomes:

I will meet with the student in person on a weekly basis to review progress with the digitization, discuss materials the student encountered, troubleshoot technical issues, and discuss the Walpole and Norfolk documents in historical context. This will be a particularly useful opportunity for a student with interests in history, American studies, social movements, and incarceration. In terms of skill development, students will: learn fundamentals of cataloging, such as Dublin Core Metadata Terms; practice historical analysis to contextualize documents for website users; explore public humanities by working to make the archive intelligible and useful to a broader public that includes students, researchers, and others; and study prison history to deepen their understanding of the events at Norfolk and Walpole—including background readings in the U.S. prison system’s development since the 18th century, the uprisings of the 1970s, and the subsequent era of mass incarceration that remains ongoing. They will also gain grant-writing experience as we collaborate on a proposal to Mass Humanities to support the implementation of the student’s ideas through website development. The student will be mentored regarding the digitization itself, the historical background (I will offer recommendations to guide their reading). I will provide feedback on written pieces for the website and engage with the student to investigate how this project may be useful for their own academic and professional interests going forward. I have worked with undergraduate students already on this project through my course “Prison Abolition,” offered through the Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship—along the way I have fine-tuned and streamlined the digitization procedures. Our work this summer will build on this foundation. As a faculty member in History and Literature who advises senior thesis and junior paper writers, I consider mentoring undergraduates to be one of the most important and rewarding aspects of my job.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

There are no prerequisites for this position. The ideal student will be enthusiastic about working with original sources, patient and attentive to detail, and curious about the historical events this archive documents. Experience with website design is helpful, but not required. Interest in or experience of any kind with the prison system is also a plus.  

Propose Your Own Houghton Library Project (Greive)

Supervisors:

Kristine Greive, Head of Teaching and Learning for Archives and Special Collections
Zoë Hill, Reference Librarian
Blake Spitz, Teaching and Learning Archivist

Project Overview:

Houghton Library is home to the world famous and the almost entirely unknown, the ancient and the contemporary, the enduring and the ephemeral; we want to know what you can do with these materials. We invite proposals for this summer on any topic or discipline supported by our collections. Creative, digital, research, and performance projects are all welcome, as are those we haven't thought of yet. For example, past fellows have written music, drafted scholarly articles, produced podcasts, created interactive fiction, composed poetry, made art, and created exhibitions.  

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The fellowship is driven by the fellow’s interests and goals for their work, with ongoing support and training from library mentors. The fellow will conduct their self-designed research project through use of collections in the reading room, secondary research, and library workshops.

Outcomes:

While the research output depends on what the fellow proposes, every fellow should walk away with a solid draft of their research project, a plan for how that output could be further developed and shared/published, and new skills in archival research that can be applied to upper-division coursework, theses, graduate school, or professional life.

Mentoring plan:

Fellows meet regularly with Houghton staff and attend tailored workshops throughout the program, building skills and knowledge in research project management, primary source research, and book/archival history.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

Successful proposals include concentrated work with Houghton collections. Previous experience with special collections is not required. Applicants should describe their proposed project, including specific information about the Houghton Library materials or types of materials the project would make use of as well as the medium or output of the project. While projects change as they develop, be as specific as you can be about your intended output and research materials. This proposal narrative is limited to approximately 500 words. In the SHARP application, this proposal will be included as your first essay response. To schedule a time to talk with a Houghton librarian about your project in advance, please email us at houghton_library@harvard.edu. 

Mapping Color in History: Data cleaning and visualization challenge (Kim and Stuber)

Supervisor:

Jinah Kim, George P. Bickford Professor of Indian and South Asian Art and Professor of South Asian Studies; and Tracy Stuber, Digital Humanities specialist, Arts & Humanities Research Computing

Project Overview:

Mapping Color in History (henceforth MCH) is a digital research platform that enables interdisciplinary, collaborative research on colorants in Asian painting. MCH database compiles pigment analysis data from existing and on-going research on scientific analysis of colorants in Asian painting with a capacity to add new data through collaboration with research centers and institutions. The MCH project takes an object-based entry method for data collection instead of a pigment-based organization scheme taken in existing pigment databases and publications. A database ontology developed for the MCH captures the complex and multi-layered hierarchic relationship between different data points, which in turn allows mapping each pigment’s appearance geographically and historically.

The MCH project is inherently multidisciplinary as it aims to bring together scientific analysis and humanistic research. The project can be best described as a three-legged stool: its three legs are 1) digital asset and software development, 2) conservation science research (core data), and 3) art historical research (core data). We currently have about 200 objects and their pigment analysis data published on the end-user site (with data on over 100 objects being organized, researched, entered, reviewed, and published on the site.). One team of researchers works on conducting art historical research on each object under the direction of Principal Investigator (PI), Jinah Kim. Another group of researchers works closely with the PI and the DH specialist, Tracy Stuber, to refine the data organization and data presentation, while PI works with scientists to evaluate and review the data.

In addition to working with partners in the U.S. and elsewhere in Europe, the MCH project is actively involved in cultivating research-based conservation practice in India: MCH-India is designed to pursue collaborative on-site research at museums and archives in India through the MCH mobile heritage lab, which is currently deployed at the Maharaja Sawai Maan Singh II Museum of the City Palace, Jaipur.

With the support of a second digital humanities development grant from the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH), we have successfully launched the version 1.5 of the search tool on our platform in December 2024, and we will be showcasing the project at the College Art Association’s book and trade fair in February 2025. As the project gains more public prominence, there is ever more need to research and clean the data, especially in relation to art historical data on objects. In 2025, we plan to develop visualization tools that can enhance the usability of the database for research in conservation science, heritage conservation, and art history. Being able to indicate the level of confidence in the art historical data also remains to be developed further.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The project will provide opportunities to learn about how an interdisciplinary collaborative project like MCH is structured and operates and how to do research in art history, heritage conservation, and digital humanities. The SHARP fellow’s responsibilities would include cleaning the art historical and/or technical data, doing research on objects, doing research on digital tools, testing the usability of MCH search tools, and helping with the development of new research tools like visualization methods. The goals for summer 2025 would include improving consistency and reducing errors in data (bibliographic, art historical, scientific) so the site can operate as intended and brainstorming and developing novel ways to visualize and use the data. We will also work on incorporating further scientific data for humanistic research. We plan to hold datathons every other week during the summer when we gather in person to go over the data and discuss findings and make any necessary corrections. The MCH team meeting is held virtually every other week where the research tasks are discussed and assigned. The SHARP fellow is expected to attend all datathons and team meetings. Depending on the need of the project and the ability of the fellow, we may meet weekly as a small group to discuss on- going research on visualization methods and digital humanities research tools. The art historical research for the SHARP fellow will entail using the library resources, i.e. finding books and articles in the stacks (physically and virtually) and preparing them to share with the group. Thus, a typical day of the SHARP fellow for the MCH project would be spent on doing research (i.e. learning about an object’s data and identifying more books/sources to help with art historical research), reviewing data, cleaning data ( mostly done virtually), and attending a meeting or two (except for the day of datathon, which would be spent in person together with the team).

Outcomes:

I expect the SHARP fellow participating in the MCH project during summer 2025 to learn how to do research in art history at a higher level and gain literacy in digital humanities. Depending on their interests, they will also gain literacy in heritage conservation. They will contribute to designing and developing new research tools for humanistic and scientific research on colorants.

Mentoring plan:

The project is not only interdisciplinary it is also intergenerational – what I mean by this is that we have team members in various stages of their academic and research career, from undergraduate research assistants to advanced graduate students (PhD candidates), to postdoctoral fellows to faculty. Advanced graduate students mentor graduate students and college students who are starting on the project. As mentioned above, there are regular team meetings, and I often pair them up across generations for mentoring. I will have regular check in meetings with the fellows, and when I am away for research, Dr. Tracy Stuber can also mentor the SHARP fellow(s). We use Slack and Github for assigning research tasks, and I will be available virtually to mentor the fellow(s).

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

Must be familiar with Excel and Google Sheet and can work independently as well as in collaboration with other teammates. Some familiarity with art history, South Asian Studies, basic chemistry and/or geology, conservation science, and/or data science is preferred but not required. Proficiency in languages like Sanskrit (and other Indic languages), Persian, Japanese, Chinese, or Korean is also a plus.

Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments Summer Scholar (Marcus)

Supervisors:

Hannah Marcus, Professor of the History of Science, CHSI Faculty Director 
Joshua Gorman, CHSI Executive Director 

Project Overview:

The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments is eager to recruit 2 undergraduates to join our team for summer 2025. CHSI fellows will learn about how university museums function and will participate in the following activities: 

• Learning how to handle historical scientific instruments
• Working with staff to curate a mini exhibition that will be on display in the front foyer of the History of Science Department
• Familiarizing themselves with the permanent exhibition in the Putnam Gallery in order to be able to give student-led tours and advise on visitor experience updates in a Fall 2025 refresh of the space
• Participating in supervised cleaning, preservation, and documentation of objects in the collection 

Mentoring plan:

CHSI has a deep team of professionals covering different areas of museum work including: executive and faculty leadership, curation, collections management, operations, and preservation. Fellows will be mentored by different team members for the various aspects of their work, but they should plan on being present for weekly all-staff meetings, and M-Th daily check-ins with their assigned daily lead. The incoming Executive Director will be their primary contact though they will also work closely with the faculty director, collections manager, curators, and project manager. On Fridays, fellows will be encouraged to read about and conduct research on the subject selected for their exhibition, and to continue to familiarize themselves with objects in the galleries in order to lead tours. Throughout the summer, the interns will travel with Collections staff to area museums for behind the scenes discussions with colleagues about specific professional practices. 

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

• Willingness to come to work in person 4 days per week
• Enthusiasm about hands-on work with historical collections
• Interest in public history, museums, and the history of science
• Ability to think about and produce content for public consumption 

Mapping the Export Economy of Roman and Post-Roman Africa (McCormick)

Supervisor:

Michael McCormick, Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History Chair, Science of the Human Past

Project Overview:

This project will train a student researcher in the tools necessary to digitally map and investigate the distribution of archaeologically attested exports from Roman and Post-Roman Africa, helping to understand the connection of Africa to the rest of the ancient world and to better understand fluctuating trends in the ancient economy and trade. 

The Roman province of Africa (modern Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco) was a cultural crossroads and melting pot.  Its strategic location at the centre of Mediterranean shipping routes helped it to emerge as a vibrant hub of economic productivity and trade.  The wheat fields, vineyards, and olive groves of Africa supplied the needs of the capital via an imperially subsidized shipping operation that stimulated a broader regional export economy.  One of the region’s most archaeologically visible products was its pottery.  An export-oriented ceramic industry flourished from the 1st to the 7th century AD, with African pottery in high demand as far away as Britain and the Near East.  Better understanding the changing distribution of this pottery can shed direct light on the economic and political fate of the Empire, its trade routes, and its inhabitants.  In this Science of the Human Past project, students will work with the SoHP team to develop existing geodatabases mapping the exports of Roman and Post-Roman Africa throughout the Empire, creating geodatabases and mapping pottery and other trade goods to understand how the economy and communication networks transformed over the period from 50 to 700 AD. This will be done in the framework of Mapping Past Societies (MAPS), a Harvard-created digital resource which allows innovative spatial and temporal analyses of world civilizations from 1500 BCE to the present. As part of this unique summer project, you will be involved in mapping African pottery and other exports where they have been found across West Eurasia. As such, you will learn much about the economy and material culture of Roman North Africa, its far-reaching connections across the ancient world, and the vicissitudes of the Roman and Post-Roman economy.  You will have the opportunity to learn how the Science of the Human Past team uses and constructs its geodatabases, in combination with the most advanced scientific analyses of ancient genetics and environmental evidence, to make revolutionary new discoveries about ancient Mediterranean political and economic patterns and structures. Additionally, as part of our work on recent discoveries in the Roman landscape, you will also have the opportunity to learn to use basic archaeological and historical databases of secondary sources, collecting information into a database to understand the spatial patterns and policies behind the sites. 

By crossing disciplines and embracing innovation, this project pushes the boundaries of convention as it relates data from the social sciences and humanities to allow undergraduate researchers to reveal undiscovered facets of the human past and, especially, the changing role of Africa at the heart of a pan-Mediterranean ancient economy. Students who contribute substantially to each database will be cited as co-authors of digital dataset releases as well as, potentially, research publications. The project will improve the contributor’s skills in data science, Geographic Information Systems (GIS, the technology behind all digital maps), and management of “big data,” to reveal revolutionary insights into the distribution of sites and the political strategies that shaped the ancient world and which define ours. 

Opportunity for the Fellow:

Reading historical sources and literature and translating them into data that computers and mapping software can understand. Locating unknown sites on maps and atlases. Deep reading of texts to understand overall context and meaning of historical circumstances in which documents were produced. Producing digital maps of pottery and other exports. Reading scholarly research in history, archaeology, and several other disciplines and translating that information into maps or databases for additional research applications.

On-campus meetings and undergraduate research assistant team-building events will be planned, encouraged, and extremely helpful to the process, including outdoor meetings/fun events. 

Mentoring plan:

Selected student will meet weekly with faculty leads, and keep in touch with leadership team via Slack or email. Assignments will be made via a combination of in-person and Zoom tutorials. Ideally, you will learn the basics of GIS software and how to build digital maps. You will also learn how to create databases, how to coordinate work in a sizeable team, how to quality-check and deliver a finished, reliable research dataset. If warranted, you will be asked to develop basic analysis queries through GIS or other software that can reveal hidden patterns in big-data. Selected student may receive ongoing guidance when needed through email or Slack, in addition to in-person meetings with leadership.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

The successful candidate will have familiarity with Microsoft Excel, PDFs, and will be able to learn quickly how to use Google Translate. Familiarity with foreign languages (French, German, Latin, Greek, or Arabic) is a plus but not required. Familiarity with GIS and/or statistical software desirable but not at all required. Prior coursework in history or archaeology a plus, but not a pre-requisite. Discipline, enthusiasm and enjoyment of a team environment working closely with senior researchers is essential. 

Works in Progress podcast (Nakaji)

Supervisor:

Bree Edwards, Director, Harvard ArtLab
Kat Nakaji, Podcast Producer

Project Overview:

The Harvard ArtLab invites applications for a research fellowship to contribute to the development of Works in Progress. This podcast explores contemporary art and the artists engaged with the ArtLab. This fellowship presents an exciting opportunity for individuals interested in storytelling, podcast production, writing, and contemporary art.

Works in Progress is a conversational podcast exploring the creative mind, artistic research, and how artists impact the world. The show highlights artists, designers, scientists, and engineers who bridge disciplinary boundaries. The work of ArtLab's resident artists will also inform additional segments of the podcast. Previous episodes of the podcast are available at https://artlab.harvard.edu/podcast/.

The SHARP Fellow will research potential artists for future podcast seasons, contribute to writing podcast content, and produce a special bonus episode featuring highlights from previous seasons. This podcast is an inclusive platform for diverse and creative voices in the arts.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The SHARP Fellow will work with Bree Edwards, Director of ArtLab, who will guide the research process, and Kat Nakaji, who will facilitate episode development. The fellow will also work with ArtLab staff to curate and produce the bonus highlights episode. The fellowship will be completed in two phases: the first phase involves curating audio clips from previous Works in Progress episodes to create the highlight episode, while the second phase focuses on researching and writing content for the upcoming season.

Outcomes:

The fellow will develop a comprehensive body of research on current artists and their practices. The fellowship offers hands-on experience in scriptwriting, discussing contemporary artistic processes, audio editing, and podcast production.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

We seek an independent and creative individual with a strong interest in contemporary art and media production. Candidates should have experience with research methodologies, art history, or working with contemporary artists and strong writing and communication skills. Prior experience in audio recording or editing is not required.

Elizaveta Mnatsakanova: Visual Poetry and Visual Art (Sandler)

Supervisor:

Stephanie Sandler, Slavic Department

Project Overview:

How does the visual art of a multilingual poet interact with her verbal creations? And how did that interaction change across her long life? This research project addresses those questions through the work of a singular, prolific, and aesthetically radical artist-poet, Elizabeth Mnatsakanova (1922-2019). Born in Baku, educated in Moscow, Mnatsakanova made Vienna her home for nearly four decades.

Mnatsakanova’s papers were acquired by Houghton Library over the last two decades and fully catalogued in 2024 (HOLLIS Houghton MS Russ 160 and 2006 M-7). The archive is vast. The goal for summer 2026 is to establish a better picture of the archive as a whole, and specifically to ask what story it can tell of the poet’s development. 

Although some of her artwork is held in museums, Mnatsakanova is known as a poet, and scholars have assumed the primacy of the verbal. That belief should be tested, and one hypothesis of this project is that she should more properly be called an artist-poet. Moreover, the mix of languages in the work presses us to consider what role language plays in both the poems and the pictures. Mnatsakanova principally wrote in Russian, but she also uses Latin and German in her poetry, calligraphy, and personal correspondence; creating an inventory of the multilingual objects will be one of the summer’s goals.

A student research assistant would work through the materials, guided by specific questions from me. Some tailoring to a student’s interests and skills is possible. A student with art historical training might do further investigation of the visual vocabulary of the artwork, including the figures and cover art in Mnatsakanova’s hand-made poetry books. A student with strong German and Latin might be more oriented to the texts that draw on those languages. 

The first week of work would have the student simply reading up on Mnatsakanova and studying her publications; I can provide extensive bibliography. Daily activities would then include sitting in the Houghton reading room taking notes on the materials; doing research to understand elements in the books, drawings, letters, and discarded drafts; discussing the work with me and others on the Houghton or Harvard Art Museum staff.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The undergraduate student will learn the basics of design thinking as applied to pedagogical course design to ideate, prototype, and research potential confluences between pedagogy, Indigenous land rights and environment, health and society, climate and culture, environmental concerns (past, present, and future), and the challenges of sustainable tourism. We will work together to analyze the state of the field, focusing our research to better understand how educators in higher education and at the secondary level are (or are not) addressing historical and contemporary conflicts over land use and resource extraction in French- speaking regions like Quebec, New Caledonia, and the Amazon, investigating the impact of environmental degradation on public health, and analyzing how climate change shapes cultural practices, traditions, and artistic expressions in various parts of the Francophonie in their language classrooms and through curricula.

A Day in the Life:

• Morning: Researching specific topics, brainstorming activity ideas, and collaborating on lesson plan frameworks,
• Afternoon: Developing multimedia resources, ideating about interactive activities,
• Once a week: engaging and exchanging with Claire-Marie Brisson.

Outcomes:

The final deliverable will result in a pedagogical article that explores the state of the field, with the SHARP program participant’s name listed as a contributor.

Between June 3 and August 16, 2024, the fellow can expect to:

• Learn about the development of innovative teaching materials and the design thinking process used to analyze and interpret research to ideate, prototype, and test potential pedagogical outcomes,
• Gain valuable experience in curriculum research and development,
• Engage with topics relating to the environment, the Francophone world, education, and sustainability,
• Create a presentation outlining what resources may currently be used in language pedagogy (state of the field) and suggestions for future-thinking before the publication of the article.

Mentoring plan:

The student will get hands-on training about Mnatsakanova’s work and about archival research, from me and from Houghton curators. Most weeks, I will be in Houghton working with these archival materials, and the student might work alongside me on some days, independently on others. The result would be invaluable experience doing sustained work in an archive and a deepened knowledge of poetry, visual art, memoirs and epistolary documents, and hand-made poetry books, as well as what the career path of an émigré artist-poet might look like.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

Ideally, a working knowledge of Russian, German, modern poetry, and the visual arts. A tall order, I realize. But there are many parts to the project, and I can imagine it benefitting my research and the student even if all these skills aren’t in place. Good Russian is pretty much a prerequisite, though, as so much of the material is in Russian.

Pedagogy as Politics: Leaders in Latin America (Sommer)

Supervisor:

Doris Sommer, Ira Jewell Williams, Jr., Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures (Spanish) and in African and African American Studies

Project Overview:

To conduct research for a book solicited by University of Oxford Press on the connection between culture and citizenship, with a focus on pedagogy in Latin America, in the tradition of John Dewey.  

“Profe” has a familiar ring in the political life of Latin America. The title for educators and, by extension, for political leaders, shows deference softened by affection for authorities who teach in classrooms and in public forums. Great leaders have, typically, moved from one space to the other. Shortening the term for teacher from the three syllables of profesor to two takes an edge off the divide between leaders and followers. 

The casual, almost intimate, mode of address deployed by students, and by citizens, counts on superiors to reciprocate the people’s invitation to talk with a disposition to listen and to engage with the public. Those who lead and those who follow recognize one another as partners in conversation through this abbreviation of power that leaves room for students to sound smart. Commonplace on the continent but maybe remarkable elsewhere, judicious liberty with language establishes interactive roles for informal contracts meant to achieve good outcomes for all, despite the admittedly unequal distribution of resources and rights. To call a minister, a mayor, a governor, or even a president “profe” confirms admiration for his or her superior information and wisdom. But it also conscripts those advantages as resources to be shared with the public, because teachers don’t hoard erudition and good judgment. They measure their success by how great a legacy of learning they leave to students who take up the lessons as responsibilities for further development.  

Transmission is a teacher’s mission to multiply the learners, a mission made possible through the intimacy – call it trust -- that should bind public figures with the public. Together, teachers and students, elected officials and the citizens who elect them, can pursue personal and public goods.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

Research can occupy several students, each dedicated to a particular country or region to 1. Identifying key profe figures throughout Latin America by canvassing experts through emails and verbal consultations [zoom, phone]. 2. Collecting relevant texts in Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, to track the primary writings and responses of other public figures and the general public – through magazines, newspapers, personal archives. 3. Arranging consultations between me, Doris Sommer, and scholars in literature, history, politics, cultural studies to test innovative readings of these materials. 4. Help to prepare drafts of chapters, in collaboration among students and identified experts before submitting full book draft.  

The “day in the life” will look different at different stages of the research. Some of the time will be dedicated to contacting experts, and more time to collecting documents and developing a rhythm with me about determining the pertinence of each text. So typical days will include reading and dialogue with me.

Outcomes:

The outcome is clear, a draft, or several chapters of a book for OUP. And the skills to be developed are basic to our work in the humanities: close reading in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French; interviews with close listening; making connections among various genres of texts (fiction, legislation, memoirs, journalism); writing correspondences with experts; and writing reports on findings from research and correspondence, concisely and to the point.

Mentoring plan:

I will meet the students at least twice a week over the 10 weeks and dedicate my office to this research project, for us to collect materials, conduct zoom interviews, and to meet in a quiet space. I will personally accompany the students to meet with appropriate librarians to facilitate the retrieval of materials.  

And I will carefully review communications and drafts of reports before they are sent out and filed for future use. This project is my priority for the summer and the following months. The mentoring relationship will continue with regular meetings to support the students in their own pursuits and take advantage of the skills we will have developed over the summer

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

Students should have good reading command of Spanish and French and some familiarity with Portuguese or the desire to acquire it. They should also have a lively interest in the intersections between literature and history/politics in Latin America.

The Films of Stanley Kubrick, Screen Violence, and the Cold War (Weir)

Supervisor:

Justin Weir, Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature 

Project Overview:

This research project will help to lay the foundation for a new course (to be offered Spring 2026) as well as my new research project on the films of Stanley Kubrick. The summer project will survey virtually all of Kubrick’s major films, inquiring specifically into the role of violence in his overall film aesthetics and situating his films within the context of Cold War culture and popular culture.  

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The overall goal for the summer research project will be for the research fellow to learn, ideally, how to derive worthy scholarly questions from popular culture and cultural history. The research fellow will also learn a lot about the films and filmmaker in question.  

Specific tasks will include: 

• Reviewing the films and discussing how to present them to students. (Prospective research fellows should know, if they don’t already, that the films contain graphic violence, sexual violence, and other objectionable material.)
• Compiling and reviewing production and marketing materials about the films, scholarly literature, and related media—that is to say, not just retrieving things from the library (compiling) but also reading and evaluating (reviewing) the research materials.
• Selecting images and creating film clips.  

A typical workday is probably best be broken down into categories of tasks that require serious intellectual work (reading and evaluating an article), those that are more passive and likely enjoyable (watching the films, a task that will take more than 25 hours), and those that are more typical RA work (going to the library, making PDFs, clips). 

Outcomes:

The research fellow will see a quick result of their work, when I teach my course in spring 2026 (they don’t have to take the course). Influence on my scholarship will take longer to see, but will ultimately be visible in a published article. The work could be useful for students considering an academic career, of course, but should be thought-provoking for students interested in the film and entertainment industries. Kubrick was a unique and influential filmmaker, typical of Hollywood in some ways and not at all in others. 

Mentoring plan:

I will be in touch with the research fellow frequently, meeting at least once per week.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

Basic library and research skills are necessary (this is the start of a project, so advanced skills aren’t as crucial), as is comfort working with media files, and a basic interest in the subject. 

Elizaveta Mnatsakanova: Visual Poetry and Visual Art

Supervisor:

Stephanie Sandler, Ernest E. Monrad Professor, Slavic Languages & Literatures

Project overview:

I am embarking this summer on a new research project about the visual poetry and visual artistry of two long-lived Russian women poets. This SHARP proposal focuses on Elizabeth Mnatsakanova (1922-2019) https://slavic.fas.harvard.edu/news/elizaveta- mnatsakanova-1922-2019 ; the other poet is Ry Nikonova (1942-2014).

Mnatsakanova’s papers were acquired by Houghton Library over the last two decades and catalogued last year (HOLLIS Houghton MS Russ 160 and 2006 M-7). I have used them in my teaching, written about the poetry, and assembled a significant bibliography on the poet. But the archive is now vast. My first goal is to work through more of the material, assess its components and scope. My research questions focus on the relationship between the visual and the verbal in her work, and the multilingual poems and artwork.

As a scholar of literature, I have taken the primacy of the verbal for granted, but I want to test that belief by looking much more closely at the art. And the mix of languages in the work should test the claim that this is “Russian” poetry. Mnatsakanova also uses Latin and especially German in her poetry and collages; creating an inventory of the multilingual objects will be useful.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

A student research assistant would work through the materials, guided by specific questions from me. A student with art historical training might also do further investigation of the visual vocabulary of the artwork, including the figures and cover art in Mnatsakanova’s hand-made poetry books. A student with strong German and Latin might be more oriented to the texts that draw on those languages.

Daily activities would include sitting in the Houghton reading room taking notes on the materials; doing research to understand elements in the books, drawings, letters, and other materials; discussing the work with me and others on the Houghton or Harvard Art Museum staff. The first week of work, possibly more, is likely to have the student simply reading up on Mnatsakanova and studying her publications, a process I would closely guide.

Mentoring plan:

I will meet with the student and train them in detail about Mnatsakanova’s work and about archival research (I would also enlist Christine Jacobson, Houghton curator extraordinaire, in the latter). The student would gain invaluable experience working in an archive, and would learn about poetry, visual art, memoirs, drafts, hand-made poetry books.

During the summers, I am in Cambridge often for my own library work. I would launch the student’s work and set up in person check-ins. We would work with the archival materials together for several sessions spread out over the summer. We would also use Zoom to stay in close touch.

Prerequisites/Selection Criteria:

Ideally, a working knowledge of Russian, German, modern poetry, and the visual arts. A tall order, I realize. But there are many parts to the project, and I can imagine it benefitting my research and the student even if all these skills aren’t in place. Good Russian is pretty much a prerequisite, though, as so much of the material is in Russian.

Community-Oriented Documentation of African Languages

Supervisor:

Kathryn Franich, Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Director of PhonLab

Project Overview:

The Harvard Phonetics and Phonology Lab (PhonLab) is dedicated to studying the sound systems of human languages, and particularly those spoken in areas of Central and West Africa. A part of our work is also devoted to documenting elements of these languages for future generations of speakers, since many of Africa’s indigenous languages are losing speakers, making them endangered or threatened. Community-oriented language documentation involves the creation of linguistic materials—such as recordings, texts and other digital resources—which can be accessed by speakers of the language and used in any way they see fit. These materials can often be used alongside traditional pedagogical materials in educational contexts, or they can be used to build awareness of cultural practices with younger generations of speakers. Our current documentation efforts have culminated in the recording of various narratives, traditional stories, and songs from speakers of Medʉmba and Kejom, two Grassfields Bantu languages from Cameroon, and various dialects of Igbo, spoken in Nigeria.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

We are seeking Harvard undergraduates who are creative and motivated to help us prepare these materials to be maximally useful to native speakers from these communities and their families. Among other things, we will be creating a website and videos with subtitles and animations in these languages. As a part of the project, we will also be seeking new ideas from students about materials that might connect with younger generations of speakers, which we will then implement. Toward the beginning of the summer, students will read papers with Prof. Franich and lab members to learn about the issue of language endangerment and the goals of language documentation. During this period, the student will also learn about the languages they will be working on and receive training (if necessary) in video editing and web design software used to create materials for the project. They will then work on preparing various text and video materials to be archived and presented to the language community later in the summer. Here is a sample timeline:

• Week 1: Initial meeting with Prof. Franich, background reading and discussion with research team
• Week 2: Training in software; planning, brainstorming, and timeline for documentary products
• Week 3: Student begins work with video materials, including transcription and video editing; student also works on website content
• Week 4: Student continues work with video materials and website; additional brainstorming session with the Prof. Franich for new materials spearheaded by the student
• Week 5: Student submits video materials to online archives; begins work on animations for stories and begins implementing new ideas for documentary products
• Weeks 6-8: Student completes story animations, website updates, and additional materials they have developed
• Week 9: Presentation of materials (via Zoom) to members of language communities
• Week 10: Wrap-up

Depending on the student’s existing skills set, we may also have the student employ computational methods for sorting and classifying aspects of our documentary data.

Mentoring Plan:

The student will meet weekly with Prof. Franich of the project to receive training and assignments, to check in about progress, and to brainstorm new ideas for the documentation project. Meetings will generally occur in person, in the Harvard PhonLab. On rare weeks where the Prof. Franich is traveling, meetings will take place via Zoom. The student will also have their own dedicated workspace in the PhonLab, and will have daily contact with the lab’s manager and other members of the summer research team.

Selection Criteria:

Preference will be given to students with at least some level of linguistics training (even just a single course, such as Ling 83 or Ling 101). Ideal candidates will also have experience with video editing software and/or website design, but these are not requirements.

Experience in any programming language (but especially Python or HTML) also highly valued.

The Platinum Age of Gospel Music

Project Supervisor:

Charrise Barron, Assistant Professor of Music.

Project Overview:

This public humanities project explores gospel music since the 1990s and develops ideas connected to the book project The Platinum Age of Gospel, which both surveys the American national gospel music scene from 1993 to 2013 and points to contemporary trends in the gospel music industry. This summer research project is deeply rooted in ethnomusicology, the study of religion, and the study of African American culture and history. The project seeks to engage in and present research for gospel scholars, practitioners, and fans alike through a podcast series and interactive website. The project will involve podcast series design and developing content for an interactive website on gospel music of the platinum age and beyond. The podcast will discuss current trends in gospel music as well as interview contemporary artists about their experiences in the platinum age and beyond.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The SHARP Fellow will assist Prof. Barron in research by engaging in some combination of following activities.

• Help strategize web/podcast series, interviewees, and interview schedule.
• Research and summarize historical narratives, biographies, and other information that can be referenced for interviews or interactive web content. This includes reading and summarizing gospel scholarship as well as magazines, e-zines, and other forms of online content.
• Study prominent churches and popular gospel artists to identify and summarize trends and innovations in gospel music performance.
• Support web and podcast development, such as supporting recording and editing audio and/or video footage for web/podcast/social media.

Outcomes:

The SHARP fellow will develop research skills using primary and secondary sources and strengthen project planning skills. The fellow will develop understanding of contemporary gospel music and the music industry. Further, the fellow will gain hands-on experience implementing a public humanities project, including development of online content for both scholarly and general audiences.

Mentoring plan:

In the first meeting, Prof. Barron and the SHARP fellow will develop a timeline and set of expectations for the summer that can be adjusted as needed. During weekly meetings—usually in person, the team will talk through new discoveries, review accomplishments, troubleshoot problems, confirm details concerning remaining deliverables, and engage in recording. While regular meetings, interviews, or other recordings usually take place in person, research and writing can be done remotely. When needed, additional meetings via Zoom may be scheduled. In all, Prof. Barron aims to provide an environment in which the SHARP fellow can ask questions and explore not only gospel music research, but also learn about engaging in research in the Humanities and academia more broadly

Selection Criteria:

The SHARP fellow should be self-motivated, detail-oriented, and interested in gospel music. The fellow should also have proficiency in using computers and the ability to learn new technical skills quickly. Experience with or ability to learn graphic design, audio editing, and/or video editing is very helpful. Experience with Keynote, OBS, HTML, WordPress, or Python is also helpful but not at all required.

Reconstructing Egyptian Papyri from the Pyramid Age (2300 BCE)

Supervisor:

M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro, Junior Research Fellow

Project overview:

Do you like puzzles, mysteries, and ancient history? Help to reconstruct the oldest undeciphered papyri in the world! Beneath the ancient Egyptian ruins of a temple in the southern island of Elephantine lay an important collection of enigmatic papyri that someone once shredded into pieces. The documents, discovered in 1890, were subsequently donated to the Brooklyn Museum and then forgotten… until now! What do the texts say? Will they tell us what was the original function of the mysterious Elephantine pyramid? Do they inform about everyday life and town gossip from an ancient Egyptian household? Could they contain excerpts of the oldest religious texts in the world? Will we discover a southern provincial government of Egypt working in parallel with the northern capital in Memphis? Why were they torn apart? To answer these questions, we first need to match the hundreds of papyrus fragments and compose a document that Egyptologists can translate and interpret.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

As a SHARP fellow your main tasks will involve working with the photographs of the fragments: 1) adjusting the size of the photos so that they all are true to scale, 2) researching parallel archives, 3) identifying fragments with common characteristics, 4) generate a database of fragments. From there you can experiment and propose your own ways to make papyrus-matching more efficient, such as using artificial intelligence, or creating a virtual or printed puzzle with the fragments. Finding matches is a plus, and I hope that you will get so hooked as to propose your own reconstructions, but it is not a requirement.

Mentoring plan:

We will be meeting in person, and preference will be given to candidates staying on campus that can use Harvard library, printing facilities, and attend the transcription tutorials. We will have a first introductory meeting to learn about ancient Egyptian history, papyrology, photoshop, and your first tasks. Then, we will meet one to two times weekly, depending on your progress, to discuss findings, explore research/reconstruction options, and learn how to transcribe the ancient Egyptian text from hieratic to hieroglyphic script. Our meetings later in the summer can also discuss potential fragment matching and content translation.

Outcomes:

You will learn about ancient Egyptian history, philological edition techniques, archival work, and introductory notions of ancient Egyptian writing and language. You will additionally develop your research and intellectual skills, for the project’s success will depend on your unprompted use of such additional sources as pattern matching software or bibliography on Egyptian script. You will be an active thinker in the project and are welcome to use your creativity and brainstorm your own ways to reconstruct this 4,000 year old puzzle!

Prerequisites:

You should be passionate about ancient history, patient, and eager to learn about an underrepresented culture and writing system. I will provide you with all the necessary training in Photoshop and Illustrator to complete this project, but if you have any additional knowledge in graphical design or pattern recognition, even better!

Greening the Francophonie: Exploring Sustainability and Environment in Language Pedagogy (Brisson)

Supervisor:

Claire-Marie Brisson, Preceptor in Romance Languages and Literatures

Project Overview:

The Francophonie, encompassing over 88 member states and over 300 million speakers, faces many environmental challenges. From Indigenous land rights to climate change, the French-speaking world is currently underrepresented in environmentally focused pedagogies that examine how best to integrate climate into the curriculum in higher education and at the secondary level. This ten-week SHARP project invites an undergraduate fellow to join me in exploring how sustainability and environmental awareness can be seamlessly integrated into the French-language classroom through a pedagogical research project.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The undergraduate student will learn the basics of design thinking as applied to pedagogical course design to ideate, prototype, and research potential confluences between pedagogy, Indigenous land rights and environment, health and society, climate and culture, environmental concerns (past, present, and future), and the challenges of sustainable tourism. We will work together to analyze the state of the field, focusing our research to better understand how educators in higher education and at the secondary level are (or are not) addressing historical and contemporary conflicts over land use and resource extraction in French- speaking regions like Quebec, New Caledonia, and the Amazon, investigating the impact of environmental degradation on public health, and analyzing how climate change shapes cultural practices, traditions, and artistic expressions in various parts of the Francophonie in their language classrooms and through curricula.

A Day in the Life:

• Morning: Researching specific topics, brainstorming activity ideas, and collaborating on lesson plan frameworks,
• Afternoon: Developing multimedia resources, ideating about interactive activities,
• Once a week: engaging and exchanging with Claire-Marie Brisson.

Outcomes:

The final deliverable will result in a pedagogical article that explores the state of the field, with the SHARP program participant’s name listed as a contributor.

Between June 3 and August 16, 2024, the fellow can expect to:

• Learn about the development of innovative teaching materials and the design thinking process used to analyze and interpret research to ideate, prototype, and test potential pedagogical outcomes,
• Gain valuable experience in curriculum research and development,
• Engage with topics relating to the environment, the Francophone world, education, and sustainability,
• Create a presentation outlining what resources may currently be used in language pedagogy (state of the field) and suggestions for future-thinking before the publication of the article.

Mentoring plan:

• Weekly individual meetings to provide guidance, address questions, and offer feedback on research progress,
• Hands-on guidance on research methodology,
• Introduction to the field of environmental humanities and its connections to French studies.
• Ongoing support throughout the research and presentation process.

Selection Criteria and Prerequisites:

• Interest in environmental issues, sustainability, and interdisciplinary learning,
• Intermediate French language proficiency (B1) or reading competency,
• Openness to creative thinking and willingness to experiment with innovative teaching approaches.

The Binary Decoder Initiative in Spanish

Supervisor:

Xiomara H, Feliberty-Casiano, Preceptor in Spanish

Project Overview:

The Binary Decoder Initiative proposes an insightful summer research project exploring alternative grammar structures in Spanish to represent non-binary genders. The project aims to identify and categorize articles and academic materials that offer cognizance into alternatives to the traditional binary gendered structures in Spanish and analyze their social use and potential impact on the language and its speakers.

The Binary Decoder is a start-up project that aims to review, curate and share materials addressing non-binary genders in romance languages. The project received a finalist mention from the Harvard Culture Lab Innovation Fund (2021), and the team is still working to make it happen. A first version of the collaboration is already online through this link: https://binarydecoder.my.canva.site/.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The student fellow will actively participate in the research project, conducting research, categorizing articles, analyzing linguistic data, and providing weekly progress reports on their findings. The fellow will acquire valuable research skills such as information literacy, critical thinking, and data analysis throughout the summer of 2024. They will also be encouraged to contribute creatively to the project by proposing educational materials to divulge in the future about alternative grammar structures for Spanish language students or suggesting new research avenues for future academic articles. All their contributions will be presently and futurely recognized as part of the research team and authorship.

Outcomes:

Overall, the Binary Decoder Initiative offers a unique opportunity for a student fellow to contribute to a significant research project while gaining valuable research skills, language exposition and experience. This initiative represents a small step towards creating a more equitable scholarly society where all individuals can express their gendered identities fully and authentically.

Mentoring Plan:

The project supervisor will actively train and oversee the student fellow throughout the summer, providing guidance on research methods, assisting with data analysis, and offering feedback on their progress. The student will collaborate with the RLL Department and benefit from the computer lab on the 4th floor of Boylston Hall. Weekly meetings with the fellow will be scheduled to discuss their progress, provide feedback, and offer mentorship.

Selection Criteria:

To be eligible for this fellowship, the student should have a strong interest in the power of language and its impact on culture and society. They should have a basic understanding of Spanish grammar, read and comprehend academic articles in Spanish, and report back in English. Advanced research skills are not required, but the student should be willing to learn and have a strong work ethic.

Walpole Prison 1973

Supervisor:

Thomas Dichter, Lecturer in History & Literature

Project Overview:

The undergraduate fellow will engage with archival materials, prison activism, digital humanities, and public history. The fellow will assist with the ongoing development of the Walpole 1973 digital archive, which will make publicly accessible the surviving records of a remarkable episode in the history of prison organizing. The National Prisoners Reform Association (NRPA) - Walpole Chapter was a prisoners’ labor union formed in 1972. In March of 1973, when the guards at Massachusetts Correctional Institution-Walpole went on strike, the NPRA took over the operations of the prison and ran it successfully and peacefully for two months. The Walpole 1973 digital archive project is making the records of the NPRA publicly accessible for the first time.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The student will assist with scanning and cataloging original archival documents. In addition to building the digital archive, the student will also help develop the user interface, including curation of collections, timelines, and/or narrative presentations through which the public can access and explore the materials. The student will gain skills working with archival documents, with the Omeka platform, and with public-facing historical scholarship. The fellow may also help expand the Walpole 1973 to include other prison history documents from Massachusetts in the 1970s, including the prisoner-led organizing in MCI-Concord and MCI-Norfolk. The student may also assist in expanding the oral history component of the archive, identifying and interviewing participants in these historical events to supplement the documents with personal narratives. The day-to-day of the position will involve both hands-on work with archival sources to create digital images and records, choosing materials to highlight in the collection, and developing ways to share the story of the NPRA with the public through the website through narrative and visual forms.

Mentoring Plan, Skill Development, Outcomes:

I will meet with the student in person on a weekly basis to review progress with the digitization, discuss materials the student encountered, troubleshoot technical issues, and discuss the Walpole documents in historical context. This will be a particularly useful opportunity for a student with interests in history, American studies, social movements, and incarceration. In terms of skill development, students will: learn fundamentals of cataloging, such as Dublin Core Metadata Terms; practice historical analysis to contextualize documents for website users; explore public humanities by working to make the archive intelligible and useful to a broader public that includes students, researchers, and others; and study prison history to deepen their understanding of the events of 1973 at Walpole—including background readings in the U.S. prison system’s development since the 18th century, the uprisings of the 1970s, and the subsequent era of mass incarceration that remains ongoing. They will also gain grant-writing experience as we collaborate on a proposal to Mass Humanities to support the implementation of the student’s ideas through website development. The student will be mentored regarding the digitization itself, the historical background (I will offer recommendations to guide their reading). I will provide feedback on written pieces for the website and engage with the student to investigate how this project may be useful for their own academic and professional interests going forward. I have worked with undergraduate students already on this project through my course “Prison Abolition,” offered through the Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship—along the way I have fine-tuned and streamlined the digitization procedures. Our work this summer will build on this foundation. As a faculty member in History and Literature who advises senior thesis and junior paper writers, I consider mentoring undergraduates to be one of the most important and rewarding aspects of my job.

Prerequisites/Selection Criteria:

There are no prerequisites for this position. The ideal student will be enthusiastic about working with original sources, patient and attentive to detail, and curious about the historical events this archive documents. Experience with website design is helpful, but not required. Interest in or experience of any kind with the prison system is also a plus.

Propose Your Own Houghton Library Project

Project Supervisors

Kristine Greive, Head of Teaching and Learning for Archives and Special Collections

Zoe Hill, Reference Librarian, Houghton Library

Project Overview

Houghton Library is pleased to invite Harvard undergraduates to work with our collections in the summer with support of SHARP. These fellowships are designed to fully support a summer of work at Houghton, Harvard’s world-class rare books and manuscripts library.

Houghton is home to the world famous and the almost entirely unknown, the ancient and the contemporary, the enduring and the ephemeral; as a researcher, a practitioner, an experimenter, we want to know what you can do with these materials. During a fellowship, fellows work closely with library staff to discover new areas of interest or to delve into ongoing projects. Past fellows have created an opera; identified and filled gaps in the literature about the American and British birth control movements; produced a series of podcasts on poetry and the archives; made surprising discoveries about the origins of American theater at Harvard; explored the life and works of John James Audubon; and the development of W.V. Quine's philosophical work; created interactive fiction; written books and poetry; made art and created exhibitions. We invite proposals for this summer on any topic or discipline supported by our collections. Creative, digital, research, and performance projects are all welcome, as are those we haven't thought of yet.

Successful project proposals tend to be driven by your passions and questions and include concentrated work with collection materials at Houghton. Fellows meet regularly with Houghton staff and attend tailored workshops throughout the program, building skills and knowledge in research project management, primary source research, and book/archival history. Previous experience with rare books and manuscripts is not required.

Proposing a Project

Applicants should be prepared to describe their proposed project, including specific information about the Houghton Library materials or kinds of materials the project would make use of as well as the outcomes or manifestation/s for the project. This proposal narrative is limited to approximately 500 words. In the SHARP application, this proposal will be included as your first essay response.

To schedule a time to talk with a Houghton librarian about your project in advance, please email us at houghton_library@harvard.edu

Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments

Supervisors:

Hannah Marcus, John and Ruth Hazel Associate Professor of the Social Sciences and Interim Faculty Director of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments

Project overview:

The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments is eager to recruit 2 undergraduates to join our team for summer 2024. CHSI SHARP/BLISS fellows will learn about how university museums function and will participate in the following activities:

• Learning how to handle historical scientific instruments
• Working with staff to curate a mini exhibition that will be on display in the front foyer of the History of Science Department
• Familiarizing themselves with the permanent exhibition in the Putnam Gallery in order to be able to give student-led tours
• Participating in supervised cleaning, preservation, and documentation of objects in the collection

Mentoring plan:

CHSI has a deep team of professionals covering different area of museum work including: curation, collections management, operations, and preservation. BLISS/SHARP fellows will be mentored by different team members for the various aspects of their work, but they should plan on being present for weekly all-staff meetings, and M-Th daily check-ins with their assigned daily lead. The incoming Executive Director will be their primary contact though they will also work closely with the faculty director, collections manager, curators, and project manager. On Fridays, fellows will be encouraged to read about and conduct research on the subject selected for their exhibition, and to continue to familiarize themselves with objects in the galleries in order to lead tours.

Prerequisites/Selection Criteria:

• Willingness to come to work in person 4 days per week
• Enthusiasm about hands-on work with historical collections
• Interest in history and the history of science

Mapping Potential Outbreaks of the Justinianic Plague and “First” Pandemic with the Science of the Human Past

Project Supervisor:

Michael McCormick, Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History

Project Overview:

In 541 CE, the Justinianic Pandemic, named for Emperor Justinian, of bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis) erupted. In subsequent years, the bubonic plague spread throughout the post-Roman world until its mysterious cessation around 750 CE, marking a significant tri-continental health event and, potentially, contributing to the end of antiquity; the significance of these sources and the impact of this pandemic are currently intensely debated. In recent years, ancient DNA (aDNA) of the bacterium Yersinia pestis has been detected in several early medieval cemeteries on the European continent, including a 6th-century cemetery in Bavaria, identified in 2013, where no known written source documents the Pandemic. The literary materials are crucial but uneven, with some geographic areas receiving more coverage than others; therefore, archaeological detection and phylogenetic reconstruction of the pathogen’s evolution complement the written record, providing irrefutable evidence of the spread and impact of various pathogens and even revealing visitations of the plague unpreserved in the written record yet indispensable to the study of past pandemics. As such, tracing the geographical spread of this pathogen can lend itself to identifying further sites of interest and expanding our understanding of the history and experience of the “First” Pandemic. Mapping outbreaks from known written sources as well as the pathogen aDNA preserved in identified victims, and using phylogeny and archaeology to establish the paths, contexts, and rhythms of the pathogen’s spread to track the recurrences and lethality of the Pandemic, offers a means of reconstructing the Pandemic’s impact that cannot be attained through the written record alone but rather through an interdisciplinary approach that accounts for both the literary and scientific evidence. Recent aDNA technological advances mean that identifying potential victims in anomalous burials has become the greatest challenge and yet the most promising development toward understanding the Pandemic. The Science of the Human Past (SoHP) at Harvard is actively engaged in this archaeoscientific and historical research, and incorporating this geospatial element is crucial to the work. 

Opportunity for the Fellow:

As an undergraduate researcher for the summer of 2024, you would collaborate with SoHP Pandemic researchers to improve and expand upon a spatiotemporal map for the entire Justinianic Pandemic, using SoHP’s full dataset of texts, burials, and genomes to track the pandemic as it spread and map the various waves or amplifications of this deadly disease. You would use digital humanities tools and your own creativity to craft an accessible teaching tool designed to be widely disseminated for anyone to access and understand. You would help create a map to enable unparalleled access to the literary and genetic evidence, providing critical understanding to international scholars and students on this early and impactful pandemic that dramatically shaped Afro-Eurasian history. Knowledge of ancient pandemics, and the pathogens behind them which still exist, elucidate the impacts and experiences of the current global pandemic of COVID-19 and potential future pandemics. It can provide new insight into the long-term evolution of this deadly pathogen (40-60% fatality in untreated cases today), which remains endemic in many parts of the globe, including the southwestern United States. Therefore, this project combines the sciences and humanities in a timely interdisciplinary opportunity.  

This project relies on a truly interdisciplinary approach, highlighting the interdependencies of hard sciences and the liberal arts. Without archaeological and historical studies, we would be unable to select individuals for testing and contextualizing the results. Without archaeoscience, it would be impossible to identify with certainty the pathogen(s) responsible for these events. By bringing the scientific advances of archaeology, history and archaeoscience together, the digital mapping of the First Pandemic pushes these disciplines beyond their traditional boundaries, enriching and expanding them all. This opportunity is for one student. All work can be conducted remotely.

Tasks:

• Working with known datasets and the SoHP Pandemic team;
• Locating outbreaks and burial sites on maps and atlases and converting these into entries in an existing geodatabase;
• Tracing the spread and recurrence of the pandemic from its origins to its endemic stage and, finally, its still-mysterious disappearance;
• Maintaining consistent communication with the team members with whom you are collaborating;
• Creating an interactive geospatial map using ArcGIS, complete with information including the location, timeline, sources, and any other relevant data concerning potential plague outbreaks throughout Europe, Asia, and North Africa;
• Reading scholarly research in history, archaeology, and several other disciplines and translating that information onto maps or databases for additional research applications, possibly even identifying new sources for analysis.
• Make existing datasets more accessible to specialist and non-specialist audiences.

Mentoring plan:

• Weekly meetings with faculty leads;
• Keeping in touch with the leadership team via Slack or email;
• Assignments made via Zoom tutorial, in which you will learn the basics of GIS software, how to build digital maps, story maps, and dashboards, and how to turn data science into an effective visual tool for wide dissemination. You will also learn how to create databases, how to coordinate work in a sizeable team, and how to quality-check and deliver a finished, reliable research dataset if applicable;
• Selected student may receive ongoing guidance when needed through email or Slack, in addition to in-person meetings with leadership.

Selection Criteria:

•    Proficiency in Microsoft Excel and/or Google Sheets. Familiarity with GIS is desirable, but not mandatory;
•    Foreign language abilities, such as Latin, Ancient Greek, French, German, Italian, and/or Arabic, are helpful but not required. 
•    Prior coursework in history or archaeology, particularly research experience, is useful but not mandatory;
•    Visual design creativity or prior experience creating a website is not required but helpful when working with ArcGIS Dashboard;
•    Discipline, enthusiasm, and enjoyment of a team environment working closely with senior researchers are essential.

Harvard Art Museums: Coins Recovery Project

Project Supervisor:

Laure Marest, Damarete Associate Curator of Ancient Coins, Harvard Art Museums

Jeff Steward, Director of Digital Infrastructure and Emerging Technology

Project Overview:

Have you ever dreamed of using your computer science skills to help solve a crime? If so, our project might just be what you are looking for.

In 1973, a portion of the coins kept in the Coin Room of the Harvard Art Museums were stolen in an orchestrated art theft, widely publicized at the time. The majority was recovered in the following years thanks to the hard work and dedication of a team of FBI agents, museums staff, Harvard students, and external consultants. However, hundreds of coins are still missing, and we are working to harness the power of new technology to try to locate them and return them to our collections.

The idea is to create a bot to crawl online auction databases in the hope of finding some of the missing coins. This is the last and crucial phase of a project that started in the Fall 2023 with archival work and will continue in the Spring 2024 to create a database of the missing coins.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

As a SHARP fellow your main tasks will involve conceiving, coding, and launching the crawler bot. You will learn about the Harvard Art Museums coin collection and museum records with our Curator of Ancient Coins, and learn problem solving and hone your computer science skills with our Director of Digital Infrastructure and Emerging Technology.

Meetings will be conducted remotely and in-person, depending on schedule. An introductory meeting will take place at the museums and include a handling session of ancient coins. Then, we will meet bi-weekly to discuss progress and troubleshoot. Later meetings, once the bot is launched, will involve looking at the resulting matches and discuss next steps.

Outcomes:

You will learn about ancient coins, the art market, practical uses for web scraping, and automation. You will explore natural language processing (NLP) and image feature detection techniques for building correlations between datasets. 

Our project is adaptable to your skills and experience. 

Selection Criteria:

You should be passionate about art and museums. This position will require strict confidentiality, patience, attention to details, and problem-solving skills. You should be able to follow guidance but also to work independently. You will need some experience coding with one of these high-level programming languages: Python, JavaScript, PHP. (Don't worry about being able to write clean code. Programming is messy.) You should also have a basic knowledge of data structures. Confidentiality required.

Harvard Art Museums: Citizenship, Law, and Interdisciplinary Teaching

Project Supervisors:

Jen Thum, Associate Director of Academic Engagement and Campus Partnerships and Research Curator, Harvard Art Museums

Camran Mani, Manager of Student Programs, Harvard Art Museums

Project overview:

The Harvard Art Museums welcomes applications from undergraduates of all disciplines for up to four SHARP Fellowships to research, develop, and lead museum-based education programs concerned with citizenship, law, and interdisciplinary teaching. The work of these Fellows will better equip the museums to be a resource to aspiring U.S. citizens in the Boston area, students and faculty at Harvard Law School, and the Harvard community more broadly. Fellows will also develop and lead original museum tours for the public. Delivered at least three or four times before the end of summer, a Fellow’s tour might highlight the museums’ work in the areas of citizenship, law, or interdisciplinary teaching; or it might feature a few works of art seen from a perspective informed by the Fellow’s work.

The SHARP Fellows’ research will draw on the intellectual, institutional, and artistic resources of the Harvard Art Museums, which feature works from the ancient world to the present, and from the Americas, Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Asia. In addition to primary and secondary source research with works of art and the museums’ files, the work will also involve meetings with staff in various departments, working collaboratively with the cohort of SHARP Fellows at the museums, and public speaking in the form of gallery tours.

Opportunity for the Fellows:

The SHARP Fellows will research, develop, and lead museum-based education programs concerned with citizenship, law, and interdisciplinary teaching. A main area of focus will be the museums’ U.S. Citizenship Course. Offered in partnership with Dorchester’s St. Mark Community Education Program, this free, 10-week course prepares aspiring U.S. citizens for the Naturalization Test, partly through student-led tours of American works in our galleries. Having offered this course four times in the last two years, we want to think afresh about the course’s lesson plans, structure, and publicity (e.g. how can we make the class shorter and easier to run while increasing its impact?) Carrying out this work will require the Fellows to be in touch with the course’s teachers and administrators to learn about their experience and ideas; their work will also need to be based on conversations with curators about any upcoming changes to the galleries.

Another area of focus will be interdisciplinary teaching and campus curricular partnerships. Fellows will help generate ideas and develop plans for a series of professional development workshops for Harvard Law School students. A new initiative, this series will be modeled on Seeing in Art and Medical Imaging, the museums’ longstanding workshop series for radiology residents at Harvard Medical School. The goal is for law (and possibly also pre-law) students to work on the skills of their profession through encounters with works of art and for the museums to get a better sense of how our collections already speak to legal concerns. Fellows will help identify these skills and concerns and work with museum staff to propose how they might be addressed through object-based interactions at the museums. Beyond this series, fellows will gather data and plans from past interdisciplinary course visits to the museums and create object lists for special topics as a resource to jump start work with other potential faculty partners. They might help museum staff brainstorm for a future publication about interdisciplinary teaching. Fellows may also assist museum staff in planning for Fall 2024 orientation programming, where their perspectives as current students will be of great value.

Additionally, the SHARP Fellow will research and design original public tours for visitors to the Harvard Art Museums. The Fellow will participate in a training program with Harvard Art Museums staff to gain knowledge of the museums’ collections, develop skills in critical thinking, visual analysis, public speaking, and leadership. Training will draw on scholarship and practice from multiple fields of knowledge. These tours will most likely highlight aspects of the museums’ work with community partners and how it has affected the Fellows’ own perspective on art. Fellows will also be encouraged, but not required, to create content for social media (e.g. the Instagram account @harvardarthappens) that captures aspects of their tour, research, or experience.

Mentoring plan:

To facilitate their independent and collaborative work, the Fellows will have access to a spacious workspace in the Harvard Art Museums building at 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge. They will have regular (approximately weekly) check-ins with their supervisors and a sequence of orientation events specially designed to familiarize them with relevant staff and resources at the Harvard Art Museums.

Outcomes:

The SHARP Fellows will gain experience with interdisciplinary research and teaching, collaborative work in a museum setting, working closely with museum professionals, designing academic and public programs with multiple stakeholders for diverse audiences, and the development of academic and community partnerships. In addition, the Fellows will gain in-depth knowledge of specific objects and collection areas they will research to prepare their tours, as well as general knowledge of museum practice through structured and unstructured learning opportunities with educators, curators, conservators, and other professional museum staff. By the end of the Fellowship, the Fellows should have knowledge of the Harvard Art Museums’ collections, education programs and art programs related to U.S. citizenship, law, and interdisciplinary teaching, improved research and communication skills, familiarity with different models of building curricular and community partnerships, and experience creating educational programs for a range of audiences.

Selection criteria:

No art history or museum experience necessary, but an interest in U.S. history, citizenship (in any context/country), and/or law, and the power of art and art museums to open up space for interdisciplinary dialogue and exploration is essential. Strong research skills and comfort with public speaking are required. Any of the following would be a plus: U.S history and/or pre-law training, tour-guiding experience, ESOL teaching/tutoring experience, and video editing skills/experience.

Data visualization of an architectural-sculptural monument

Supervisor:

Eugene Wang, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art and Founding Director of Harvard FAS CAMLab

Project Overview:

Have you ever heard about a thesaurus in an architectural-structural form? Built in the 13th century, the twin pagodas at the Kaiyuan Monastery in Quanzhou, China, amount to just that. Featured therein are 160 figures in sculptural relief, mostly Buddhist characters, 40 Buddhist narrative scenes, and 48 panels of flora and fauna. The twin structures are propped up by 16 dwarfish atlas figures. The figural assemble spatially distributed between two five-story structures call for ways of data visualization for legibility and easy understanding.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

• Research prototypes - search for comparable cases and treatment by others in data visualization that provide the solution to the problem.
• Work with designers in adopting or modifying existing prototypes.
• In the case of no satisfying prototypes, try to conceptually design a model that could plot or map out the iconographic program architecturally or schematically.
• Explore ways of correlating the spatially arranged figures and scenes with other means of representation, e.g., diagrams, etc.
• Work with designers in conceptual blueprint with the aim of staging an online or digitally choreographed exhibition.

SHARP Independent Research Fellowships

In addition to the menu of SHARP projects presented by faculty or led by our institutional partners, this year SHARP is inviting students to propose their own independent research projects on topics in the arts and humanities, broadly defined. For SHARP independent research projects, applicants must describe the proposed research project in detail and the scope of the work for the 10-week summer research period, including specific information about the resources and materials to be engaged on campus. Students must also identify a faculty mentor for the research project. In the SHARP application, your independent project proposal will be included as your first essay response.

Please note: For students proposing independent research projects, the academic reference letter should, in part, specifically address the project and your preparedness to undertake it.

Research Mentor Confirmation Letter

A brief note from your research mentor is also required, providing details about the proposed project and their involvement over the summer. If your academic recommender is also your summer research mentor, the letter of recommendation can also count as the confirmation, and you do not need to provide a separate mentor letter.

When confirmed, the faculty mentor should email their confirmation letter in pdf format to undergradresearch@fas.harvard.edu with SHARP and [YOUR LAST NAME] in the subject line. If you do not have your mentor confirmed by the application deadline, please have them email their confirmation letter as soon as possible.

Harvard Art Museums: Arthur K. and Mariot F. Solomon Collection Exhibition

Project Supervisor:

A. Cassandra Albinson, Head, Division of European and American Art, and Margaret S. Winthrop Curator of European Art
Marina Kliger, Rousseau Curatorial Fellow in European Art

Project Overview:

The Harvard Art Museums welcomes applications from undergraduates of all disciplines for up to two SHARP Fellowships to conduct in-depth research for the upcoming exhibition of the Arthur K. and Mariot F. Solomon collection (summer 2025).

Bequeathed to the Harvard Art Museums in 2021, the Solomon collection includes prints, drawings, paintings, and sculpture by European and American artists from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Arthur K. Solomon (1912-2004), a professor and research scientist at the Harvard Medical School, became interested in art as a young man through the influence of notable acquaintances like photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, dealer Justin Thannhauser, and Harvard professor and museum director Paul Sachs. Mariot (“Marny”) F. Solomon (1932-2020) studied at Radcliffe and, though she did not complete her degree, remained close to Harvard, working as an assistant to art history professors Frederick Deknatel and Charles Kuhn and befriending museum donors and staff. Their collection, amassed quietly over the course of nearly a century and little known, is one of the most important donations of art in the history of the Harvard Art Museums.

The exhibition will highlight three distinct areas of the Solomons’ collecting: early modern European prints acquired almost exclusively by Marny; modern European and American art assembled largely by Arthur; and post-war American art the couple collected together in the 1970s and 80s. While this arrangement privileges the sometimes-conflicting tastes of the donors, interpretive materials like exhibition didactics and an audio experience will highlight other individuals whose agency brought these artworks to Harvard and whose perspectives expand their interpretation.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The SHARP Fellow(s) will be an integral part of the exhibition and will collaborate with curatorial staff to research 1) selected artworks in the Solomon collection; 2) the lives and collecting practices of the Solomons, as well as their art world contacts; and 3) other individuals who came into contact with works in their collection, including artists, critics, dealers, collectors, art historians, former and current Harvard students, and museum staff.

The SHARP Fellow(s) will utilize resources found in libraries, university and museum archives, and curatorial records, and may be asked to conduct interviews with museum staff. The Fellow(s) will work closely with exhibition co-curators and have the opportunity to interface with departments like Museum Archives, Conservation, Editorial, Design, Digital Infrastructure and Emerging Technology, and Academic and Public Programs.

Outcomes:

The Fellow(s)’ findings will support the production of exhibition didactics, including labels and galley texts; an oral history project documenting the collection’s formation by the Solomons and acquisition by the Harvard Art Museums; and an audio experience to accompany the exhibition that will animate the voices of individuals linked to the collection.

The Fellow(s) will gain experience in many of the steps that go into the development of a special exhibition. They will develop their research skills and learn how information gleaned from a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, including personal papers, art reviews, oral histories, and art historical publications, can inform interpretive materials, foster institutional transparency, and contribute to a broader understanding and awareness of how artworks come to be in private and museum collections.

Selection Criteria:

Candidates should be curious, persistent, and detail-oriented researchers with excellent writing and organizational skills. They should be able to follow guidance, but also to work independently. Interest in art, art history, collecting, and/or museums, as well as reading knowledge of French, would be helpful but not required.

Reconstructing Egyptian Papyri from the Pyramids Age (2300 BCE)

Project Supervisor:

M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro, Junior Research Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows

Project Overview:

Do you like puzzles, mysteries, and ancient history? Help to reconstruct the oldest undeciphered papyri in the world! Beneath the ancient Egyptian ruins of the pyramid of an unknown pharaoh in the southern island of Elephantine lay an important collection of enigmatic papyri that someone once shredded into pieces. The documents, discovered in 1890, were subsequently donated to the Brooklyn Museum and then forgotten… until now! What do the texts say? Will they tell us which king was buried in the Elephantine pyramid? Do they inform about everyday life and town gossip from an ancient Egyptian household? Could they contain excerpts of the oldest religious texts in the world? Will we discover a southern provincial government of Egypt working in parallel with the northern capital in Memphis? Why were they torn apart? To answer these questions, we first need to match the hundreds of papyrus fragments and compose a document that Egyptologists can translate and interpret.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

As a SHARP fellow your main tasks will involve preparing the images for matching, including sorting through the roughly 3500 photos of the fragments, selecting the most informative pieces, arranging the fragments in visually efficient plates, and producing facsimiles. From there you can experiment and propose your own ways to make papyrus-matching more efficient, such as using artificial intelligence, or creating a virtual or printed puzzle with the fragments. Finding matches is a plus, and I hope that you will get so hooked as to propose your own reconstructions, but it is not a requirement.

Meetings will be conducted remotely and in-person, depending on schedule. We will have a first introductory meeting to learn about ancient Egyptian history, papyrology, photoshop, and your first tasks. Then, we will meet one to two times weekly, depending on your progress, to discuss findings, explore research/reconstruction options, and continue training on illustrator-facsimile production. Our meetings later in the summer can also discuss potential fragment matching and content translation.

Outcomes:

You will learn about ancient Egyptian history, philological edition techniques, including the use of photoshop and illustrator, and the process of facsimile production. Depending on your interest and progress, you may gain some introductory notions of ancient Egyptian writing and language. You will additionally develop your research and intellectual skills, for the project’s success will depend on your unprompted use of such additional sources as pattern matching software or bibliography on Egyptian script. You will be an active thinker in the project and are welcome to use your creativity and brainstorm your own ways to reconstruct this 4,000 year old puzzle!

Selection Criteria:

You should be passionate about ancient history, patient, and eager to learn about an underrepresented culture and writing system. I will provide you with all the necessary training in Photoshop and Illustrator to complete this project, but if you have any additional knowledge in graphical design or pattern recognition, even better!

Collective Reconstructions: Genre and Historical Trauma in Argentinean Cinema

Project Supervisor

Jennifer Alpert, Lecturer, Committee on Degrees in History & Literature

Project Overview

The January 6th insurrection in 2021 brought the danger of dictatorship close to home for the United States, a country that dubs itself the land of the free. At this juncture, Latin America’s history of interrupted democracy offered a model to understand the dangers of authoritarianism, and the means available to resist it. As extreme right-wing movements resurface around the world, culture remains a critical tool against the perils of dictatorship and its legacies. Latin America’s long history of tyranny, repression, and impunity reveals that—in national traditions where fiction has often addressed either explicitly or allegorically what journalism did or could not—culture has mediated moments of historical trauma as countries grapple with the consequences of state terrorism and political instability.

This project involves working closely with Professor Alpert on an interdisciplinary book-length project that reflects on the role of cultural resistance in keeping democracy alive and ensuring human rights abuses never happen again through one key case study: Argentina. In a country that confronted six periods of dictatorship since 1930, each more repressive than the last, how has fiction represented and mediated the consequences of tyranny? Considering that Argentina’s last military dictatorship (1976–1983) left a bloody legacy of 30,000 disappeared and many more survivors of torture and repression, how has popular cinema given expression to protest against state-sponsored violence and resulting social divisions? How do high-grossing nationally produced movies help a nation work through historical trauma, rebuild its community, reconstruct its identity, and sustain collective memory in a context of impunity? These are some of the questions that the analysis of selected popular fictional films and historical sources—such newspapers, testimonies, and speeches—will help elucidate. The project pays particular attention to medium (cinema) and genre (crime thrillers, science fiction, melodramas, musicals) to understand the rhetorical devices surrounding dictatorship in Argentina and the aesthetic codes that have surfaced or been repurposed as forms of resistance to ensure a democratic future.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The SHARP Fellow will help Professor Alpert research various aspects of this project in 20th and 21st century primary sources that include films, photographs, specialized magazines, newspapers, legislation, and multiple forms of personal testimony (among others). The interests, abilities, and insights of the fellow will help to shape the work significantly. The fellow will meet regularly with Professor Alpert and under her guidance and mentorship, will prepare summaries as well as preliminary analyses of the findings and reflect on the significance they have in the broader project.

Selection Criteria:

The SHARP Fellow will ideally be: a resourceful, curious, and self-motivated researcher with attention to detail and good organization skills as well as Spanish reading fluency. An interest in the humanities is a must, as is an interest in fiction (specifically cinema). Prior knowledge of 20th and 21st century Latin American history (particularly Argentina) or histories of dictatorship and genocide would be helpful but not necessary. It is expected, however, that the fellow be interested in working with cultural primary sources.

Harvard Square and Cambridge MA

Project Supervisor

Suzanne Preston Blier, Allen Whitehill Clowes Chair of Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies

Project Overview

This project addresses Harvard Square and the City of Cambridge, our history, cultural legacy, and factors of change. Goals for the summer: I am looking for an individual who will help research, create visual content, and engage with local citizens here in helping to address issues involving Harvard Square and the city of Cambridge. Tasks will involve research in Cambridge archives (in person and online - such as the Historical Commission), creating visual content, and community outreach. I am looking for someone with a deep interest in contributing to the understanding and vitality of Harvard Square. This person will help to build new content (for example a set of web-based tours featuring Harvard Square historical events or cultural issues). A typical day: might include a 2-hour interview with a local person knowledgeable in the history of a key period. Transcribing the interview, plotting out a walking tour that would illuminate key related places in the area, and exploring other online walking tours to identify effective examples of this, and beginning the work of fashioning an online. Another day might involve using sketch-up or other software to fashion older buildings (now demolished) in key parts of Harvard Square and creating short videos or Tiktok projects highlighting one or another aspect of Cambridge history. Another multi-day task might involve identifying the names and sites of the first Puritans who lived in Cambridge circa 1630, working with online New England ancestry archives to gather information to add their names to the online open-source genealogy site, Wikitree and create a visualization of their occupations, their land holdings, and where their descendants ended up moving to once they left. Another multi-day work might be to trace the names and locations of our early 19th century African American community (Lewisville – near Garden and Concord Avenue), work with local groups exploring their history, add their names to Wikitree, and address the movement of some of the Lewis family members to Liberia. Another several-day set of work goals might be to create a teaching syllabus for area fourth-fifth grade students on Cambridge history drawing from changes in the Harvard Square area. Another possible task is to explore early area newspapers for references to the indigenous Massachusett members and from this create an annotated map of life in Harvard Square and Cambridge prior to the Puritan arrival.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

I will meet with the student twice a week (in some cases with other neighborhood or city leaders) and we will map out a work schedule for the week with specific goals. Through this project the student will learn important skills of online mapping, local research, effective community engagement, and well as other skills important to developing projects that emerge through this summer program. These skills will be important in terms of larger academic trajectory in areas ranging from urban planning, sociology, history, architecture and the environment. I do not plan to be away during the summer, but if it should happen, I will ask the student to meet with one of the other leaders of this larger Harvard Square and Cambridge project.

Selection Criteria:

I am looking for a self-starter who is willing to work with a diversity of others, someone who listens and is also able to provide new insights and is results oriented. No specific academic background per se is required, although a deeper interest in local history and urban planning will be important. Basic data gathering and analysis skills (including statistical analysis) are required, including basic proficiency in MS Office Suite (excel included). The ideal candidate would also have some arts or design acumen.

Urban Futures in History

Project Supervisor:

Bruno Carvalho, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and African and African American Studies; Co-Director of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative (HMUI)

Project Overview:

This project is affiliated with the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, which aims to encourage research and teaching on urbanization in its many forms. It involves working closely with Professor Carvalho on a book on how people imagined urban futures in the past, called The Invention of the Future: A Transatlantic History of Urbanization.

In modernity, cities became expressions of individual and collective aspirations. The expectation that the future will be radically different from the past emerged as a defining trait. This book recasts modern urbanization within a history of competing visions for the future. How did people in the past envision the cities of tomorrow, or their own futures in a changing world? What do expectations about the future tell us about how people made sense of their lives? This research traces the evolving perspectives of urban planners, and of urban dwellers that sought to overcome roles assigned to them based on gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, or social class. We will examine how they experienced and imagined cities as places of frustration and promise.

The book opens in the eighteenth century, when some intellectuals began to develop ideas about how they could shape humanity’s destiny. It covers a period when urban planning was premised on an understanding of progress as achievable and desirable, even though few agreed about what that meant. The book moves all the way to the present, where climate change creates another condition: catastrophic futures seem inevitable. Rather than succumbing to doomsterism or techno-boosterism, The Invention of the Future proposes that the history of urbanization can renew our capacity to envision and pursue large-scale transformations.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

Our research will cover a variety of urban projects, forecasts, and fictional representations, with an eye towards how the unplanned, the unintended, and the unexpected happen with frequency in urban history. We will discuss questions like: what can we learn from studying the past? How can culture, the arts, and new technologies push us to reimagine our own sense of what’s possible? Much of the remaining research will focus on the period since the 1950s. It will address both promising ongoing urban transformations, and how some of our current challenges result from unintended consequences of innovations once hailed as solutions, particularly the car.

The SHARP Fellow will help Professor Carvalho conduct research in sources including photographs, films, pop culture, magazines, newspapers, planning documents, literature, and oral histories. Since the research is in the final stages, some of the work will involve discussing drafts, helping to revise and clarify arguments for a broader audience, and mapping existing scholarship on specific topics.

The interests, abilities, and ingenuity of the fellow will shape the work in significant ways. The fellow will meet regularly with Professor Carvalho and will be expected to prepare brief summaries of the findings and to reflect on their potential significance to the broader project.

Selection Criteria:

The SHARP Fellow should be interested in urban issues in historical perspectives, and possess a love of reading. Prior knowledge of urban and cultural histories of the Americas, Europe and/or West Africa would be very helpful but is not necessary. It is expected, however, that the fellow be self-motivated, organized, and resourceful.

Reconstructing Life after Deindustrialization in the U.S. and France

Project Supervisor:

Lizabeth Cohen, Howard Mumford Jones Professor American Studies and Harvard Distinguished Service Professor, Department of History. This project is sponsored by the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative (HMUI).

Project Overview:

All Western industrialized countries flourished through industrialization during the 19^th and 20^th centuries. But beginning in the last third of the 20^th century, they restructured their economies as a result of a more globalized capitalism that moved production to the developing world and liberalized trade policies, technological innovations that slashed jobs, and other factors. The resulting “deindustrialization” shattered lives, broke communities, and tore the social fabric across vast stretches of the global landscape. How people and places navigated this great economic reordering varied from one nation to another as well as within any one country. Professor Cohen, who is an American historian of labor and urban life, is working with a co-author, a European historian, to write a book that will compare how two great Western democratic republics—the United States and France—experienced and coped with deindustrialization. Although these nations faced similar economic challenges and opportunities, they met the crisis in ways revealing of their national cultures, policy priorities, vested interests, and racial/ethnic and class profiles. This book will be unique in exploring how deindustrialization played out locally, regionally, and nationally within two very different countries.

The SHARP fellow will focus on reconstructing the personal experiences of individuals caught up in this enormous transformation. Those figures will include workers, family members, local merchants and other business owners, educators, public officials, union leaders, and many others who lives were affected by the dramatic collapse of manufacturing in the U.S. and France. The geographical focus on the U.S. side will be on the heavy industry region of Youngstown, Ohio to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The site of study in France will be the départements of the Nord and Lorraine. Sources to be consulted range from many oral history collections, newspapers, personal papers, creative expressions in writing and the arts, and other records that provide insight into obvious and more subtle ways that individuals found their lives upended and sought to redefine them.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The SHARP fellow must be a determined and imaginative researcher, capable of “reading between the lines” to understand people’s deepest thoughts and strategies. The fellow must be highly organized to keep careful track of research findings. And they should demonstrate strong writing ability, as often research findings will need to be communicated in well-constructed analytical memos. Professor Cohen will meet weekly with the fellow to discuss findings.

Selection Criteria:

The SHARP fellow selected should have had some experience doing research and have general familiarity with 20^th century history, particularly post-World War II. Ideally, the fellow will have strong reading ability in French as well as English, though French language is not a requirement for consideration.

Works in Progress Podcast

Project Supervisor:

Bree Edwards, Director, Harvard ArtLab
Kat Nakaji, Production and Technical Specialist, Harvard ArtLab

Project Overview:

The ArtLab welcomes applications for a research fellow to support the development of a podcast about contemporary art and the artists working in the ArtLab. If you are interested in storytelling, podcasts, writing, and contemporary art, this fellowship may interest you.

Works in Progress is a new podcast that explores the creative mind, artistic research, and how artists impact the world around us. More information at https://artlab.harvard.edu/media. The SHARP Fellow will research potential artists, write content, and learn about podcast development. This podcast is a platform for diverse and creative voices to be heard.

This show will focus on artists, designers, scientists, and engineers crossing disciplinary boundaries to solve some of today’s most pressing issues, such as climate change, food insecurity, education, and public health. ArtLab’s artists in residence will also inspire segments of this project.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The SHARP Fellow will work with the ArtLab’s director Bree Edwards. The Fellow can complete the research and writing remotely, if necessary, other activities will take place on site at the ArtLab. The first phase of this fellowship will include becoming with the first season of Works in Progress, looking at interview structures, and learning about the recording process. From there, you will begin research and writing for the upcoming session of interviews.

Outcomes:

We are developing creative ways to document research.  You will gain experience in script writing, speaking about contemporary artistic processes, audio recording, and podcast production.

Selection Criteria:

We are looking for an independent and creative student who is curious to learn more about contemporary art and media production. Research methodology, clear writing, and communication skills are essential. Experience with audio recording or editing is not required, but you may learn about it along the way.

Propose Your Own Houghton Library Project

Project Supervisors:

Kristine Greive, Head of Teaching and Learning, Houghton Library
Zoe Hill, Reference Librarian, Houghton Library

Project Overview:

Houghton Library is pleased to invite Harvard undergraduates to work with our collections in the summer with support of SHARP. These competitive fellowships are designed to fully support a summer of work at Houghton, Harvard’s world-class rare books and manuscripts library.

Houghton is home to the world famous and the almost entirely unknown, the ancient and the contemporary, the enduring and the ephemeral; as a researcher, a practitioner, an experimenter, we want to know what you can do with these materials. During a fellowship, fellows work closely with library staff to discover new areas of interest or to delve into ongoing projects. Past fellows have created an opera; identified and filled gaps in the literature about the American and British birth control movements; produced a series of podcasts on poetry and the archives; made surprising discoveries about the origins of American theater at Harvard; explored the life and works of John James Audubon; and the development of W.V. Quine's philosophical work; created interactive fiction; written books and poetry; made art and created exhibitions. We invite proposals for this summer on any topic or discipline supported by our collections. Creative, digital, research, and performance projects are all welcome, as are those we haven't thought of yet.

Successful project proposals tend to be driven by your passions and questions and include concentrated work with collection materials at Houghton. Fellows meet regularly with Houghton staff and attend tailored workshops throughout the program, building skills and knowledge in research project management, primary source research, and book/archival history. Previous experience with rare books and manuscripts is not required.

Proposing a project:

Applicants should be prepared to describe their proposed project, including specific information about the Houghton Library materials or kinds of materials the project would make use of as well as the outcomes or manifestation/s for the project. This proposal narrative is limited to approximately 500 words. In the SHARP application, this proposal will be included as your first essay response.

To schedule a time to talk with a Houghton librarian about your project in advance, please email us at houghton_library@harvard.edu.

Digitally Mapping the Movement and Concealment of Ancient Wealth

Project Supervisor:

Michael McCormick, Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History, Chair of the Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard, Director at Harvard of the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean, General Editor of Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations

Project Overview:

Treasure buried beneath the land and lost under the sea offers incredible insights into the production and distribution of wealth in ancient and medieval societies. In this Science of the Human Past project, students will work with the SoHP team to develop existing geodatabases documenting the ancient and medieval extraction, transport and distribution of wealth from ancient mines and how and whether that wealth was stored (concealed) by identifying, creating geodatabases and mapping ancient coin finds from the time of the fall of the Roman Empire. This will be done in the framework of Mapping Past Societies (MAPS), a Harvard-created digital resource which allows innovative spatial and temporal analyses of world civilizations from 1500 BCE to the present. As part of this unique summer project, you will be involved in mapping ancient mines documented archaeologically or historically and, most importantly, mapping ancient coin hoards. As such, you will learn much about late Roman civilization and the peoples that settled in its territories, notably in the Balkans and Gaul (France). You will have the opportunity to learn how the Science of the Human Past team uses and constructs its geodatabases, in combination with the most advanced scientific analyses of ancient genetics and environmental evidence, to make revolutionary new discoveries about ancient Mediterranean economic patterns and structures. Additionally, as part of our work on recent discoveries of Roman coins, you will also have the opportunity to learn to use basic archaeological and historical databases of secondary sources, collecting information into a database (incorporating additional coin databases not yet resourced, or printed collections and newly discovered coins) – both building on our existing research for Mediterranean-area coin finds, and additionally expanding the reach outside the Mediterranean.

By crossing disciplines and embracing innovation, this project pushes the boundaries of convention as it relates data from the social sciences and humanities to allow undergraduate researchers to reveal undiscovered facets of the human past and, especially, the money circulating in particular place at a particular time. Students who contribute substantially to each database will be cited as co-authors of digital dataset releases as well as, potentially, research publications. The project will improve the contributor’s skills in data science, Geographic Information Systems (GIS, the technology behind all digital maps), and management of “big data,” to reveal revolutionary insights into the distribution of wealth and the economic trends that shaped the ancient world and which define ours.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

Reading historical sources and literature and translating them into data that computers and mapping software can understand. Locating unknown sites on maps and atlases. Deep reading of texts to understand overall context and meaning of historical circumstances in which documents were produced. Producing digital maps of mines, coin deposits, and other forms of wealth. Reading scholarly research in history, archaeology, and several other disciplines and translating that information into maps or databases for additional research applications.

Selected student will meet weekly with faculty leads, and keep in touch with leadership team via Slack or email. Assignments will be made via Zoom tutorial. You will learn the basics of GIS software and how to build digital maps, either through a direct initial overview or via training offered by the Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis (or both, depending on CGA’s schedule). You will also learn how to create databases, how to coordinate work in a sizeable team, how to quality-check and deliver a finished, reliable research dataset. If warranted, you will be asked to develop basic analysis queries through GIS or other software that can reveal hidden patterns in big-data. Selected student may receive ongoing guidance when needed through email or Slack.

Possibility for 1 student, and all work can be conducted remotely (if needed re pandemic), however on-campus meetings and undergraduate research assistant team-building events will be planned, encouraged, and extremely helpful to the process, including outdoor meetings/fun events.

Selection Criteria:

The successful candidate will have familiarity with Microsoft Excel, PDFs, and will be able to learn quickly how to use Google Translate. Familiarity with foreign languages (French, German, Latin, , Greek, or Arabic) is a plus but not required. Familiarity with GIS, Python, R, or other statistical software desirable but not at all required. Prior coursework in history or archaeology a plus, but not a pre-requisite. Discipline, enthusiasm and enjoyment of a team environment working closely with senior researchers is essential.

A Homer Commentary in Progress, linked with a new model of online annotating for content

Project Supervisor:

Gregory Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature

Project Overview:

This project involves research on selections from the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, respectively 15,000+ and 12,000+ lines of Ancient Greek epic poetry. The writing-up of this research takes the form of a special kind of online commentary, described here as annotation, where the meaning of the poetry is analyzed line-by-line, with special attention to individual interpretations that converge with or diverge from received opinion.

Proposing this project is Gregory Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature, who cites a very brief statement he wrote here to explain the intellectual foundations of online annotation as a dynamic form of commentary reporting on ongoing research: https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/search/page/3/?s=annotation.

In making his proposal for a summer phase of “A Homer Commentary in Progress,” Nagy has consulted with Naomi Weiss, Professor of the Classics, who is currently the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Classics Department.

In consultation with Professor Weiss, Nagy proposes to select, from a field of Harvard College candidates who have a good working knowledge of Ancient Greek, a concentrator in the Classics Department or in the Comparative Literature Department with whom he would work intensively in augmenting the content of “A Homer Commentary in Progress,” hereafter abbreviated as “AHCIP” - an early version of which is already published online, open-access, at https://ahcip.chs.harvard.edu.

The research done so far in AHCIP has been edited by Nagy and by other senior professors who are experts in Homeric poetry - including Harvard’s own David F. Elmer, Eliot Professor of Greek Literature and currently Chair of Classics, who, like Nagy, is also a voting member of the Comparative Literature Department. Most of the actual content of AHCIP as published online so far derives from earlier work done by Nagy in another online open-access medium that likewise involves research on Homeric poetry: https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/about-online-annotation-as-an-academic-genre-designed-to-track-ongoing-research/. The founding editors of the project, as introduced here, https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/draft-of-a-declaration-by-the-founding-authors-of-a-homer-commentary-in-progress/, Nagy included, have long felt that the top-heaviness of contributors who are senior professors needs to be counterbalanced by the fresh insights of students doing their own research—and Harvard has such a wealth of brilliant junior scholars who are already masters of ancient Greek in their own right. Thus, much earlier work needs to be re-thought and then integrated into AHCIP, relying on the intergenerational research to be pursued by the student/professor team who would be working on enhancing AHCIP this summer.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

To give an idea about the kind of research that could go into the Homer commentary this coming summer, here is a link to a recent essay on the last of the 48 “books” or rhapsodies of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey combined, Odyssey 24: https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/odyssey-24/. Students would be free to select a passage from Homer which is of particular interest to them, and then to add their own commentary, as seen in the above essay. For example, students might want to consider major elements at play in their chosen passages, or to comment on Homer’s use of language in a given set of lines.

The working hours spent doing intergenerational research with the selected student would be the responsibility of Nagy, but he is counting on the advice and guidance of Professor Weiss in selecting the given student and in occasionally meeting with Nagy and the student. Professor Weiss is herself an acclaimed expert in the science – and art - of commenting effectively on ancient texts, and she has recently been commissioned by Cambridge University Press to produce a commentary on the Orestes of Euripides. Accordingly, it is a coup for this proposal that Professor Weiss has kindly agreed to co-sponsor it with Nagy. But the actual work-load, to repeat, will be the responsibility of Nagy working closely, week by week, day by day, with the selected student.

Poetry in America

Project Supervisor:

Elisa New, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature and Director and Host of Poetry in America

Project Overview:

I am currently at work on Poetry in America, a multiplatform humanities and media initiative. Poetry in America began in 2013 as a series of HarvardX modules, and, ten years later, has now expanded to a PBS television series, as well as a wide range of multimedia educational initiatives across Harvard, Arizona State University, and Arizona PBS.

Seasons 1, 2, and 3 of the Poetry in America television series aired nationally in 2018, 2020, and 2022, respectively. I am currently producing Season 4 (slated for Spring 2024 release) and Season 5 of the PBS series, and developing classroom resources for PBS Learning Media. Simultaneously, my team is working to create state-of-the-art online course materials and teacher training materials that connect the reading of poetry with other disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Finally, in partnership with the National Education Equity Lab and Arizona State University, we are also administering a successful dual enrollment program that offers low-cost college credit to high-schoolers in Title I high schools around the country.

In the next 12 months, my Production Team will be developing footage for the fourth and fifth seasons of the Poetry in America television series. Our Education Team will simultaneously be updating and adding to our suite of online courses aimed at K-12 teachers and students, and developing classroom resources for PBS Learning Media.

Additionally, the 2023 SHARP fellow will come onboard as the Education Team ramps up production and instructional design of its first Health Humanities offerings, via Arizona State University. A young, interdisciplinary field that integrates the humanities, social sciences, and the arts with the study and practice of medicine and wellness, the Health Humanities originated in medical education – but its greatest efficacy is realized in programs that support the broadest societal understanding of the human life cycle. The SHARP fellow will have the opportunity to support the team designing a set of Health Humanities learning experiences — to include for-credit undergraduate courses, materials for use in K-12 classrooms, and more — building invaluable skills in the world of online education.

We seek a SHARP fellow to assist with online course development, educational program evaluation, production support, and/or archival research. The fellow will work with project mentors to devise a project suited to his or her interests, but a few possible areas of focus include: assisting with the development of a searchable database of images and footage; designing and developing PBS Learning Media collections; finding and logging archival assets for TV; conducting research on online education and dual enrollment models; reviewing existing and developing new course assessments; developing Health Humanities learning experiences; incorporating interactive design elements into online courses; photographing guests on set; planning and executing outreach events; or developing GIFs and short-form video assets for a PBS station social media toolkit. Please indicate potential areas of interest in your cover letter.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The SHARP fellow will hone close-reading and research skills. They will become familiar with our library of footage, and become adept at watching, editing, and reviewing educational media, identifying key teaching moments, and developing curricula or assessments tailored to learning outcomes. The SHARP fellow will gain an understanding of copyright law, and assist the Poetry in America team with copyright compliance and rights acquisition.

Poetry in America SHARP fellows will design their projects in consultation with me and with members of my Production or Education teams. All fellowship projects can be completed remotely, or in a hybrid format with in-person learning opportunities, to align with the format of the SHARP program in Summer 2023.

Selection Criteria:

The ideal candidate for this SHARP fellowship will be a self-motivated, organized, creative, and energetic undergraduate, preferably a rising junior or senior. The applicant should have some experience in literature, history, and/or the arts, and an interest in the digital humanities, multimedia education, and K-12 education. Students with an interest or background in film production or web design are also welcome to apply; however, none of these skills are required, and there will be opportunities for learning on the job if applicants are interested in these areas.

Lost in a Forest of Invisible Trees

Project Supervisor:

Sarah Newman, Director of Art & Education at metaLAB at Harvard and Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society

Project Overview:

Our contemporary lives are steeped in invisible connections: cellular, wifi, bluetooth, and more. Chances are you’re reading this very sentence on a screen that is sending and receiving information wirelessly, almost as if by magic, moving at light speed through the air, and invisible to the human eye. What would the world look like if these hidden signals were rendered visible? Would such a view be a useful, even more accurate, reminder of the ubiquity -- and uncanniness -- of these signals that we rely on in nearly every aspect of our lives and yet somehow manage to take for granted?

The invisibility of technology infrastructures are varied: some are invisible because they are literally out of sight: server farms, submarine cables, and under- or over-ground wiring; others are invisible because their signals (the pulsing of bluetooth, the cellular connection via triangulated towers, the wireless signal to a wired router) are thick and present just invisible to the human eye. This project will focus on both kinds of invisibility, with emphasis on the second: the uncanny magic of massive amounts of information moving through the air we breathe.

This interdisciplinary research project incorporates elements of technology studies/STS, design, speculative fiction, science communication, media art, environmental studies, and more. The metaLAB SHARP fellow will contribute to many aspects of the research and design for this project, tailored to the Fellow’s particular interests and strengths. Summer project work will include ecosystem analysis of related explorations, research into these technologies and their infrastructures, how the environment and the technologies themselves are changing, and how change varies by geography or jurisdiction. The Fellow will also take part in helping co-design and co-lead some small research workshops to test the hypotheses of the project (eg, how does the public think wireless technologies work? What sorts of visual companions might help convey more accurately the underpinnings of these systems?); and, where applicable, the SHARP fellow can be involved with design of possible outputs, overlays, graphics, and other visual elements that will be complements to the research for future website, publication, and exhibition.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The SHARP Fellow will work under the supervision of metaLAB Director of Art & Education, Sarah Newman, and with other student researchers and members of the metaLAB team. The work will be eclectic and engaging, and will benefit from a student who is self-motivated, creative, curious, and works well independently as well as in groups. As this is a research project with a broad public audience in mind, specific domain expertise is not required, but interest in design, research, and technology communication is welcome. Students with coding skills (or other particular skills!) should indicate them in their applications. The work is multimodal and a Fellow’s particular work will be scoped with their skills and interests in mind. There will also be opportunities to connect with other metaLAB projects that are ongoing or that arise so that the Fellow will have an engaging and fun summer working with metaLAB’s interdisciplinary research interests and team.

Made in Germany? Art and Identity in a Global Nation

Project Supervisors:

Lynette Roth, Daimler Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum
Peter Murphy, Stefan Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow in the Busch-Reisinger Museum

Project Overview:

In Fall 2024, the Harvard Art Museums will mount a special exhibition that takes an unprecedented look at German art after 1980. Made in Germany? Art and Identity in a Global Nation will feature works by well-known and emerging artists that deal with issues of race, migration, and national identity. Today, Germany is second only to the United States as a destination for immigrants, resulting in what historian Rita Chin has called “a distinctly German brand of multiculturalism” (The Guest Worker, 2007). Yet the art historical field and museums have been slow to take stock of this phenomenon. While the focus of the exhibition is on Germany, the project—including related programming and an accompanying publication—will contribute to broader critical debates on multiculturalism, nationalism, and social change in the face of migration and globalization.

Made in Germany? will offer a nuanced examination of the modern nation from the 1980s, when discussions about multiculturalism in West Germany first emerged, to our current time, a period still defined by the migration policies of former chancellor Angela Merkel and by the postwar demographic transformation of the country. In the wake of these shifts, racial violence, right-wing populism, and ethnically defined nationalism have become increasingly prevalent—just as they have in the United States in recent years. Since the resurgence of international interest in German art in the 1980s, contemporary art from Germany has largely been associated with white male West German artists who confronted the country’s Nazi past in monumental gestural paintings. But what about artists who represent a different kind of “Germanness”? These include women, East Germans, long-term residents, recent citizens, and artists with a “migration background” (a term used in population statistics), including persons of Turkish, Jewish, Arab, Asian, Iranian, Sinti/Roma, Baltic, and African descent. Made in Germany? will juxtapose works by such artists with works by those who are more familiar to German art scholars and audiences and who contend with issues of German art and identity in often surprising ways.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

Made in Germany? will be accompanied by a series of programming. Working closely with the Daimler Curator and Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow, the SHARP Fellow will assist with the planning of both a film program and community engagement. For the film program, the SHARP Fellow will conduct research on film and media that ties closely with the themes of the exhibition. The Fellow will be an integral part of the selection process for the program, meaning they will have the opportunity to curate films for a wide audience. Given that the film program will be open to the public, the Fellow will help choose films that can introduce our audiences to the themes and issues that the exhibition explores. Further, the Fellow will research ways to connect the exhibition and its programming with the greater Boston community.

As part of the Fellow’s research, they will independently research films that relate to the exhibition. This will include watching films, engaging with relevant scholarship and writing about the films and filmmakers, and learning about the histories that the films deal with. They will be required to produce brief written reports that the curatorial team can reference, as well as provide their recommendation for which films the team should watch. The Fellow will also have the opportunity to produce their own writing on the selected films for public facing announcements about the program. Their research and writing can also be featured on the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s Instagram account, @busch_hall.

Outcomes:

The SHARP Fellow will gain experience in the research and planning that goes into a special exhibition and its accompanying programming. They will further their skills in writing, visual analysis, historical research, and community engagement. The Fellowship will also allow students to strengthen their knowledge of film and media studies, art history, and German studies. In addition, the Fellow will gain in-depth knowledge of specific objects, artists, and contemporary issues in Germany, as well as general knowledge of museum practice through structured and unstructured learning opportunities with curators, conservators, and other professional museum staff. By the end of the Fellowship, the student will have gained valuable experience that can apply to both academic pursuits and professional development.

Selection Criteria:

No art history, archives, or museum experience necessary, but interest in German film and media studies in addition to an expanded understanding of identity is essential. Outstanding research, writing, and organizational skills are required. Intermediate to advanced German language skills are strongly preferred. The ability to work independently and in collaboration with museum professionals is also important for this position. A commitment to community engagement will also be useful.

Equal Educational Opportunity: Aesthetic and Moral Dimensions

Project Supervisors:

Gina Schouten, Professor of Philosophy
Samantha Matherne, Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Project Overview:

For Professor Matherne: Early Visions of Equal Educational Opportunity

Of the many issues Mary Wollstonecraft addresses in the Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), the topic of women’s education is one of the most pressing. Writing in the wake of early modern theories of education defended by philosophers, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau and John Locke, and the conduct books written in the mid-18th century by conservative thinkers, like James Fordyce and Hannah Moore, Wollstonecraft, along with other early feminists, like Mary Hays and Maria Edgeworth, demanded a reform in the education of women. Instead of educating women to be the objects of men’s satisfaction, they demanded an education for women as equals. As was in keeping with the broad terms in which education was understood at the turn of the 19th century, the reform they envisioned targeted not just the acquisition of knowledge, but also the moral and aesthetic dimensions of women’s education. In my current research, I am investigating the aesthetic aspect of women’s education in this moment. I am interested in questions such as: what sort of conversative aesthetic education did the early feminists target from early modern philosophy and conduct books? What sort of reform in aesthetic education did they advocate for? And how did the early feminists understand the relevance of aesthetic education to the epistemological and moral dimensions of women’s education?

For Professor Schouten: Equal Educational Opportunity in America: Tracing and Reclaiming an Elusive Ideal

It is difficult to think of a more broadly appealing social ideal than equal educational opportunity. Indeed, a commitment to equal educational opportunity has been a core element of American political culture since the mid 19th century. But as plenty of theorists have pointed out, that broad commitment masks deep disagreement as to what that ideal actually requires. Discussions about the meanings and purposes of equal educational opportunity, in turn, have frequently exposed—and occasionally obscured—larger conflicts over what constitutes a just social, economic, and political order. As Christopher Jencks wrote in 1988, “If equal opportunity can mean distributing resources either equally or unequally, if it can be compatible with inequalities that favor either the initially advantaged or the initially disadvantaged, and if the relative weight of these principles can vary from one situation to the next, it is small wonder that most Americans support the idea.” Indeed, he continued, “A skeptic might wonder…whether an idea that can embrace so much means anything at all.”¹ This book is coauthored with a historian of education (Leah Gordon, Brandeis). It explores the ideal of equal educational opportunity as it has evolved in American history, thought, and policy, and proposes a radical vision for what equal educational opportunity should mean moving forward.

¹ Christopher Jencks, “Whom Must We Treat Equally for Educational Opportunity to be Equal?” Ethics, 98, (1998): 518–33, 533.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The SHARP Fellow will help Professors Schouten and Matherne with their distinct but thematically related research projects. This will involve conducting scholarly research, mostly in philosophy but also in other humanities disciplines and in the social sciences. The expected products of this research are an annotated bibliography of sources and regular discussions with Professors Schouten and Matherne as that annotated bibliography develops, in which the Fellow can shape the direction of their research projects. Both in the written product and in the meetings, the fellow will be encouraged to reflect on the potential significance of their findings to the broader project. Together with the Fellow, Professors Schouten and Matherne will work out a schedule to divide time between the two projects in a way that is manageable and fruitful for all three parties.

Selection Criteria:

The ideal SHARP fellow for this project will have curiosity and interest in the history and philosophy of education, resourcefulness as a researcher, self-motivation, good organizational skills, ability to distill and communicate key ideas from a text, and strong writing ability.

Crossroads in Jewish and African Studies

Project Supervisor:

Kay Kaufman Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and Professor of African and African American Studies.

Project Overview:

I am seeking the collaboration of a SHARP Fellow for research in locating, reading, and summarizing literature to support work on my next book. The planned monograph will take a critical, comparative, and reflexive approach to my scholarly experience of alternating between musical research in two different yet complementary fields:  Jewish Studies and  African Studies. The readings will focus on recent literature that crosses disciplinary boundaries, seeking insight into the ways in which a scholar’s engagement with two or more fields can be transformative both to the research process and its outcome. We will focus on selected humanities and social science literature regarding community, history, memory, race, forced migration, discrimination and diaspora. For example, two important sources for my work in the past have been Yosef H. Yerushalmi’s Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, and W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk (especially the concept of double consciousness). Because my research activity for the last decade has been more heavily focused in African (especially Ethiopian) Studies, I would prioritize a SHARP Fellow with broad interests and relevant background in Jewish Studies, but would certainly welcome a student who would be capable of helping to locate and digest readings in both Jewish and African Studies.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

The SHARP fellow would help me select literature relevant for the project, read and summarize articles and books that we agree will be of interest, and help identify any new or unexpected intellectual directions that may emerge in the process. My goals for summer 2023 are quite straightforward: to identify and gain a close familiarity with a carefully selected scholarly literature that gives special attention to comparative methods in both Jewish and African Studies, as well as discusses the utility and power of interdisciplinarity more broadly. The collaborating student will engage with cutting- edge research that intentionally crosses boundaries of fields and disciplines, while the process should sharpen their critical reading and writing skills.

Mentoring Plan: I find that close, collaborative work in research inevitably stimulates broader intellectual interaction and I have worked with and mentored a SHARP Fellow while writing my most recent book, Sing and Sing On. Sentinel Musicians and the Making of the Ethiopian American Diaspora (Chicago, 2022). I cited this Fellow’s work in that book and we have remained in touch through the course of her doctoral studies. In this project, I will be working and reading along with the student, so I anticipate setting aside time for frequent discussions of the sources we are reading and developing a carefully curated list of books and articles. I plan be in Cambridge for most of summer 2023 and will surely keep in regular touch by zoom or telephone if I go away for any part of the time.

Selection Criteria:

Although my top priority would be for a SHARP Fellow with background and interest in Jewish Studies, should a student have interests and/or background in both Jewish and African Studies, I would welcome their assistance in winnowing relevant African Studies literature as well. I would hope for a Fellow keen to investigate interdisciplinarity and who is able to carry out creative literature searches. Musical expertise is much less important to this research process than is intellectual curiosity and skills in critical reading and writing. English will be the main research language, but I would be interested in knowing in what other languages the student has competence.

Mapping Asian American Poetics

Project Supervisor:

Christopher Spaide, Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows

Project Overview:

Has there ever been a better time to study the history and sprawl of Asian American poetry? Look at the past decade: The poets Fatimah Asghar, Cathy Park Hong, and Ocean Vuong have quickly become some of the most popular Asian American authors now or ever, stretching our sense of Asian American poetics but moving into television, essays, and autobiographical fiction. Foundational authors like Agha Shahid Ali, Marilyn Chin, and Arthur Sze have seen their work collected and published by major presses, and awards as prestigious as the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award have been given to Victoria Chang, Vijay Seshadri, and Don Mee Choi. The Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW) and Kundiman continue to grow while constantly rethinking what work a community-based arts organization should do (artistically, socially, politically) and broadening their understanding of Asian Americans to encompass not only East, Southeast, and South Asian Americans but Pacific Islanders, West Asian Americans, Arab Americans, and a wider Asian diaspora. Yet, despite all these encouraging signs, there are sparingly few resources for the study of Asian American poets, and the resources that do exist routinely frame those poets in limiting or unhelpful terms. The most recent comprehensive bibliography of Asian American poetry appeared a quarter-century ago, as an appendix to Quiet Fire: A Historical Anthology of Asian American Poetry, 1892–1970 (1996), now out of print. (To this day, there is no anthology that covers the 130-year sweep of Asian American poetry, from the late-nineteenth-century poets Sadakichi Hartmann and Yone Noguchi to the flowering of Asian American poetry today.) More controversially, a 2014 list of “Asian American Voices in Poetry” published on the Poetry Foundation website received near-unanimous backlash from Asian American writers. Many took issue with the list for labeling poets by their “country of heritage,” reinforcing a sense of Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners: Asian in essence, American by accident. (Those labels have since been removed.) The poets Eunsong Kim and Don Mee Choi objected to the project altogether, which they saw as a rewriting of “the genealogy of Asian American literature” (and minority writing generally) that centered “whiteness or white gatekeeping.” “We reject your buffet. We reject your retelling, your management, your desires,” the two poets declared in “Refusal=Intervention,” a “critique/manifesto” published on the AAWW website.

The aim of my research project Mapping Asian American Poetics is to create a useful, versatile, easily updateable resource for the study and teaching of Asian American poetry, one which avoids the limitations and pitfalls of past resources: the static snapshot of a bibliography, a xenophobic emphasis on otherness, the consumerist groupings of a selective “buffet.” Mapping Asian American Poetics aims instead to group Asian American poets according to their affiliations with one another; the places they mention and describe in their poems; the schools, programs, and conferences where they’ve studied and interacted; the presses, publications, and anthologies that have published their work; and other authors and crucial figures, Asian American or not, who played some role in the production and dissemination of their work. As I see it, the project has three components—not stages or units, exactly, since the three should run more or less concurrently. The first component is to compile the above information, with the help of existing resources, a library catalog like HOLLIS or WorldCat, and the Harvard Library staff. The second would be to design ways to visualize or present that information. My original idea was to create custom maps with Google Maps or an equivalent site or software, maps ranging in scale from the globe to significant metropolitan areas or even a university campus—but I’m open to any diagrams, traditional or experimental, that suit this subject. And the third component is to use both our collected information and our visualizations to answer research questions in the study of Asian American poetry. Some of those questions could include the grand, period-spanning questions of literary history: Where, at any given year, is Asian American poetry being written, published, and taught? If we wanted to contrast the Asian American poetry of the East Coast and the West Coast, where should we look, and what would we find? Other questions could center on a particular place or poet: What’s the state of Asian American poetry in Boston, or New York City, or Berkeley, today? If we were to read, say, all of Ocean Vuong’s poetry and prose, what places would he lead us to, in Vietnam, where he was born, or Hartford, Connecticut, where he grew up—and which other poets offer different glances of those same places?

Opportunity for the Fellow:

As a contributor to this project, a SHARP fellow would collaborate with me on the first two components of the project. They would read widely and curiously in Asian American poetry, from published books to archival deep-cuts, and they’d help me compile and visualize the information we’d find. With the project’s third component, the student would strike out on their own, pursuing their own research questions, combining their own analytical and interpretive work with insights from the projects first two components. Every week, the fellow and I would meet in person or over Zoom to discuss all aspects of the project. For the first and second components of the project, I’ll be a collaborator, communicating with the fellow through regular notes and updates on Google Docs or Slack. For the third, I’ll be more of a mentor, advising the fellow in designing and drafting their individual project. Going in, the fellow wouldn’t need to know their research questions—inevitably, questions will arise and develop as the larger project progresses. My hope is that the fellow would conclude the summer with an original critical or creative work on Asian American literature and history, something that could serve as the groundwork for a senior thesis, a writing sample for graduate-school applications, or a first publication.

Selection Criteria:

The ideal contributor for Mapping Asian American Poetics would be a student who is interested in poetry and writing biographically, critically, or historically about contemporary authors. Preferably, they’d have taken a course or two in poetry, contemporary literature, or multiethnic American literature. Students interested in Asian American studies, creative writing, diasporic history, or digital humanities are especially encouraged to apply. Some handiness with graphic design, visualizing data, or coding is a plus but not a requirement.

“A Winter’s Tale: Karen Blixen in America”

Project Supervisor:

Thomas Wisniewski, Ph.D, Lecturer on Comparative Literature

Project Overview:

I am applying to the Summer Humanities and Arts Research Program (SHARP) in connection with a documentary film of literary history that I am currently researching and writing, which would benefit from the work of an undergraduate research assistant during Summer 2023. Titled “A Winter’s Tale: Karen Blixen in America,” it will be made by the Danish film company Zentropa and shot on location in Copenhagen, in New York City, and at Harvard. I would like to collaborate with an undergraduate research assistant to work on gathering archival sources for the film and contributing to the screenplay. To give the program a clear sense of the project, I will first summarize the film’s narrative arc and then address its connection to Harvard’s campus, curriculum, faculty, and students. I will then detail the research and pedagogical approach to be taken, including the preliminary work that needs to be done. In closing, I will state the importance and potential impact of the project.

“A Winter’s Tale: Karen Blixen in America” opens in media res when Karen Blixen briefly escapes in 1942 from the Nazi occupation of Denmark to travel to Stockholm with the express purpose of sending off, via her contacts at the British Embassy, the English-language manuscript of her second book of fiction, Winter’s Tales, to Random House in New York. With a note of desperation as if it were sent in a message-in-a-bottle across the wartime Atlantic, she writes: “I can sign no contract and I can read no proofs. I leave the fate of my book in your hands.” Much to her delight, when Blixen learns of the book’s publication only after the war, Random House has issued an Armed Services edition printed specially for American soldiers stationed in Europe. The film then moves back in time to the writing of Blixen’s first book, Seven Gothic Tales, published in the US in 1934, which makes a transatlantic splash under her nom de plume, Isak Dinesen, by which she is known to this day. It then moves forward to the writing of “Babette’s Feast,” published serially in the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1950, which shows the popularity of this Danish writer in American periodicals of the period, alongside contemporary writers including Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost. We see how the publication and circulation of these stories endeared the Baroness Blixen to her American readers, following on the heels of Out of Africa (1937), which Truman Capote called “one of the most beautiful books of the twentieth century” and for which Ernest Hemingway, upon winning the Nobel Prize in 1954, remarked that it should have gone to his fellow nominee, “that beautiful writer Isak Dinesen.”

Following the decades of a Danish writer publishing her work in English in America comes the climax of the film near the end of her life: Blixen’s 1959 American tour, set into motion by the Ford Foundation, which was making a film series about the world’s greatest living writers. Fighting a lifetime of illness from syphilis and arsenic poisoning, proceeding against the express wishes of her doctors, and staving off death to make her first, and what was to be her last, journey across the Atlantic, the Baroness travels from Copenhagen to New York City in the winter of 1959, subsisting on an aristocratic diet born of necessity: white grapes, oysters, and champagne. There, she gives the “On Mottoes of My Life” address at the annual dinner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where she is introduced to Carson McCullers and invited to lunch at the novelist’s home in Nyack, New York, in the company of Arthur Miller and his then wife Marilyn Monroe. Among other appearances, seeing these social occasions gives us a sense of Blixen’s popularity in the city, and the film quotes from several newspapers and magazines of the period, including a cartoon in the New York Times Book Review that shows two poets at a Greenwich Village café, who remark: “Did you catch Isak Dinesen at the Y?”

Following Blixen’s New York success, the film then moves to Harvard, where on the chilly evening of February 20, 1959, introduced by the then Chair of Comparative Literature, Harry Levin, Blixen performs two tales from memory for a spellbound audience: “A King’s Letter” and “The Wine of the Tetrarch.” The film closes with Blixen’s return to Denmark, where we can see that at last she has attained the long-awaited recognition from her native country, given to her in America decades previously when, as her own evocative, aging voice as heard on an archival recording, reminds us: “I first came over the Atlantic in the form of a book called Seven Gothic Tales.” A quiet death in her sleep occurs three years later, in September 1962, and our closing shot is that of snow falling over her tombstone on the pastoral grounds of Rungstedlund, the old manor inn and family home where she was born and died, with a quotation from the last line of “Babette’s Feast.”

This documentary project is connected to two undergraduate seminars that I am teaching in Spring 2023: Comparative Literature 97, an introduction to the field for new concentrators, which will feature two weeks on literature and cinema, including the work of Karen Blixen, and Comparative Literature 102Y: “Literary Biography and Documentary Film.” Because I anticipate that the curricular connection to this project will build a sense of intellectual community among students enrolled in both seminars, and because my description of the latter course in the catalogue gives special emphasis to the work of the author in question, I will quote from it in full:

What is the relation between literary biography and documentary film? What might the life of a writer tell us about the work? To explore these questions, we will study the writing of a range of authors in tandem with documentaries made about their lives. Each week will pair the viewing of a documentary film with selections from the sources on which it is based, including several award-winning literary biographies. As we challenge the intentional fallacy, we will analyze the cinematic technique with which the film is made and the literary evidence from which it draws. Selections of fictional and nonfictional texts featured in the documentaries will frame our seminar discussions. A centerpiece of the course will be the work of Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen, a Dane who wrote primarily in English, whose memoirs will be read alongside her short fiction and compared to the feature films and documentaries made about her life and her writing. To that end, the seminar will offer students the opportunity to collaborate on, and contribute original research to, a new documentary film about Blixen’s 1959 transatlantic tour, including her legendary trip to New York and Boston.

To that end, the documentary will involve students at all phases of its production: the research process, the filming, and the post-production. I anticipate that students will be interviewed and filmed during class. The documentary will also shoot locations that Blixen visited herself and will alternate between the past of 1959 and the present of today; contemporary interviews will be interwoven with archival sound and video. A series of interviews will feature Harvard faculty, including Professor James Engell, Blixen scholars—Professor Susan Brantly, Catherine Lefebvre, and Blixen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, Judith Thurman—and the actress Meryl Streep, who played Blixen in Out of Africa, a commercial success in 1985. The second half of the documentary will be shot on location in buildings on Harvard’s campus, including interviews in offices in Dana-Palmer House, the Barker Center, and the Fogg Large Lecture Room, where Blixen spoke to College students on February 20, 1959, upon the invitation of the former Dean of the Radcliffe Graduate School, Bernice B. Cronkhite.

Because the documentary narrates a piece of literary history that is also a small part of Harvard’s history, I am confident that the project will generate intellectual community among faculty colleagues and students and will lead to a lasting impact on campus, preserved in the form of a documentary film whose trace will not be soon erased. The work is interdisciplinary, in that it combines literary history with cinema, and truly transatlantic, in that both the subject of the film and its production are a Danish-American collaboration. The project intersects with several fields in the Arts & Humanities at Harvard that faculty are currently researching and teaching—in particular, in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature: world literature, travel literature, literary history, translation studies, and literature and cinema. The film, more broadly, is a public humanities project; given the worldwide prestige of Zentropa, it will have a wide distribution on both sides of the Atlantic, as it recovers and narrates a piece of a literary past of interest to readers in Denmark, the United States, and many other parts of the world.

The documentary is therefore a work of cultural and literary history. Because the afterlife of Blixen’s writing is inextricably linked to her lived experience of migration and self-translation as well as her transnational reception, the project will contribute to deepening scholarly and popular understanding of this Danish writer’s legacy by incorporating her work into disability studies, migration studies, and contemporary debates on the hotly contested canon of global Anglophone and world literature—in particular, literature written across national cultures by authors who write bilingually, in self-translation, and in English as a foreign language. The urgency for a global approach to literature is given special prominence among such prose stylists who choose to write in a language not natively their own. Studying Karen Blixen’s early- to mid-twentieth- century fiction gives us insight into the work of one of the century’s most significant yet neglected writers. Of the sources to be featured in the documentary—manuscripts, public readings, and radio recordings—many provide evidence of Blixen’s capacity to convey orality in language through the voice of the storyteller, both fictional and real. To that end, the documentary examines Blixen’s life and work through the eye of a biographer focused on her subjectivity as refracted through her literary sensibility, her private self, and her public persona, as can be understood from primary sources, including television and sound recordings, memoirs, diaries, and the many drafts, typescripts, rewritings, and self-translations from the archives.

Opportunity for the Fellow:

• gather primary sources documenting Karen Blixen’s 1959 tour to New York and Boston (letters, photographs, newspapers, magazines, sound and video recordings, and ephemera held in the New York Public Library, the YMHA Poetry Center, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and at Harvard: Radcliffe, Widener, Houghton, and the Woodberry Poetry Room)
• compile bibliography and organize sources for filmmakers
• create a slideshow of archival photographs to be used in the film
• liaise with Zentropa in Copenhagen to request permissions for quotations and for reproductions of images, video, and sound
• research questions for interview subjects

Mentoring plan: Throughout the summer, the student will work independently and will be regularly in touch on campus and in person with the project supervisor (Thomas Wisniewski) and on Zoom with the project’s Danish collaborator (Catherine Lefebvre) as well as with producers at Zentropa in Copenhagen. Regular in-person meetings will be scheduled, during which the student will have the chance to answer questions and give updates on his/her/their work. Skills acquired will include conducting archival research; doing documentary writing and editing; gaining research experience in literature and cinema; and working closely with a leading filmmaker in Denmark.

Selection Criteria:

An excellent writer knowledgeable of literature with an interest in documentary film. Reading knowledge of Danish would be helpful, but not required.

SHARP Independent Research Fellowships

In addition to the menu of SHARP projects presented by faculty or led by our institutional partners, this year SHARP is inviting students to propose their own independent research projects on topics in the arts and humanities, broadly defined. For SHARP independent research projects, applicants must describe the proposed research project in detail and the scope of the work for the 10-week summer research period, including specific information about the resources and materials to be engaged on campus. Students must also identify a faculty mentor for the research project. In the SHARP application, your independent project proposal will be included as your first essay response.

Please note: For students proposing independent research projects, the academic reference letter should, in part, specifically address the project and your preparedness to undertake it.

Research Mentor Confirmation Letter

A brief note from your research mentor is also required, providing details about the proposed project and their involvement over the summer. If your academic recommender is also your summer research mentor, the letter of recommendation can also count as the confirmation, and you do not need to provide a separate mentor letter.

When confirmed, the faculty mentor should email their confirmation letter in pdf format to undergradresearch@fas.harvard.edu with SHARP and [YOUR LAST NAME] in the subject line. If you do not have your mentor confirmed by the application deadline, please have them email their confirmation letter as soon as possible.

Urban Futures in History

Project Supervisor

Bruno Carvalho, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and African and African American Studies; Co-Director of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative (HMUI)

Project Description

This project is affiliated with the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, which aims to encourage research and teaching around urbanization in its many forms. It involves working closely with Professor Carvalho on a book on how people imagined urban futures in the past. Throughout modernity, cities have been arenas for competing visions of the future. The expectation that the future will be radically different from the past emerged as a defining trait of urban life. Urbanization became an expression of the notion that humans can reshape the planet, as well as their own destinies. In the past, how did people envision the cities of tomorrow, or their own futures in an urbanizing planet? What do expectations about the future tell us about how people in the past made sense of their world? Given climate change, and seemingly inevitable catastrophic futures, what can we learn from studying the past? How can culture, the arts, and new technologies push us to reimagine our own sense of what’s possible? The book traces the evolving aspirations of urban planners, designers, and of the people that made cities, often seeking to escape roles assigned to them based on gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, and class. We will examine how they experienced and imagined cities as places of frustration, and possibility. Our research will investigate a variety of urban projects, forecasts, and fictional representations, with an eye towards how the unplanned, the unintended, and the unexpected seem to happen with frequency in urban history. The book covers the last three centuries, but most of the research during this Summer will focus on the decades since the 1930s.

Opportunity for the Student

The SHARP Fellow will help Professor Carvalho conduct research in sources like novels, films, magazines, newspapers, planning documents, oral histories, letters, and museum collections, among others. The interests, abilities, and ingenuity of the fellow will shape the work in significant ways. The fellow will meet regularly with Professor Carvalho and will be expected to prepare brief summaries of the findings and to reflect on their potential significance to the broader project.

Selection Criteria

The SHARP Fellow should be interested in urban issues in historical perspectives, and possess a love of reading both non-fiction and fiction. Prior knowledge of urban and cultural histories of the Americas since the 1900s would be very helpful but is not necessary. It is expected, however, that the fellow be self-motivated, organized, and resourceful.

Works in Progress Podcast

Project Supervisor

Bree Edwards, Director, Harvard ArtLab

Project Overview

The ArtLab welcomes applications for a research fellow to support the development of a podcast about contemporary art and the artists working in the ArtLab. If you are interested in storytelling, podcasts, writing, and contemporary art, this fellowship may interest you.

Works in Progress is a new podcast that explores the creative mind, artistic research, and how artists impact the world around us. More information on the ArtLab website. The SHARP Fellow will research potential artists, write content, and help develop the highlights episode from season one. This podcast is a platform for diverse and creative voices to be heard.

This show will focus on artists, designers, scientists, and engineers crossing disciplinary boundaries to solve some of today’s most pressing issues, such as climate change, food insecurity, education, and public health. ArtLab’s artists in residence will also inspire segments of this project.

Agenda

The SHARP Fellow will work the ArtLab’s director Bree Edwards. The Fellow can complete the research and writing remotely if necessary. The first phase of this fellowship will include creating a highlight episode selecting audio clips from the first session of Works in Progress, which consisted of five hour-long episodes. From there, you will begin research and writing for the upcoming session of interviews.

Outcomes

We are developing creative ways to document research.

You will gain experience in script writing, speaking about contemporary artistic processes, editing audio, and podcast production.

Selection Criteria

We are looking for an independent and creative student who is curious to learn more about contemporary art and media production. Research methodology, clear writing, and communication skills are essential. Experience with audio recording or editing is not required, but you may learn about it along the way.

Propose Your Own Houghton Library Project

Project Supervisor

Kristine Greive, Head of Teaching and Learning, Houghton Library

Project Overview

Houghton Library is pleased to invite Harvard undergraduates to work with our collections in the summer with support of SHARP. These competitive fellowships are designed to fully support a summer of work at Houghton, Harvard’s world-class rare books and manuscripts library.

Houghton is home to the world famous and the almost entirely unknown, the ancient and the contemporary, the enduring and the ephemeral; as a researcher, a practitioner, an experimenter, we want to know what you can do with these materials. During a fellowship, fellows work closely with library staff to discover new areas of interest or to delve into ongoing projects. Past fellows have created an opera; identified and filled gaps in the literature about the American and British birth control movements; produced a series of podcasts on poetry and the archives; made surprising discoveries about the origins of American theater at Harvard; explored the life and works of John James Audubon; and the development of W.V. Quine's philosophical work; created interactive fiction; written books and poetry; made art and created exhibitions. We invite proposals for this summer on any topic or discipline supported by our collections. Creative, digital, research, and performance projects are all welcome, as are those we haven't thought of yet.

Successful project proposals tend to be driven by your passions and questions and include concentrated work with collection materials at Houghton. Fellows meet regularly with Houghton staff and attend tailored workshops throughout the program, building skills and knowledge in research project management, primary source research, and book/archival history. Previous experience with rare books and manuscripts is not required.

Proposing a Project

Applicants should be prepared to describe their proposed project, including specific information about the Houghton Library materials or kinds of materials the project would make use of as well as the outcomes or manifestation/s for the project. This proposal narrative is limited to approximately 500 words. In the SHARP application, this proposal will be included as your first essay response.

To schedule a time to talk with a Houghton librarian about your project in advance, please email us at houghton_library@harvard.edu.

Harvard Art Museums: Community Partnerships

Project Supervisors

Camran Mani, Cunningham Curatorial Fellow in Academic and Public Programs
Jeanne Burke, Academic and Public Programs Coordinator

Project Overview

The Harvard Art Museums welcomes applications from undergraduates of all disciplines for up to two SHARP Fellowships to research, design, and lead education programs to develop the museums’ community partnerships. These programs will build on existing relationships with the St. Mark Community Education Program (a Dorchester-based program that prepares aspiring American citizens of all ages for the U.S. Citizenship Test) and Cambridge’s Community Art Center, or CAC (which serves young people, ages 5-19, through hands-on art-making opportunities). Fellows will also develop and deliver museum tours for the general public that highlight aspects of these community partnerships and their impact on the Fellows’ own ways of looking at art. This work will involve archival and collections research, meetings with staff members from across the museums’ departments, and public speaking.

The SHARP Fellows’ research will draw on the substantial intellectual, institutional, and artistic resources of the Harvard Art Museums – the Fogg, the Busch-Reisinger, and the Arthur M. Sackler – which feature works from the ancient world to the present, and from the Americas, Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Asia.

Agenda

The SHARP Fellows will research, design, and lead education programs for audiences and organizations the museum has designated as community partners. In the case of St. Mark, they will deploy works from the museums’ American art collection in original virtual and/or in-person museum tours that prepare the students for the U.S. Citizenship Test (also known as the Naturalization Interview and Test). These tours may cover American history, culture, symbols, and aspects of speaking the English language, such as vocabulary and pronunciation. For the CAC, the Fellows will develop and lead workshops that combine hands-on art-making activities with close looking at original works of art in the museums’ collections. In doing so, the Fellows may work with the staff and resources of the museums’ Materials Lab (a space for hands-on engagement with art materials and processes, equipped with an array of art supplies), in addition to the museums’ collections and curatorial files. There may also be work with other community partners, yet to be determined. And all of this work may be modified on the basis of the Fellows’ interests and input. The Fellows will put their own creative stamp on these programs.

Additionally, the SHARP Fellows will research and design original public tours for visitors to the Harvard Art Museums. The Fellows will participate in a training program with Harvard Art Museums staff to gain knowledge of the museums’ collections, develop skills in critical thinking, visual analysis, public speaking, and leadership. Training will draw on scholarship and practice from multiple fields of knowledge, including curatorial practice, art history, artistic practice, conservation science, and the social sciences. These tours, delivered virtually and/or in person, will highlight aspects of the museums’ work with community partners and how it has affected the Fellows’ own perspective on art.

Outcomes

The SHARP Fellows will gain experience researching works of art, working closely with museum professionals, designing education programs for diverse public audiences, developing community partnerships, and teaching with multidisciplinary museum resources in person and online. In addition, Fellows will gain in-depth knowledge of specific objects and collection areas that they will research to prepare their tours, as well as general knowledge of museum practice through structured and unstructured learning opportunities with curators, conservators, and other professional museum staff. By the end of the fellowship, the Fellows should have knowledge of the Harvard Art Museums collections, improved research and communication skills, familiarity with different models of building community partnerships, teaching experience, and experience creating educational programs for a wide range of public audiences.

Selection Criteria

No art history or museum experience necessary, but an interest in the power of art to cut across social divides and open up space for dialogue and partnership between communities is essential. Outstanding research skills and comfort with public speaking are required. Teaching and tour-guiding experience a plus.

Telling the Story Map of the “First” Pandemic with the Science of the Human Past

Supervisor

Michael McCormick, Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History; Chair, Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard; Director at Harvard of the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean; General Editor, Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations

Overview

Emerging in 541 CE and spreading around the post-Roman world until ~750 CE, the Justinianic Pandemic of bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis) appears as an important tri-continental health event and, potentially, a very significant contributor to the end of the ancient world. It is unevenly documented in the rare written sources and its impact is currently intensely debated. Since the ancient DNA (aDNA) of the bacillus Yersinia pestis was robustly identified in 2013 in a 6th-century cemetery in Bavaria (where no written record documents the Pandemic), archaeological detection and phylogenetic reconstruction of the pathogen’s evolution has become a top priority for international research. Mapping outbreaks from the pathogen aDNA preserved in its victims and using phylogeny and archaeology to establish the paths, contexts, and rhythms of its spread, recurrences and possibly changing lethality offer the only feasible path to reconstructing the Pandemic’s impact, and the long-term evolution of a deadly pathogen (40-60% case fatality in untreated cases today) which remains endemic in many parts of the globe, including the southwest US. Recent aDNA technological advances mean that identifying potential victims in anomalous burials has become the greatest single challenge to reconstructing the Pandemic. The Science of the Human Past at Harvard is actively engaged in robust archaeoscientific and historical research to understand this “First” great pandemic.

As an undergraduate researcher in Summer 2022, you would create a Story Map for the entire Justinianic Pandemic, using SoHP’s full dataset of texts, burials, and genomes: tracking the pandemic as it spread and mapping the various waves or amplifications of the deadly bacterium. You would use digital humanities tools and your own creativity and inspiration to craft a teaching tool that could be widely disseminated and allow unparalleled access to geospatial evidence, providing critical understanding to international scholars and students on this early and impactful pandemic which dramatically shaped Afro-Eurasian history. Because knowledge of ancient pandemics is indeed crucial for insights into the current global pandemic, as well as potential future pandemics, this project combines science and the humanities in a truly timely interdisciplinary opportunity.

Types of tasks

Working with known datasets and the SoHP Pandemic team to create a unique geospatial timeline tracing the spread and recurrence of the pandemic from its origins to its endemic stage and finally its still-mysterious disappearance. Locating outbreaks and burial sites on maps and atlases and converting these into entries in a geodatabase. Producing digital maps and eventually a full Story Map, which will allow students and scholars to visually understand the spread of the disease. Reading scholarly research in history, archaeology, and several other disciplines and translating that information into maps or databases for additional research applications.

Skills

Familiarity with Excel or Google Sheets desirable. Familiarity with GIS, Python, R, or other statistical software desirable but not indispensable. Foreign language abilities helpful. Prior coursework in history or archaeology a plus, but not a pre-requisite. Visual design creativity or prior experience creating a website is a plus. Discipline, enthusiasm and enjoyment of a team environment working closely with senior researchers is essential.

Mentoring and collaboration

Selected student will meet weekly with faculty leads, and keep in touch with leadership team via Slack or email. Assignments will be made via Zoom tutorial. You will learn the basics of GIS software, how to build digital maps, story maps, and dashboards, and how to turn data science into effective story telling. You will also learn how to create databases, how to coordinate work in a sizeable team, how to quality-check and deliver a finished, reliable research dataset if applicable. Selected student may receive ongoing guidance when needed through email, Slack, and regular Zoom meetings.

Capacity

Possibility for 1 student, and all work can be conducted remotely.

Harvard Art Museums: Medical Parterships

Project Supervisor

Dr. Jen Thum, Assistant Director of Academic Engagement and Assistant Research Curator, Division of Academic and Public Programs

Project Overview

The Harvard Art Museums welcomes applications from undergraduates of all disciplines for a SHARP Fellowship to research and help design museum-based education programs to develop the museums’ work with medical partners. The research will build on existing programs with the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, and others. These partnerships explore how issues and processes of visualization, translation, and interpretation in art relate to comparable issues and processes in medicine, and facilitate discussions among medical practitioners on such issues as bias, self-care, and power dynamics. By holding these discussions within the context of an art institution, we have given these practitioners an alternative space, freed from hospital hierarchies and the exigencies of patient care, in which to critically explore the conditions of their own work experiences. Additionally, by enacting scholarly theorizations of the importance of the humanities to scientific training, we have intended to illustrate the value of interdisciplinarity, presenting the arts as a partner with, rather than distraction from, the sciences. The Fellow will also develop and deliver museum tours for the public that highlight aspects of their research at the museums. This work will involve archival and collections research, meetings with staff members from across the museums’ departments, interviews with physicians, medical researchers and medical school staff, and public speaking.

The SHARP Fellow’s research will draw on the substantial intellectual, institutional, and artistic resources of the Harvard Art Museums – the Fogg, the Busch-Reisinger, and the Arthur M. Sackler – which feature works from the ancient world to the present, and from the Americas, Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Asia.

Agenda

The SHARP Fellows will research and design education programs for medical audiences, including pre-medical students, medical students, residents, physicians, and medical researchers. In doing so, the Fellows may work with the staff and resources of the museums’ Materials Lab (a space for hands-on engagement with art materials and processes, equipped with an array of art supplies), in addition to the museums’ collections and curatorial files. There may also be work with hospital and medical school partners as appropriate. And all of this work may be modified partly on the basis of the Fellow’s interests and input. The Fellow will put their own creative stamp on these programs.

Additionally, the SHARP Fellow will research and design original public tours for visitors to the Harvard Art Museums. The Fellow will participate in a training program with Harvard Art Museums staff to gain knowledge of the museums’ collections, develop skills in critical thinking, visual analysis, public speaking, and leadership. Training will draw on scholarship and practice from multiple fields of knowledge, including curatorial practice, art history, artistic practice, conservation science, and the social sciences. These tours, delivered virtually and/or in person, will highlight aspects of the museums’ work with community partners and how it has affected the Fellows’ own perspective on art.

Outcomes

The SHARP Fellow will gain experience researching works of art, working closely with museum and medical professionals, designing education programs for diverse medical audiences, making use of multidisciplinary museum resources in person and online. In addition, Fellow will gain in-depth knowledge of specific objects and collection areas they will research to prepare their tours, as well as general knowledge of museum practice through structured and unstructured learning opportunities with curators, conservators, and other professional museum staff . By the end of the fellowship, the Fellow should have knowledge of the Harvard Art Museums’ collections, knowledge of medicine-specific art programs, improved research and communication skills, familiarity with different models of building community partnerships, and experience creating educational programs for a wide range of public audiences.

Selection Criteria

No art history or museum experience necessary, but an interest in STEM subjects/medicine and the power of art to cut across disciplinary divides and open up space for dialogue and exploration is essential. Outstanding research skills and comfort with public speaking are required. STEM and/or pre-med training a plus. Teaching and tour-guiding experience a plus.

A Winter’s Tale: Karen Blixen in America

Project Supervisor

Thomas Wisniewski, Ph.D., Lecturer on Comparative Literature

Project Synopsis

This SHARP project is made in connection with a documentary film of literary history. Titled “A Winter’s Tale: Karen Blixen in America,” it will be made by the Danish film company Zentropa and shot on location in Copenhagen, in New York City, and at Harvard. In finalizing this project, I would like to collaborate with an undergraduate research assistant to work on gathering archival sources for the film and contributing to the screenplay.

“A Winter’s Tale: Karen Blixen in America” opens in media res at the moment when Karen Blixen briefly escapes in 1942 from the Nazi occupation of Denmark to travel to Stockholm with the express purpose of sending off, via her contacts at the British Embassy, the English-language manuscript of her second book of fiction, Winter’s Tales, to Random House in New York. With a note of desperation as if it were sent in a message-in-a-bottle across the wartime Atlantic, she writes: “I can sign no contract and I can read no proofs. I leave the fate of my book in your hands.” Much to her delight, when Blixen learns of the book’s publication only after the war, Random House has issued an Armed Services edition printed specially for American soldiers stationed in Europe. The film then moves back in time to the writing of Blixen’s first book, Seven Gothic Tales, published in the US in 1934, which makes a transatlantic splash under her nom de plume, Isak Dinesen, by which she is known to this day. It then moves forward to the writing of “Babette’s Feast,” published serially in the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1950, which shows the popularity of this Danish writer in American periodicals of the period, alongside contemporary writers including Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost. We see how the publication and circulation of these stories endeared the Baroness Blixen to her American readers, following on the heels of Out of Africa (1937), which Truman Capote called “one of the most beautiful books of the twentieth century” and for which Ernest Hemingway, upon winning the Nobel Prize in 1954, remarked that it should have gone to his fellow nominee, “that beautiful writer Isak Dinesen.”

Following the decades of a Danish writer publishing her work in English in America comes the climax of the film near the end of her life: Blixen’s 1959 American tour, set into motion by the Ford Foundation, which was making a film series about the world’s greatest living writers. Fighting a lifetime of illness from syphilis and arsenic poisoning, proceeding against the express wishes of her doctors, and staving off death to make her first, and what was to be her last, journey across the Atlantic, the Baroness travels from Copenhagen to New York City in the winter of 1959, subsisting on an aristocratic diet born of necessity: white grapes, oysters, and champagne. There, she gives the “On Mottoes of My Life” address at the annual dinner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where she is introduced to Carson McCullers and invited to lunch at the novelist’s home in Nyack, New York, in the company of Arthur Miller and his then wife Marilyn Monroe. Among other appearances, seeing these social occasions gives us a sense of Blixen’s popularity in the city, and the film quotes from a number of newspapers and magazines of the period, including a cartoon in the New York Times Book Review that shows two poets at a Greenwich Village café, who remark: “Did you catch Isak Dinesen at the Y?”

Following Blixen’s New York success, the film then moves to Harvard, where on the chilly evening of February 20, 1959, introduced by the then Chair of Comparative Literature, Harry Levin, Blixen performs two tales from memory for a spellbound audience: “A King’s Letter” and “The Wine of the Tetrarch.” The film closes with Blixen’s return to Denmark, where we can see that at last she has attained the long-awaited recognition from her native country, given to her in America decades previously when, as her own evocative, aging voice as heard on an archival recording, reminds us: “I first came over the Atlantic in the form of a book called Seven Gothic Tales.” A quiet death in her sleep occurs three years later, in September 1962, and our closing shot is that of snow falling over her tombstone on the pastoral grounds of Rungstedlund, the old manor inn and family home where she was born and died, with a quotation from the last line of “Babette’s Feast.”

This documentary project is directly connected to the book that I am currently writing—“Close Listening: The Sound of Prose,” a revision of my doctoral dissertation featuring, among others, the sound recordings of Karen Blixen—and to two undergraduate seminars that I am teaching in Spring 2022: Comparative Literature 97, the introduction to the field for new concentrators, which will feature two weeks on literature and cinema, including the work of Karen Blixen, and Comparative Literature 120: “Travel Writing as World Literature.” Because I anticipate that the curricular connection to this project will build a sense of intellectual community among students enrolled in both seminars, and because my description of the latter course in the catalogue gives special emphasis to the work of the author in question, I will quote from it in full: “A survey of literary masterpieces from Marco Polo to Italo Calvino (and beyond), this seminar offers students an introduction to travel literature written around the world from 1300 to 2021. In reading a diverse geographical and linguistic range of travel writers, the course will feature the work of the Danish writer, Karen Blixen, whose travel memoirs will be studied alongside the letters from Africa and selections from the European settings of her short fiction. Students will write a research paper and complete a creative project. The seminar will also offer the opportunity to collaborate on, and contribute original research to, a new documentary film on Blixen's 1959 transatlantic tour, including her trip to Harvard and Radcliffe.”

To that end, the documentary will involve students at all phases of its production: the research process, the filming, and the post-production. I anticipate that students will be interviewed and filmed during class. The documentary will also shoot locations that Blixen visited herself and will alternate between the past of 1959 and the present of today; contemporary interviews will be interwoven with archival sound and video. A series of interviews will feature Harvard faculty, including Professor James Engell, Blixen scholars—Professor Susan Brantly, Catherine Lefebvre, and Blixen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, Judith Thurman—and the actress Meryl Streep, who played Blixen in Out of Africa, a commercial success in 1985. The second half of the documentary will be shot on location in buildings on Harvard’s campus, including interviews inoffices in Dana-Palmer House, the Barker Center, and the Fogg Large Lecture Room, where Blixen spoke to College students on February 20, 1959, upon the invitation of the former Dean of the Radcliffe Graduate School, Bernice B. Cronkhite.

Because the documentary narrates a piece of literary history that is also a small part of Harvard’s history, I am confident that the project will generate intellectual community among faculty colleagues and students and will lead to a lasting impact on campus, preserved in the form of a documentary film whose trace will not be soon erased. The work is interdisciplinary, in that it combines literary history with cinema, and truly transatlantic, in that both the subject of the film and its production are a Danish-American collaboration. The project intersects with a number of fields in the Arts & Humanities at Harvard that faculty are currently researching and teaching—in particular, in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature: world literature, travel literature, literary history, translation studies, and literature and cinema. The film, more broadly, is a public humanities project; given the worldwide prestige of Zentropa, it will have a wide distribution on both sides of the Atlantic, as it recovers and narrates a piece of a literary past of interest to readers in Denmark, the United States, and many other parts of the world.

The documentary is therefore a work of cultural and literary history. Because the afterlife of Blixen’s writing is inextricably linked to her lived experience of migration and self-translation as well as her transnational reception, the project will contribute to deepening scholarly and popular understanding of this Danish writer’s legacy by incorporating her work into disability studies, migration studies, and contemporary debates on the hotly contested canon of global Anglophone and world literature—in particular, literature written across national cultures by authors who write bilingually, in self-translation, and in English as a foreign language. The urgency for a global approach to literature is given special prominence among such prose stylists who choose to write in a language not natively their own. Studying Karen Blixen’s early- to mid-twentieth-century fiction gives us insight into the work of one of the century’s most significant yet neglected writers. Of the sources to be featured in the documentary—manuscripts, public readings, and radio recordings—many provide evidence of Blixen’s capacity to convey orality in language through the voice of the storyteller, both fictional and real. To that end, the documentary examines Blixen’s life and work through the eye of a biographer focused on her subjectivity as refracted through her literary sensibility, her private self, and her public persona, as can be understood from primary sources, including television and sound recordings, memoirs, diaries, and the many drafts, typescripts, rewritings, and self-translations from the archives.

Project Goals

• Gather primary sources documenting Karen Blixen’s 1959 tour to New York and Boston (letters, photographs, newspapers, magazines, sound and video recordings, and ephemera held in the New York Public Library, the YMHA Poetry Center, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and at Harvard: Radcliffe, Widener, Houghton, and the Woodberry Poetry Room)
• Compile bibliography and organize sources for filmmakers
• Create a slideshow of archival photographs to be used in the film
• Liaise with Zentropa in Copenhagen to request permissions for quotations and for reproductions of images, video, and sound
• Research questions for interview subjects

Mentoring Plan

Throughout the summer, the student will work independently and will be regularly in touch on campus and in person with the project supervisor (Thomas Wisniewski) and on Zoom with the project’s Danish collaborator (Catherine Lefebvre) as well as with producers at Zentropa in Copenhagen. Regular in-person meetings will be scheduled, during which the student will have the chance to answer questions and give updates on his/her/their work. Skills acquired will include conducting archival research; doing documentary writing and editing; gaining research experience in literature and cinema; and working closely with a leading filmmaker in Denmark.

Prerequisites

An excellent writer knowledgeable of literature with an interest in documentary film. Reading knowledge of Danish would be helpful, but not required.

SHARP Independent Research Fellowships

In addition to the menu of SHARP projects presented by faculty or led by our institutional partners, this year SHARP is inviting students to propose their own independent research projects on topics in the arts and humanities, broadly defined. For SHARP independent research projects, applicants must describe the proposed research project in detail and the scope of the work for the 10-week summer research period, including specific information about the resources and materials to be engaged on campus. Students must also identify a faculty mentor for the research project. In the SHARP application, your independent project proposal will be included as your first essay response.

Please note: For students proposing independent research projects, the academic reference letter should, in part, specifically address the project and your preparedness to undertake it.

Research Mentor Confirmation Letter

A brief note from your research mentor is also required, providing details about the proposed project and their involvement over the summer. If your academic recommender is also your summer research mentor, the letter of recommendation can also count as the confirmation, and you do not need to provide a separate mentor letter.

When confirmed, the faculty mentor should email their confirmation letter in pdf format to undergradresearch@fas.harvard.edu with SHARP and [YOUR LAST NAME] in the subject line. If you do not have your mentor confirmed by the application deadline, please have them email their confirmation letter as soon as possible.

Creating Digital Public History from African American Primary Sources

Project Supervisors

Dorothy Berry, Digital Collections Program Manager, Houghton Library

Kristine Greive, Head of Teaching and Learning, Houghton Library

Project Overview

For the 2020-2021 academic year, Houghton Library has dedicated its digitization resources to Slavery, Abolition, Emancipation, and Freedom: Primary Sources from Houghton Library (SAEF). This large scale digital project is designed to provide broad access to digitized rare books and manuscripts, as well as the accompanying data, increasing the representation of African American history and culture in Harvard’s digital libraries. With material ranging from abolitionist pamphlets, proceedings from Colored Conventions, and family papers of the formerly enslaved, to government documents from the Freedmen's Bureau, pro-slavery screeds, and propoganda, this collection is opening up new avenues for primary source based historical research.

This fellowship is designed to provide an opportunity for deep independent research in a curated set of digitized material and the creation of a work of public digital scholarship with user friendly tools like Exhibit, StoryMapJS, and Chronos Timeline. The final form of the project will depend on the fellow’s interests and research trajectory, but Houghton mentors will provide ongoing support and guidance from conception to publication. The public digital history project will be part of the launch of the official web presence for the SAEF project.

Houghton mentors will meet regularly with the fellow to help them strengthen research and primary source analysis skills through a mixture of one-on-one conversations and workshops. The fellow will also form a cohort with Houghton undergraduate fellows working on other projects. 

Skills Needed

Students applying for this fellowship should have an interest in American history, AAAS, or related fields. Applicants should also have strong writing skills and enthusiasm for primary source research.

Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970

Project Supervisor

Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography

Project Description

In the fall of 2021, the Harvard Art Museums will present Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970. With over 130 works by an international roster of 53 artists planned, seven thematic groupings structure the exhibition, illustrating the national footprint of the military on the environment, the wide range of industries directly related to these activities, and the human impact of and responses to this activity. The exhibition finds its historic roots in the Civil War era, with images that show the devastation by troops who were instructed by General William Tecumseh Sherman to ransack farms and indiscriminately set fires to eliminate the transportation and industrial infrastructure that sustained the Confederate Army. “We have devoured the land,” he declared. Recognizing its links to a trajectory that originated in the 19th century, Devour the Land highlights the 1970s, a dynamic period for environmental activism and photography, with a concentration of works from the 1980s onwards. The exhibition is being curated by Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography.

Working closely with the curator, the SHARP Fellow will assist in creating dynamic supplemental material and programming for the exhibition. Tasks will include, but not be limited to: researching and producing podcast episodes, conducting Zoom interviews with artists and campus partners, creating content for social media, developing other online and gallery engagement tools – including playlists, maps, digital timelines, and more.

This position will be remote. The Fellow will draw on exhibition materials, the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, and various online databases in their research. The ideal candidate will be highly organized, detail oriented, comfortable working independently and taking initiative, and will possess a knowledge about making podcasts and producing online content.

Outcomes

Interns will gain experience conducting research in art history, producing digital content and engagement tools, and working closely with curators and Museums staff to development educational materials and programs for public audiences. In addition, interns will gain in-depth knowledge of specific objects, artists, activists, and environmental issues, as well as general knowledge of museum practice through structures and unstructured learning opportunities with curators, conservators, and other professional museum staff. By the end of the program, the intern should have a knowledge of Harvard Art Museums’ collections, improved research and communication skills, familiarity with different models for public engagement in museums, and experience writing and creating education materials for public audiences.

Selection Criteria

No art history or museum experience necessarily, but we will seek to work with a highly motivated student who demonstrates an in interest in environmental issues and photography, excitement about the Harvard Art Museums, and a willingness to develop new skills. Strong research, writing, and organizational skills required.

Urban Futures in History

Project Supervisor

Bruno Carvalho, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and African and African American Studies; Co-Director of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative (HMUI)

Project Description

This project is affiliated with the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, which aims to encourage greater research and teaching around urbanization in its many forms. It involves working closely with Professor Carvalho on a new book-length project on how people imagined urban futures during the last 250 years. Throughout modernity, cities have been arenas for competing visions of the future. Some, for example, vied for segregated cities, others for egalitarian utopias. In contexts of rapid urbanization, how did different authors, designers, planners, artists, and “ordinary” people envision the cities of tomorrow, or their own futures as urbanites? What roles did factors like gender, citizenship status, race, and technology play? This project will investigate a variety of proposals, forecasts, and fictional representations, with an eye towards how the unplanned, the unintended, and the unexpected seem to happen with frequency in urban history. But even if the human ability to foretell has had a mixed record (at best!), we can ask questions like: what do expectations about the future tell us about how people in the past made sense of their world? And if today, given concerns like climate change, it often seems as if a catastrophic future is inevitable, what can we learn from studying the past? Can culture and the arts stretch the limits of the thinkable, pushing us to reimage our own possible futures?

Opportunity for the Student

The SHARP Fellow will help Professor Carvalho conduct research in sources like novels, magazines, newspapers, planning documents, museum collections, among others. The interests, abilities, and ingenuity of the fellow will shape the work in significant ways. The fellow will meet regularly with Professor Carvalho and will be expected to prepare summaries of the findings and to reflect on their potential significance to the broader project.

Selection Criteria

The SHARP Fellow should be interested in urban issues in historical perspectives, and possess a love of reading both non-fiction and fiction. Prior knowledge of urban and cultural histories of the Americas between the 1870s and the 1960s would be very helpful but is not necessary. It is expected, however, that the fellow be self-motivated, organized, and resourceful.

Designing a Modern, More Democratic America After World War II

Project Supervisor

Lizabeth Cohen, Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies and Harvard Distinguished Service Professor, Department of History; Co-Director of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative (HMUI)

Project Description

This project is affiliated with the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, which aims to encourage greater research and teaching around urbanism in its many forms. It involves working closely with Professor Cohen on a new book-length project that will probe how, after a decade and a half of the Great Depression and destructive world war, creative Americans devoted themselves from the late 1940s into the 1960s to achieving a more democratic nation through cultural innovation. Faced with the hardening of political possibilities in an intensifying Cold War climate, they focused on the realm of culture to imagine a new kind of postwar society. In interventions as varied as architecture, interior design, clothing, and dance, they experimented with making modernism a vehicle for greater democracy and equality. In their personal lives, these cultural innovators were also experimental; for example, many married couples worked together as artistic teams. Some established their residences and workshops in urban neighborhoods more industrial than residential; others set up shop in rural areas. It is likely, however, that the undertakings of these cultural designers served more to alienate the ordinary Americans they had hoped to attract than to inspire them to adopt new values and tastes. The result was the deepening of a cultural wedge that would help divide Americans more than unite them by the 1960s.

Opportunity for the Student

The SHARP Fellow will help Professor Cohen research various aspects of this project in popular magazines, digitized archives of personal papers and company records, oral histories, films, museum collections, and more. Ingenuity will be needed to figure out what sources are available for remote research, given the limitations posed by the pandemic. The fellow will meet regularly with Professor Cohen and with her guidance prepare memos that document research findings as well as offer preliminary analyses.

Selection Criteria

The SHARP Fellow should ideally bring the following qualities to the position: curiosity and interest in the recent history of material and expressive culture, resourcefulness as a researcher, self-motivation, good organizational skills, strong writing ability, and some knowledge of 20^th century US history, particularly from 1930-60. Past experience doing research in visual, written, media, and/or material culture sources would be helpful.

The Meaning & Modality (M&M) Linguistics Lab

Project Supervisor

Kathryn Davidson, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Linguistics

Project Description

This is a project for students to gain direct experience carrying out linguistics research related to how different meanings are expressed across languages, using a combination of theoretical and experimental methods. The goal of this summer research project is for the student to design and begin to execute an experiment that fits into a larger project in the lab studying how signed and spoken languages compare in their uses of analog vs. discrete semantic representations. Depending on the student’s background, they could focus either on the sign language half of the equation or the spoken language half, designing a study in partnership with both Deaf and hearing lab members.

A good fit for this project

A team player who is excited to learn what it is like to conduct research in Linguistics. There is a lot of opportunity for independent research to take off from the existing studies, so this would be an especially great opportunity for someone who is open to the possibility of continuing research in linguistics after this summer (in this lab, in grad school, etc.). Research generally involves a balance of working independently while at the same time not shying away from asking all of the questions when you do get stuck, so an applicant should be prepared to do their best to brave both sides of that coin. We’ll do our best to support you along the way.

What you would be doing

Throughout the 10-week program, the student and mentor will meet once a week to discuss the student’s progress on this specific project, and another time in the week as part of our weekly lab meeting with a larger group (roughly 15 members comprised of undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs).

Day to day work includes reading primary sources (journal papers) in Linguistics to situate the project and inform the design in the first couple of weeks, and then may include video filming and editing for project design and implementation of surveys in Qualtrics, as well as statistics in R for data analysis, depending on how quickly the project progresses. We have been carrying out our work virtually during the pandemic and can continue to do so if recommended by health considerations this summer.

What you would gain from the experience

Understanding of current open theoretical questions in sign language and spoken language linguistics; research skills (data design and collection); analytical skills (analysis and writing); a lab community with members with a wide variety of academic experiences.

Prerequisites

A strong background either in Linguistics (a current Linguistics concentrator, or plans to be), OR a background in American Sign Language. The applicant should have an interest in investigating theoretical linguistics questions using quantitative experimental methods. Experience in statistics using R, experience with Qualtrics or ELAN, and/or iMovie/AdobeRush/etc. would be a plus but definitely not required.

ArtLab Radio

Project Supervisor

Bree Edwards, Director, Harvard ArtLab

Project Overview

The ArtLab welcomes applications from all disciplines to conduct research and produce a podcast that will launch ArtLab Radio from our broadcast quality sound studio.

ArtLab Radio will explore the creative mind, innovative artistic research, and how it shapes the world around us. The SHARP Fellow will research potential stories, write content, record and edit audio while creating a platform for diverse and creative voices to be heard. If you are a storyteller, a fan of podcasts, or engaged with interdisciplinary research or artmaking, this fellowship may interest you.

This show will focus on artists, designers, scientists, and engineers crossing disciplinary boundaries to solve some of today’s most pressing issues, such as climate change, food insecurity, education, and public health. The ArtLab’s artists in residence will also inspire segments of this project.

Agenda

The SHARP Fellow will work with Creative Producer in residence Nicholas Medvescek and the ArtLab’s director Bree Edwards. The Fellow can complete the research and writing remotely if necessary. The first phase of this fellowship will outline the themes and topics for the first four segments. Phase two will be the research and writing of stories. The third segment will focus on production and include interviewing guests and recording stories. The final step will consist of editing and a digital launch of ArtLab Radio.

Outcomes

• Learning and developing creative ways to document research.
• Gain experience in audio editing and podcast creation

Selection Criteria

We are looking for an independent and creative student. Strong research, writing, and communication skills are essential. Experience with audio recording or audio is not required for this fellowship, but you may learn about it along the way.

Propose Your Own Houghton Library Project

Project Supervisor

Kristine Greive, Head of Teaching and Learning, Houghton Library 

Project Overview

Houghton Library is pleased to invite Harvard undergraduates to work with our collections in the summer with support of SHARP. These competitive fellowships are designed to fully support a summer of work at Houghton, Harvard’s world-class rare books and manuscripts library.

Houghton is home to the world famous and the almost entirely unknown, the ancient and the contemporary, the enduring and the ephemeral; as a researcher, a practitioner, an experimenter, we want to know what you can do with these materials. During the course of a fellowship, fellows work closely with library staff to discover new areas of interest or to delve into ongoing projects. Past fellows have created an opera; identified and filled gaps in the literature about the American and British birth control movements; produced a series of podcasts on poetry and the archives; made surprising discoveries about the origins of American theater at Harvard; explored the life and works of John James Audubon; and the development of W.V. Quine's philosophical work; created interactive fiction; written books and poetry; made art and created exhibitions. We invite proposals for this summer on any topic or discipline supported by our collections. Creative, digital, research, and performance projects are all welcome, as are those we haven't thought of yet.

Successful project proposals tend to be driven by your passions and questions and include concentrated work with collection materials at Houghton. Fellows attend workshops on book history, book arts, archives, and other associated topics and also meet weekly with mentors and as a research cohort throughout the program. 

Proposing a Project

Applicants should be prepared to describe their proposed project, including specific information about the Houghton Library materials or kinds of materials the project would make use of as well as the outcomes or manifestation/s for the project. This proposal narrative is limited to approximately 500 words. In the SHARP application, this proposal will be included as your first essay response.

To schedule a time to talk with a Houghton librarian about your project in advance, please email us at houghton_library@harvard.edu.

Mapping the past for a better future: Next-generation research into Past Pandemics, Places, Photography, Philology

Project Supervisor

Michael McCormick, Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History & Chair, Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard

Overview

Ever wondered how roads and travel infrastructures change the spread of disease? How has this changed over time? Have the Romans determined how COVID spread 2000 years after they built their roads? This project seeks undergraduate researchers to build a map of the past with next-generation technology that can inform our understanding of the present and the future. We explore how climate, diseases, economies, literature, communications, and the environment changed over the past 2000 years. We aim to expand our digital maps beyond western societies, exploring cultures and places not yet on any map. Relating data from the social sciences and humanities, this project has taught students how to use in-demand technologies such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS, the software behind every app with a map), statistical tools, and even new imaging tools that can reveal new information about the location where old photographs were taken. By crossing disciplines and shedding any fear of innovation, this project pushes the boundaries of convention as we work with our amazing undergraduates to make groundbreaking discoveries.

Types of tasks

Reading historical sources and translating them into data that computers and mapping software can understand. Locating unknown sites on maps and atlases. Deep reading of texts to understand overall context and meaning of historical circumstances in which documents were produced. Producing digital maps and story maps. Testing new graphics manipulation software to reveal the hidden surroundings of historical photographs. Using stylometric software to reveal the true authorship of texts of unidentified authors. Reading scholarly research in history, archaeology, and several other disciplines and translating that information into maps or databases for additional research applications.

Skills

Familiarity with Excel or Google Sheets desirable. Familiarity with GIS, Python, R, or other statistical software desirable but not indispensable. Foreign language abilities highly desirable. Prior coursework in history or archaeology a plus, but not a pre-requisite. Discipline, enthusiasm and enjoyment of a team environment working closely with senior researchers.

Mentoring and collaboration

Students will meet weekly with faculty leads, and keep in touch with leadership team via Slack or email. Assignments will be made via Zoom tutorial. Students will learn the basics of GIS software and how to build digital maps, story maps, and dashboards. They will also learn how to create databases, how to coordinate work in a sizeable team, how to quality-check and deliver a finished, reliable research dataset. Students will choose their project area of interest and be asked to contribute their perspective about data usability, research questions, user interfaces for public use, and more sources for additional projects. If able, students will be asked to develop basic analysis queries through GIS or other software that can reveal hidden patterns in big-data. Students may receive ongoing guidance when needed through email or Slack. We will replicate for this broader range of projects the structures, guidance and organizational models we deployed with considerable success for 5 HUCE and SoHP summer interns working on historical climate change in 2020.

Capacity

Possibility for 3 students, and all work can be conducted remotely.

Contact Information

Prof. Michael McCormick
Email: sohpchair@fas.harvard.edu
Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History
Chair, Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard
Director at Harvard of the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean
General Editor, Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations
Robinson Hall
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
Voice (617) 496-3905

Poetry in America - Summer 2021 SHARP Project Proposal

Project Supervisor

Professor Elisa New

Poetry in America Overview

I am currently at work on Poetry in America, a multiplatform humanities and media initiative at Harvard. Poetry in America began as a series of HarvardX modules, and has now expanded to a PBS television series, as well as a wide range of multimedia educational initiatives across Harvard and with GBH, public television’s preeminent production house. Seasons 1 and 2 of the Poetry in America television series aired nationally in 2018 and 2020, respectively, and I am currently producing Seasons 3 and 4 of the series (we anticipate that Season 3 will premiere in the fall of 2021, with filming and production schedules contingent on COVID-19 numbers). In addition, my team is working to create state-of-the-art online course materials and teacher training materials in partnership with HGSE and DCE that connect the reading of poetry with other disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. In partnership with the National Education Equity Lab, the Harvard Extension School, and Arizona State University, we are also piloting an initiative to offer low-cost college credit to high-schoolers in Title I high schools around the country.

Opportunities

In the next 12 months my Production Team will be developing footage for the third and fourth seasons of the Poetry in America television series, as well as working with our Education Team to update and add to our suite of online courses aimed at K-12 teachers and students. Over the spring and summer months, our Education Team will also be analyzing survey and student performance data following the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 runs of our National Pilot program for high-schoolers in order to reflect and report on outcomes, and to make changes to future runs of the program.

We seek a SHARP fellow to assist with online course development and educational program evaluation. The fellow will work with project mentors to devise a project suited to his or her interests, but a few possible areas of focus include: conducting research on online education and Dual Enrollment models; reviewing existing and developing new assessments for our online courses; developing materials for teachers and students participating in our National Pilot program; and assisting with the rollout of the Fall 2021 run of the Pilot.

In addition, after launching our first successful Poetry in America for Teachers course in 2017, we received funding to begin developing video content and curricula on Shakespeare and on World Literature (in partnership with Stephen Greenblatt and Martin Puchner, respectively) for use in the K-12 classroom and for K-12 teacher education. If a SHARP fellow were interested in humanities education beyond poetry, this could be one possible avenue for research and work this summer.

The SHARP fellow will hone close-reading and research skills. They will become familiar with our library of footage, and become adept at watching, editing, and reviewing educational media, identifying key teaching moments, and developing curricula or assessments tailored to learning outcomes. The SHARP fellow will gain an understanding of copyright law, and assist the Poetry in America team with copyright compliance and rights acquisition.

Poetry in America SHARP fellows will design their projects in consultation with me and with members of my Production or Education teams. All fellowship projects can be completed remotely or in person, to align with the format of the SHARP program in Summer 2021.

Selection Criteria

The ideal candidate for this SHARP fellowship will be a self-motivated, organized, creative, and energetic undergraduate, preferably a rising junior or senior. The applicant should have some experience in literature, history, and/or the arts, and an interest in the digital humanities, multimedia education, and K-12 education. Students with an interest or background in film production or Web design are also welcome to apply; however, none of these skills are required, and there will be opportunities for learning on the job if applicants are interested in these areas.

Seeing Clear Through: Studio Research on the “Shadowgraphs”

Project Supervisors

Jennifer Roberts, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities, Department of History of Art and Architecture
Matt Saunders, Harris K. Weston Associate Professor of the Humanities, Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies

Project Description

If you’ve searched much in the digital collection of the Harvard Art Museums, you may have thought you’d seen a ghost. For there among the pots and coins, bronzes and paintings, you’ll occasionally spot a spectral face, perhaps riddled with wormholes or pierced with nails. This is one of the over 4,000 “shadowgraphs”—X-rays of works of art—in the collection of the Straus Center for Conservations. Between 1925-1944, conservation pioneer Alan Burroughs conducted the first large scale, systematic project for the technical study of art using x-radiographs. He used a portable Picker x-ray unit and traveled to major collections in the US and Europe, imaging sculptures and paintings, both famous and obscure.

To the contemporary eye, these photographs float partly free of their documentary and forensic content. They are haunting and disorienting, showing works of art in their cracked, fragile and enduring material bodies, and they inspire new ways of approaching the uncanniness and physicality of images. As Professor Roberts observes about the X-rays of paintings: “These images bring the backs and fronts together, so that they soak into each other in an impossible simultaneity. The backs and the supports—wood grain, linen, canvas, nails, seemingly mute and inert forms from the earth—quietly insist on their role in illusion, narrative, and the painterly imagination.” Observations like this, and the way these “shadowgraphs” continue to challenge and inspire, lead us to a project to explore them in more depth.

We are seeking a SHARP fellow to join us in our engagement with this archive. The project is part speculative art history and part creative practice. Time will be spent researching and examining the contents of the collection; developing observations and language about its many meanings; and using hands on practice to think through what these images might show us. Equal time will be devoted to looking, discussing and making. With uncertainty still about access to campus, the structure will change based on the situation. The Burroughs collection is almost fully digitized and accessible remotely. Studio projects will depend on the experience—and ideas—of the fellow. They could include monotyping, screenprinting, casting, and analogue or digital photography, pursued either in the studios of the Carpenter Center or elsewhere.

Fellows will be mentored by professors Jennifer Roberts of the History of Art and Architecture and Matt Saunders of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, and over the summer will gain experience with this particular archive, with museum research in general, with approaches to applying art historical research “out of the box,” and ways that artmaking itself can be informed by and be a form of research.

The ideal candidate will be self-motivated and have some comfort with art-making in any form. An art historical background is wonderful, but not required, as the material could also be approached from other vantages (hard science, conservation, media studies and others.)

Harvard Art Museums: Brandywine Workshop and Archives Exhibition

Project Supervisors

Elizabeth Rudy, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Associate Curator of Prints, Division of European and American Art
Sarah Kianovsky, Curator of the Collection, Division of Modern and Contemporary Art

Project Overview

The Harvard Art Museums welcomes applications from undergraduates of all disciplines for up to two SHARP Fellowships to conduct research on a diverse group of artists featured in the upcoming exhibition of prints from the Brandywine Workshop and Archives, acquired by the Harvard Art Museums in 2018. An organization founded in Philadelphia in 1972, Brandywine has been dedicated to the "creation, documentation, and preservation of a legacy of culturally diverse American art and ensuring the participation of multi-ethnic artists and audiences in the field of fine art printmaking and related media technologies.” In addition to their educational activities, the Workshop has a long and significant history of offering short-term printmaking residencies for artists working in other media. Whether made by artists who are well-known (Bettye Saar, Edgar Heap of Birds, Sam Gilliam) or less familiar (Odili Donald Odita, Pedro Abascal, Tanya Murphy), the works that emerged from the Brandywine Workshop are unanimously compelling and beautiful.

Agenda

The SHARP Fellow(s) will be an integral part of the team working on an exciting upcoming exhibition (spring 2022) featuring prints by a diverse group of artists from the Brandywine Workshop, acquired by the Harvard Art Museums in 2018. (View the prints online!) The exhibition will highlight the collaborative and technically experimental character of Brandywine, and the Museums’ focus on the material qualities of works of art. The exhibition will include more than 100 prints, spanning the history of the Workshop and celebrating its mission of creating opportunities for artists underrepresented in both the marketplace and museum collections. The exhibition will honor that mission by involving as many of the living artists represented in the show as possible through programming; inviting students and professors to write labels; and soliciting responses from local artists to the works on view; the participation of the SHARP Fellow(s) will play a major role in this effort.

The core of the project will center on research and writing on artists featured in the exhibition--including compiling artist biographies, identifying how the Brandywine experience influenced the artists' career trajectories, finding comparative works and online presentations by artists in our collection, writing labels--that will help shape and deepen the content of the exhibition and related programming. The work of the SHARP Fellow(s) will include research into resources found in libraries, curatorial records, and online; and (depending on Covid restrictions over the summer) may include opportunities to work directly with works of art. The Fellow(s) will work closely with exhibition co-curators and have opportunities to meet and interact with staff across many departments, such as those in conservation, editorial, design, digital, and public programs.

Outcomes

The Fellow(s) will gain experience in many of the steps that go into the development of a special exhibition. They will further develop their research skills, and will learn how information gleaned from a wide variety of sources, including local newspapers and magazines, as well as more traditional art-focused publications, can inform interpretive materials and public programming, and contribute to a broader understanding and awareness of artists and communities who have historically been underrepresented.

Selection Criteria

Interest or background in art or art history will be helpful since conducting research on the artists represented in the show will be a big part of the fellow's assignment. Curiosity, creativity, and persistence will be required since some of these artists are less well-known. Ability to follow the guidance of co-curators, but also to work independently.

Women in the History of the Harvard Art Museums

Project supervisors

Megan Schwenke, Senior Archivist/Records Manager
Camran Mani, Cunningham Curatorial Fellow

The Harvard Art Museums welcomes applications from undergraduates of all disciplines for up to two SHARP Fellowships to conduct research on the accomplishments of, and barriers faced by, women in the history of this complex institution, long a major training ground for leading art historians, conservation scientists, and museum professionals. Resulting findings will fuel the production of short videos or other digital media projects to promote greater understanding of these topics. Students will also deliver some original, research-based tours of the collections to museum visitors online, acting as the public face of the Harvard Art Museums. The work of the SHARP Fellows will include archival research, museum and collections research, meetings and workshops with staff from across the museums’ departments, and the development of educational materials for public audiences.

The research and educational work of the SHARP Fellows will draw on the intellectual, institutional, and artistic resources of the Harvard Art Museums – the Fogg, the Busch-Reisinger, and the Arthur M. Sackler – which feature works from the ancient world to the present, and from the Americas, Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Asia.

Agenda

The SHARP Fellows will perform research using available materials held by the Harvard Art Museums Archives, possibly conduct interviews with experts, and consult with supervisors to develop a substantial understanding of the under-recognized work of women in the history of the Harvard Art Museums, the conditions in which it took place, and its significance for later generations (socially, professionally, etc.). With this foundation, they will draft (and perhaps create) one or more brief documentary videos or other digital media, as they and their supervisors deem fit, for distribution on the Internet. They may also draft a memo with recommendations for how to incorporate these stories into the museums’ communications. The latter will be based on familiarity with the museums’ website, social media platforms, wall labels, and collections installations, which museums staff and supervisors will facilitate over the course of the fellowship.

Some of the women likely to be important protagonists in this project are Agnes Mongan (Drawings curator, 1940-1975; Director of the Fogg and allegedly the first woman director of a major American art museum, 1969-1971), Elizabeth “Betty” Jones (Chief of Conservation at the Fogg, 1952-1974, and one of the earliest women leaders in the field of art conservation), and Elizabeth “Lisl” Strassman (Fogg Museum Registrar, 1943-1968). Attention to women who made foreign-language translations, took dictation for articles and books, and did other vital but unglamorized -- and under-recognized -- kinds of work will be encouraged. Examination of how the gender-based discrimination they faced intersected with discrimination based on race, religion, and additional aspects of identity will be essential.

Outcomes

The Fellows will gain experience conducting archival research in the histories of art and gender, working closely with museum professionals, and developing educational materials for public audiences. In addition, interns will gain in-depth knowledge of specific objects and collection areas they research in preparation for their tours, as well as general knowledge of museum practice through structured and unstructured learning opportunities with curators, conservators, archivists, and other professional museum staff. By the end of the fellowship, the Fellows should have knowledge of the Harvard Art Museums’ history and collections, improved research and communication skills, and experience developing educational materials for public audiences.

Selection criteria

No art history, archives, or museum experience necessary, but interest in the Harvard Art Museums and the power of stories to address social inequities is essential. Outstanding research and writing skills and comfort with public speaking are required. Video production skills and social media savvy preferred. Knowledge of twentieth-century American history or the history of gender not required but a plus. Tour-guiding experience a plus.

Storytelling and Games with Museum APIs

Project Supervisor

Jeff Steward, Director of Digital Infrastructure and Emerging Technology (DIET), Harvard Art Museums

Project Overview

The SHARP fellow will work with the DIET team on coding digital, interactive stories and games based on two upcoming exhibitions: Devour the Land and States of Play. The student will learn about the design and development process for creating these exhibitions; they will learn about the museum’s digital infrastructure; they will research select themes and objects featured in the exhibitions; and then they will assist in designing and coding interactive websites to compliment the exhibitions.

A few questions we’ll address:

• How are museum exhibitions created?
• What is cultural data?
• Why do museums have data? What is in it?
• What role does technology play in the museum setting?
• How can we use games to interpret art and make art more accessible?

The fellow will work with the museum’s coding frameworks, open dataset, and APIs to code websites to run in the museum’s Lightbox Gallery in tandem with each exhibition.

Agenda

The project will run in four phases. During the first phase the fellow will meet with members of the museum staff to learn about the curatorial process and design process for creating museum exhibitions. The second phase includes research into select themes and objects from each exhibition. The third phase will be to learn the museum's digital infrastructure and coding practices. The final phase will be to write, test, and debug code for the interactive websites.

The fellow will work with the Director of DIET at the Harvard Art Museums throughout the entire project.

Outcomes

The fellow will learn the full depth and breadth of designing and coding websites for the museum’s Lightbox Gallery. They will gain experience using version control systems (GitHub) and writing readable code/documentation. They will gain experience with APIs and the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF). They will gain experience writing and designing websites for global, interdisciplinary audiences. We aim to make the art museum's collections accessible to diverse audiences. This is an opportunity to work on museum projects that are public facing and have a global impact. By the end of the term, the fellow will have learned how computer (cognitive, color, data, etc.) science and creative thinking are applied at art museums.

Selection Criteria

This is a great opportunity for those interested in exploring digital storytelling and digital humanities. The fellow should be interested in making art accessible through technology and coding.

We're looking for an independent and organized student. Strong research, writing, and communication skills are required.

Some experience and knowledge of coding for the web is required. (Don't worry about being able to write clean code. Programming is messy.) It’s more important that you can bring ideas to life on the screen than be able to write the perfect algorithm. Our project is adaptable to your skills and experience.

No prior museum experience is necessary.

Village China: A Modern History

Faculty Sponsor

Michael Szonyi
Frank Wen-hsiung Wu Memorial Professor of Chinese History
Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

Project Description

Until the early twenty-first century, most Chinese people lived not in big cities like Beijing or Shanghai but in the countryside, in millions upon millions of villages. China’s transformation from an overwhelmingly rural society to an increasingly urban one is among the most significant transformations of the modern world. Looking at the lives of the rural majority and how they have changed can help us see more clearly what is distinctive about China’s historical trajectory, what it has in common with other places around the world, and what lessons it might offer for rural people in other places. For the past few years, I’ve been working on a book, to be published by Princeton University Press, that explores the extraordinary changes of the last century from the perspective of this rural majority, and asks how a focus on the rural can change our understanding of Chinese history. With China-based research on the project suspended by the pandemic, my focus has now shifted to library and online research tasks in Cambridge. This is an opportunity to participate in that work.

Research Opportunity and Tasks

The specific research tasks will depend very much on the aptitude and interests of the successful candidate. After an initial 1-2 weeks (as needed) of familiarizing yourself with the project and the field of modern Chinese history (through a combination of intensive reading, online lectures, and one-on-one meetings with me), your daily work might include some of the following tasks:

• Problem-solving in the humanities, original research and analysis: How might you go about answering questions like the following: “How did literacy levels in rural China change over the course of the twentieth-century?” “What percentage of the rural population from different parts of China is currently living away from their home village and engaged in migrant labor?” - Where would you look for data? Having located the most reliable data, can you develop an explanation for these changes?
• Intensive reading in fiction: Reading novels and short stories (in the original Chinese or in translation) to learn about specific aspects of rural life at different times and places
• Scholarly literature reviews: Reading widely in the immense secondary literature in history, political science, anthropology, and rural studies to answer specific questions and find relevant supporting evidence
• Archival work: Exploring, analyzing and summarizing digitized village and township archives from Chinese villages, on subjects ranging from the assignment of people to class ranks in the 1950s to the implementation of birth control regulations (requires Chinese language ability)

Mentorship and Learning Outcomes

I expect to meet (probably online) multiple times per week in the initial phase of familiarization, and then once or twice a week thereafter, once to discuss research outcomes and findings and once to plan the coming week’s research activities.

Working on this project you will learn the processes involved in a long-term humanistic research project. You’ll develop useful research skills that you will be able to use for future projects: how to locate and evaluate information in support of a larger research project, how to manage large quantities of information/data/evidence; develop analytical skills; and develop communication skills to convey research findings.

Participants in the project can expect to be acknowledged in the published book.

Selection Criteria

The ideal candidate will be energetic, self-motivated, able to work independently and have an interest in how ordinary people experience the big changes of history. Ability to read Chinese would be a plus, but is not required. Similarly, an interest in Chinese history, development studies or rural studies would be an advantage but is not required.

SHARP Independent Research Fellowships

In addition to the menu of SHARP projects presented by faculty or led by our institutional partners, this year SHARP is inviting students to propose their own independent research projects on topics in the arts and humanities, broadly defined. For SHARP independent research projects, applicants must describe the proposed research project in detail and the scope of the work for the 10-week summer research period, including specific information about the resources and materials to be engaged on campus. Students must also identify a faculty mentor for the research project. In the SHARP application, your independent project proposal will be included as your first essay response.

Please note: For students proposing independent research projects, the academic reference letter should, in part, specifically address the project and your preparedness to undertake it.

Research Mentor Confirmation Letter

A brief note from your research mentor is also required, providing details about the proposed project and their involvement over the summer. If your academic recommender is also your summer research mentor, the letter of recommendation can also count as the confirmation, and you do not need to provide a separate mentor letter.

When confirmed, the faculty mentor should email their confirmation letter in pdf format to undergradresearch@fas.harvard.edu with SHARP and [YOUR LAST NAME] in the subject line. If you do not have your mentor confirmed by the application deadline, please have them email their confirmation letter as soon as possible.

“Abolitionist Women and Their Worlds”: Course Development Research

Project Supervisors

Tiya Miles, Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor

Ellen Shea, Head of Research Services, and Tamar Gonen Brown, Research Librarian, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America

Project Description

The Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is part of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and is the only Harvard library dedicated to documenting and preserving the history of women. The year 2020 marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which removed federal barriers to women’s suffrage in the United States. To mark the occasion, the Library has launched a major project, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to commemorate, interrogate, and redefine the narrative of American women’s citizenship. As part of that effort, the Library is spearheading the creation of Harvard College courses that draw heavily on the Library’s archival collections. The second of these courses, “Abolitionist Women and Their World,” will be taught by Tiya Miles in spring 2021. The course draws students into an exploration of nineteenth-century activist women’s lives that underscores the critical difference of the past from the present while also recognizing that some questions repeat across time, such as how does a person change her own life and make a difference in the lives of others?

We seek a SHARP Fellow to assist Professor Miles during summer 2020 with in-depth research to develop this archive-intensive course. The Fellow will conduct broad and deep research into the Library’s rich collections and will be tasked with locating specific materials, surveying collections, identifying potentially relevant sites and artifacts, and other research tasks as assigned.

Learning Outcomes & Skills

The SHARP Fellow will develop and hone historical research skills, will become well-versed in the history and debates surrounding abolition and women’s citizenship, and will become familiar with library and archival methodologies as well as the principles of course design.

Selection Criteria

We seek SHARP Fellows with strong research and writing skills and an interest in history, African and African American studies, law, digital humanities, WGS, or other related fields. No prior library or museum experience is required. Strong technical skills are desirable, but not required. Most important is the willingness to learn and explore, and a genuine curiosity and excitement about the project.

A Difficult Archaeologist: Digitization of the Papers of Clarence S. Fisher at the Semitic Museum

Supervisor

Peter Der Manuelian, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, Anthropology, Director, Harvard Semitic Museum

Project Description

Clarence S. Fisher (1876–1941) trained as an architect at the University of Pennsylvania (B.S. 1897) and, from 1899 onwards, spent his professional career working on American archaeological expeditions in Iraq, Egypt and Palestine. He was architect and draftsman for the Harvard Excavations at Samaria, 1908–1910, begun by the founding Curator of the Semitic Museum, Harvard professor David Gordon Lyon, and directed in the field by Lyon’s star pupil, George Reisner. In Egypt Fisher excavated the palace of King Merneptah at Memphis, cemeteries at Denderah, and Theban tombs from the New Kingdom cemeteries of modern Luxor. As a scholar and architectural archaeologist, Fisher was gifted. As an individual and a field director, however, Fisher drove those around him, Americans and Egyptians alike, almost insane with his mercurial nature and paranoia. Discerning his “unique” personality will be part of the project—and part of the fun.

Over the course of four decades, Fisher accumulated a large archive of documents, photographs and technical drawings. Originally widely dispersed, Fisher’s archive is now deposited at the Semitic Museum, though divided among several different collections, some only partly catalogued. The objective of the Museum’s C.S. Fisher Archive Project is to unify—virtually, not physically—these disparate collections and create a common finding aid. This summer’s efforts will be devoted particularly to a collection of papers from Fisher’s work in Egypt, which is less well known than his work in Iraq or Palestine. Other material in the Museum’s Samaria Excavations Archive and the Museum’s Historical Archive relevant to Fisher’s life and works will also be digitized in conjunction with these papers.

The long-term objective of this project to digitize the entire Archive and to make it available publicly for purposes of research, teaching and museum exhibition. This will also support another ongoing project to compile an institutional history of the Museum, especially its early years (1889–1932) for which, in addition to Fisher, it has especially rich holdings.

We seek an undergraduate assistant intern, from June to August, to help in organizing, processing and digitizing the Fisher Archive material. While no particular prerequisite skills are required, we hope to take on a student interested in some or all of the following: archaeology, art history, history of the early modern Middle East, museum collection research, museum studies, and archival work. A combination of some of the following attributes will be helpful: excellent organizational and project management skills; basic computer database and Excel abilities, and perhaps even some rudimentary Photoshop and archival research experience. There will be lots of scanning of valuable archival documents involved.

Working together with Manuelian and the Museum’s deputy director, Joseph A. Greene, by the end of the project the intern should have a firm grasp of the innerworkings of university archaeological museum, how it organizes and cares for its archival collections, and how it uses those collections for teaching, research, public exhibition and outreach education. While there will be a fair amount of scanning involved, the intellectual component of the project lies in gathering the diverse materials spread across the Museum’s archives, organizing them electronically in an intelligent system, creating a finding aid reference document to them, and assessing Clarence Fisher’s role in the development of Harvard archaeology and interactions with Museum Director David Gordon Lyon and Egyptologist/archaeologist George Reisner. Background materials on Fisher, including possible interactions with his living grandson, should help bring the project alive.

I plan to be in Boston through most of the summer of 2020, and my deputy director will work directly with the student on a daily basis. The student will work in the Semitic Museum alongside Museum staff and other summer volunteer interns in a friendly, collegial environment. We believe this will provide a Harvard undergraduate a unique opportunity to learn how the products of “old” technology—in Fisher’s case pen, paper, drafting table, glass plate photography—can be transformed by modern digital technology to make them accessible to the scholarly and world community.

Digital Archaeology: The Giza Project at Harvard

Faculty Supervisor

Peter Der Manuelian, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, Anthropology, Director, Harvard Semitic Museum

Project Description

The Giza Project’s goal is the comprehensive collection, electronic preservation, scholarly study, and public presentation of data on the world’s most famous archaeological site: the Giza Pyramids of Egypt and their surrounding cemeteries and settlements (3rd millennium BCE to present). Building upon twenty years of academic data processing at Harvard and earlier at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Project has now reached a maturity and scope at which exciting new forms of outreach and education are possible. Using digital archaeology, the Project combines powerful online and traditional academic research tools with new teaching technologies for the world community, as a model of archaeological information management.

We have assembled electronic archival datasets through collaborative agreements around the globe, focusing mainly (but not exclusively) on collections from fifteen international institutions, in Berkeley, CA; Boston; Berlin; Cairo; Cambridge; Hildesheim; Leipzig; Philadelphia; Turin; and Vienna. Their pooled data comprise the largest collection of Giza archival materials ever compiled, all in electronic form. Through consolidation and standardized processing by the Giza Project this substantial volume of scattered records has become publicly available to the world community. Our pilot website is available at http://giza.fas.harvard.edu.

We seek an undergraduate assistant intern, from June to August, to help in organizing and processing part of our backlog of images and documents in the pipeline for our database and website. Some of these come from our European partners abroad; others consist of multiple views of statues and other objects in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (with multiple images of the same object, metadata processing becomes much easier).

While no particular prerequisite skills are required, we hope to take on a student interested in some or all of the following: archaeology, art history, museum collection research, database spreadsheet preparation, museum studies, and archival work. A combination of some of the following attributes will be helpful: excellent organizational and project management skills; basic computer database and Excel abilities, and perhaps even some rudimentary Photoshop and archival research experience. The student will assist with researching, describing, and properly labeling images in a spreadsheet in preparation for batch uploads to the Giza database and website. In the process s/he will learn museum collection research methods, collections management metadata skills, and the significance of intelligent linking between images, documents, names, and places that make the Giza Project website such a powerful tool.

Working together with Manuelian and the Giza Project’s deputy director, Nicholas Picardo, in Vanserg 130, by the end of the project the intern should have a firm grasp on the internal structure of large information management projects, and how to make them accessible to a wider audience.

I plan to be in Boston through most of the summer of 2020, and my deputy director will also work directly with the student on a daily basis. The student will work primarily in the Giza Project office in Vanserg 130, where other summer staff and volunteers will be on hand, in a relaxed and friendly environment. We believe this work provides a unique opportunity to become familiar with the most famous archaeological site in the world, and how scholars strive to apply new technologies to make it accessible to the world community.

Diversity in Digital Space

Project supervisors

Christina Linklater (Keeper of the Isham Memorial Library and Houghton Music Cataloger)
Carol J. Oja (William Powell Mason Professor of Music)
Braxton D. Shelley (Assistant Professor of Music)

Project description

To mark the golden anniversary of the landmark book The Music of Black Americans (1971), Harvard Library staff (Christina Linklater), faculty (Professors Carol J. Oja and Braxton D. Shelley) and students are collaborating on an exhibition, a symposium and two concerts. These events, scheduled for the spring semester of 2021, will honor both the book and its author, Eileen Southern (1920-2002), who was the first African-American woman tenured in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

We invite two SHARP fellows to join us in this endeavor for a summer of editing, revision, research, and online exhibition curation. The position offers hands-on experience in designing and implementing an online exhibit, with the goal of reaching a diverse audience. It embraces core values of the public humanities, and it aims to generate conversations about race and music that will extend far beyond the walls of Harvard. At the same time, it offers intensive experience in data management and library techniques.

The fellows will be charged with verifying the accuracy of data in exhibition labels and other pieces of data created and gathered by Professor Oja's graduate students in a Fall 2019 seminar. They will additionally review closed-captioned video footage of interviews conducted by the seminar with Southern's colleagues and friends, checking for errors in the captions, helping to create metadata for deposit of these videos into Harvard Library's Digital Repository Service, and choosing excerpts to be included in a composite video. All these tasks will be geared to the primary goal, which is to collaborate with project staff to imagine a digital space into which the exhibition will extend, bringing together the graduate students' ArcGIS and other web projects into a cohesive online presence.

All in all, the various threads involved in this project will be undertaken with an eye to diverse access. What audiences might turn to this exhibition, whether in public libraries or secondary-school classrooms? How can the materials be edited and presented so as to attract the broadest possible audience?

Learning outcomes

The felows will become adept at working with the Omeka web-publishing system, data management, HOLLIS searching, and navigating the Harvard Library system. If interested, the fellows could receive training in metadata creation for Alma, Harvard's Integrated Library System.

Schedule and mentorship

One day per week throughout the summer will be devoted exclusively to developing a web presence for the exhibition. For the video review phase of the project, the fellows could each be reasonably expected to view one video per day, simultaneously composing descriptive metadata, comparing the audio track against its captions, and choosing segments for a future compilation. Other typical days could include transcribing data into a spreadsheet, searching HOLLIS or other resources provided by project mentors for the secondary source literature references, and retrieving that literature to check citations, indicating on the spreadsheet whether the citations were correct or, if necessary, how they ought to be emended.

At the beginning of each day, Christina Linklater will meet with the fellows to discuss the coming day's work and review that of the previous day. The felows will become adept at working with the Omeka web-publishing system, data management, HOLLIS searching, and navigating the Harvard Library system. If interested, the fellows could receive training in metadata creation for Alma, Harvard's Integrated Library System.

Professor Oja will also interact vigorously with the fellows, including regular in-person and Zoom consultations to discuss the conceptual frameworks being developed. Christina Linklater will be on campus for the entire summer, with the exception of June 15-19 and July 20-24, and will be responsible for the project's day-to-day management. Professor Oja will be both in- and out-of town, but steadily available via the internet. Professor Shelley will not be directly involved with this summertime phase of the project.

Selection criteria

A fundamental requirement is an interest in creatively shaping a digital exhibit to reach diverse audiences. Attention to detail and a strong command of grammar and spelling are also essential, as is willingness to learn and apply library and research techniques. Awareness of the conventions of writing for the internet would be helpful but could be learned. The fellows need not read music or know a foreign language.

Harvard Art Museums Getting Started with Cultural Data

Project Supervisor

Jeff Steward, Director of Digital Infrastructure and Emerging Technology (DIET), Harvard Art Museums

Project Overview

The SHARP fellow will work with the DIET team on researching and designing a guide for getting started in computational art and art history. The student will learn about the art museum's data; research how other museums and collections talk about and present data; and then use that research to help improve and extend the existing documentation for the Harvard Art Museums open dataset and API. A primary goal of the project is to make the guide and our documentation usable by those with limited knowledge of programming.

A few questions we’ll try to address and illustrate:

• What is an API?
• Why do museums have APIs?
• What is cultural data?
• Why do museums have data? What is in it?
• What can I do with this data?

The fellow will work on designing basic coding and data mining exercises with the HAM API that answer these questions. The current HAM API documentation attempts to do this, but we make a lot of assumptions about technical experience and knowledge. We’ll look for the gaps and work on building a guide that shortens the amount of time it takes to get from idea to reality.

Agenda

The project will run in four phases. During the the first phase the fellow will meet with members of every department at the art museums (facilities, curatorial, communications, conservation, etc.) to learn what collections data is and what it means to staff across the business. The second phase includes research and benchmarking against peer institutions to better understand how other museums talk about and share data. The third phase will be to assess the documentation and tools Harvard Art Museums currently provides with its data. The final phase includes reporting on the findings, designing exercises to be included in the API, and editing/writing public documentation for our API.
The fellow will work with the Director of DIET at the Harvard Art Museums throughout the entire project.

Outcomes

The fellow will learn the full depth and breadth of collections data. They will gain experience using version control systems (GitHub) and writing readable code/documentation. They will gain experience writing and communicating for global, interdisciplinary audiences. We aim to make the art museum's collections available to diverse audiences including humanists, CS students, artists, creative coders, statisticians, etc. This is an opportunity to create tools that are utilized beyond Harvard. By default we build tools that are outward facing and designed to have a global impact. Thus far our tools have been used by students, educators, and engineers and have been featured on syllabi around the world (including at UC Berkeley, Tilburg University, SPbPU). The fellow will help expand the reach by identifying and writing for new global audiences. By the end of the term, the fellow will have learned how computer (cognitive, color, data, etc.) science and creative thinking are applied at art museums.

Selection Criteria

This is a great opportunity for those interested in exploring open access, digital humanities, computer science, and building connections between the arts and sciences. The fellow should be interested in making art accessible to new audiences through data and algorithms.

We're looking for an independent and organized student. Strong research, writing, and communication skills are required.

Some experience and knowledge of coding and data structures is helpful along with the ability to read and understand code snippets. It isn't necessary for the fellow to be able to write code, but if they can, great! (Don't worry about being able to write clean code. Programming is messy.) It’s more important that you can communicate about technical topics than be able to code. Our project is adaptable to your skills and experience.

No prior museum experience is necessary.

Restoring a Great but Forgotten Work of Political Theory from the Italian Renaissance

Project Mentor

James Hankins, Professor of History and General Editor, I Tatti Renaissance Library

Project Description

In December 2019 I published a monograph entitled Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy (Belknap Press). One of the book’s arguments is that Niccolò Machiavelli is not the only great political theorist of the Italian Renaissance, but that the little-known Francesco Patrizi of Siena (1413-1494) deserves to be considered its most compelling voice of “virtue politics.” Virtue politics is the Renaissance’s more idealistic approach to politics and contrasts with Machiavelli’s amoral realism. There is a lively discussion in modern America right now about the importance of virtue in politics, and it is too bad that Patrizi is not part of that conversation. He has much to offer.

The main reason that Patrizi is not appreciated today is that his political thought is contained in two very long Latin treatises, How to Found a Republics and On Kingship. Neither of these works has been edited in modern times, and neither has been translated into English. Most people who now work in the history of political theory do not read Latin easily, if at all. The best remedy for this situation would be a critical edition and translation of the Latin text, of the kind that we do in the I Tatti Renaissance Library, a series I edit for the Villa I Tatti, Harvard’s Renaissance studies center in Italy. However, from long experience I recognize that, even if I could find a qualified classicist interested in the project, it would be at least a decade to prepare an edition and translation of either text. 

Fortunately, there is an alternative though less ideal solution to making Patrizi available in English. In the reign of Elizabeth I, a well known translator, Richard Robinson (1544-1603) made an epitome of the more interesting of Patrizi’s works, How to Found a Republic (1465/71). Robinson translated Patrizi’s own presentations of political problems but eliminated most of his classical examples. In other words, the work, entitled A Moral Method of Civil Policy (London, 1576) makes Patrizi’s substantive arguments available, mostly in the form of direct translation of his texts rather than paraphrase. (Please see this attached sample translation.)

I am seeking a SHARP fellow to undertake the work of editing Robinson’s English epitome of Patrizi for online publication. A scan of the translation made from the only edition of 1576 is available online, on the database EEBO (Early English Books Online), but the scan has many errors and will be unintelligible and unusable to most English readers. The project will ask the SHARP fellow to correct the scan against the printed version (also available online), modernize spelling, capitalization and punctuation, and add explanatory glosses of archaic words and phrases. If there is time, the fellow might also help with the identification of classical texts quoted by Patrizi.

The first phase of this project can be done from any computer with an internet connection and does not necessarily require advanced knowledge of Latin (though that would help!). When identifying sources the fellow may have to work with Latin editions of Patrizi, which sometimes identify sources not identified in Robinson’s epitome. Most of these are online, but some may only be available in Houghton or another rare book library. I will meet with the SHARP fellow at regular intervals, weekly at first, to discuss problems of transcription, editing, and source identification. I will also be available via Skype.

In addition to being among the first modern readers to meet this great political thinker of the Renaissance, the SHARP fellow will learn a good deal about Elizabethan English and editorial method. He or she will also be introduced to the dying but still basic technique of identifying sources, distinguishing direct from intermediate borrowings, and analyzing their use and abuse by later writers. By studying Patrizi’s source base the student will acquire a better sense of what has been called “the classical bookshelf” of the Italian and English Renaissances, which is quite different from the Loeb Classical Library.

The fellow’s work product, if satisfactory, will be published under her or his name on my personal website, with links from from my site on academia.edu. This will bring it to the attention of most people working in the history of political theory.

Harvard Art Museums

Project supervisors

David Odo, Director of Academic and Public Programs, Division Head and Research Curator
Camran Mani, Cunningham Curatorial Fellow in Academic and Public Programs

Project Description 

Harvard Art Museums welcomes applications from undergraduates of all disciplines to conduct research for, and think creatively about, art-based educational programs to expand our impact in the greater Cambridge and Boston metropolitan areas. Students will also deliver regularly scheduled tours for visitors, acting as the public face of the Harvard Art Museums throughout the summer. This work will include museum and collections research, workshops with Museums staff from curatorial, education, conservation, and other departments, and the development of educational and interpretive programming for public audiences.

The research, writing, and presentation work of the SHARP interns will draw on the intellectual, institutional, and artistic resources of the Harvard Art Museums – the Fogg, the Busch-Reisinger, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum – which feature works from the ancient world to the present, and from the Americas, Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Asia.

Agenda

The SHARP interns will produce a research report with recommendations to improve community access to the Harvard Art Museums. Interns will research visitorship data to the Museums in the context of the greater Cambridge and Boston metropolitan areas, and make recommendations as to which publics the Museums should better serve (e.g. family audiences, visitors with dementia, and visitors who are deaf or hard of hearing). The report will provide information about group’s special needs, list relevant resources, and propose strategies for providing tours or events for these groups, using specific objects in the Museums’ collections. Interns would strengthen and expand their research skills through field work with community members and work in libraries as well as in the museums’ objects files and archives. They would also explore how to teach with museum collections and develop a deeper sense of the diverse communities in which the Harvard Art Museums are embedded.

Outcomes

Interns will gain experience conducting research in art history and on art museum visitorship, teaching in a museum setting, and working closely with curators and Museums staff to develop educational materials and programs for public audiences. In addition, interns will gain in-depth knowledge of specific objects and collection areas they research in preparation for their tours, as well as general knowledge of museum practice through structured and unstructured learning opportunities with curators, conservators, and other professional museum staff. By the end of the program, the intern should have knowledge of Harvard Art Museums’ collections, improved research and communication skills, familiarity with different models for public engagement in museums, and experience writing and creating educational materials and tours for public audiences.

Selection criteria

No art history or museum experience necessary, but excitement about the Harvard Art Museums and its potential to become more accessible and inclusive is required. Strong research and writing skills are required. We are seeking students with a welcoming and engaging demeanor and a comfort with public speaking; prior teaching/tutoring experience preferred.

HMNH Women in Science Exhibit Research

Project Supervisors

Reed Gochberg, Assistant Director of Studies and Lecturer, History and Literature
Janis Sacco, Director of Exhibitions, Harvard Museums of Science and Culture

Project Description

Reed Gochberg is collaborating with the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture to develop a new exhibit for the Harvard Museum of Natural History that is planned to open in Summer 2021. The exhibit will feature the history of women in science, specifically their work at the Museum of Comparative Zoology and Harvard Museum of Natural History. Most histories of the museum have focused on the work of Harvard faculty, who were predominantly white men throughout the twentieth century. This exhibit will instead take an inclusive approach to foreground individuals who received less or even no public recognition. From assistants who sorted and catalogued collections in the late nineteenth century to contemporary curators and educators, women have been an integral part of the museum’s history, contributing to research, teaching, and public programs.

This exhibit will feature their stories for the first time in the main galleries of the Harvard Museum of Natural History. It will include photographs, letters, and scrapbooks, as well as specimens, illustrations, and other materials that demonstrate the range of women’s work and contributions. The exhibit is scheduled for installation in the Harvard Museum of Natural History in early summer 2021.

The SHARP fellow will work with us on two important aspects of the exhibit development process: researching content for the exhibit and conducting evaluation interviews with museum visitors.

Content Research: Research tasks will include developing working biographies of key figures, examining institutional history in the Museum of Comparative Zoology’s Annual Reports, and reviewing correspondence, photographs, other images, and manuscripts at the Ernst Mayr Library, Schlesinger Library, and Harvard University Archives.

Visitor Evaluation Research: Research tasks will include developing and documenting goals and procedures for evaluation interviews, developing effective interview questions, carrying out interviews with visitors in the HMNH galleries, analyzing the results of evaluation interviews, and drafting an evaluation report with findings and recommendations.

Summer Goals and Outcomes

The SHARP fellow will develop research and writing skills, including curatorial and archival research, evaluation research methods, goal-setting, and analysis. The SHARP fellow will also gain experience in public presentation and communication.

Selection Criteria

We will be looking to work with a highly motivated, independent, and organized student who shows curiosity and enthusiasm for the topic and a willingness to develop new skills. No prior library or museum experience is required, but the SHARP fellow should have strong research and writing skills and an interest in history, WGS, history of science, natural history, museum studies, and/or related fields.

Houghton Library 2020 SHARP Fellowships

Project Supervisors

Kristine Greive, Head of Teaching and Learning, Houghton Library
Kate Donovan, Associate Librarian for Public Services, Houghton Library

Project Overview

Houghton Library is pleased to invite Harvard undergraduates to work with our collections in the summer with support of SHARP. These competitive fellowships are designed to fully support a summer of work at Houghton, Harvard’s world-class rare books and manuscripts library.

Houghton is home to the world famous and the almost entirely unknown, the ancient and the contemporary, the enduring and the ephemeral; as a researcher, a practitioner, an experimenter, we want to know what you can do with these materials. During the course of a fellowship, fellows work closely with library staff to discover new areas of interest or to delve into ongoing projects. Past fellows created an opera; identified and filled gaps in the literature about the American and British birth control movements; produced a series of podcasts on poetry and the archives; made surprising discoveries about the origins of American theater at Harvard; explored the life and works of John James Audubon; and the development of W.V. Quine's philosophical work; created interactive fiction; used the world’s largest collection of materials on altered states of being, written books and poetry; made art and created exhibitions. We invite proposals for this summer on any topic or discipline supported by our collections. Creative, digital, research, and performance projects are all welcome, as are those we haven't thought of yet.

Successful project proposals tend to be driven by your passions and questions and include concentrated work with collection materials at Houghton. Fellows will have the opportunity to be in residence at Houghton Library working in the Reading Room with guidance from staff throughout the summer. Fellows attend workshops on book history, book arts, archives, and other associated topics and also meet weekly with mentors and as a research cohort throughout the program.

Proposing a Project

Applicants should be prepared to describe their proposed project, including specific information about the Houghton Library materials or kinds of materials the project would make use of as well as the outcomes or manifestation/s for the project. This proposal narrative is limited to approximately 500 words. In the SHARP application, this proposal will be included as your first essay response.

To schedule a time to talk with a Houghton librarian about your project in advance, please email us at: houghton_library@harvard.edu.

Indian Philosophy Project

Project Supervisor

Parimal G. Patil, Professor of Religion and Indian Philosophy

Project Description

Classical Indian philosophy is one of the great philosophical traditions of the world. And yet, it is all but invisible to contemporary Philosophy, let alone the humanities more generally. The Indian Philosophy Project is an attempt at correcting this.

Debates between rival Indian philosophers on topics such as the sources of knowledge, the nature of persons, consciousness, the meaning of words and sentences, moral motivation, the goals of life, aesthetics, and poetic language inspired generations of their successors. Even in the 21st century, philosophers writing in classical Sanskrit (as well as modern South Asian languages) continue to debate these issues. Unfortunately, it is still far too difficult for anyone other than specialists to engage with and learn from the work of any of these remarkable intellectuals. While some useful secondary material exists, useable translations do not. Most of the translations that do exist are designed for people who already know the primary languages and so are almost useless to those who do not. The same is true for much of the secondary scholarship, which is either too specific to be useable by non-specialists or too general to serve as a basis for future scholarship. Even worse, the overwhelming majority of Indian philosophical texts have never been translated. Imagine the humanities without translations of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, etc.

The Indian Philosophy Project takes a modest step towards correcting this problem, by making freely available the kinds of resources necessary for eventually solving it.

Summer Goals

The first goal for the summer of 2020 is create free, publicly available teaching modules on topics in Indian Philosophy. Each module will contain an edition of a relevant text; a minimally annotated translation of my own; and a detailed set of notes and argument reconstructions designed for both teachers and students. This summer, my goal is to put existing versions of three modules into their final form and post them to a soon-to-be created Indian Philosophy Project web site.

A second is goal is to develop new teaching modules, by identifying appropriate sections of currently translated texts to be re-edited, translated, and developed into new modules. This summer, I hope to develop new teaching modules in Buddhist philosophy of mind and classical Indian aesthetics e.g., theories of aestheticized emotions and metaphor. These modules will eventually find their way into my own courses at Harvard.

A third goal is to identify contemporary work in Arts, Humanities, and qualitative Social Sciences that can be brought into critical conversation with the Indian material. Realizing this goal, will require writing academic articles that can be submitted to peer-reviewed journals outside the field of South Asian studies. This summer, I hope to revise 2 such articles.

Opportunities

I am seeking a SHARP fellow to assist with this project. I would like the fellow to work through existing modules and give (critical input) into the translations and notes; read new translations and make suggestions for how they might provide a basis for future modules; and suggest new topics of interest to the SHARP fellow which, in time (and perhaps over the summer itself) can be developed into new modules. It is important to me that the fellow identify and work on a topic of specific interest to them.

During the summer, the SHARP fellow will further develop their already developed close- reading and research skills. They will become familiar with a broad range of Indian philosophical texts and learn how to use the existing data bases and digital humanities resources in the field. The SHARP fellow will also have the opportunity, through bi-weekly meetings with me, to discuss and debate the wide range of philosophical issues raised by the modules and texts they are working on. Finally, the SHARP fellow will gain an understanding of just what it takes to broaden our curriculum.

Selection criteria

The ideal candidate for this SHARP fellowship will be a well-motivated, creative, and energetic undergraduate, preferably a rising junior or senior. The applicant should have some experience in philosophy, as well as an interest in working through difficult, and at times, frustrating (but also fun) texts and arguments. The applicant should also have some interest, if not experience, in working with web-sites, though there will be opportunities for learning on the job. What is most important, however, is deep philosophical curiosity and an interest in exploring and grappling with the unfamiliar. No knowledge of South Asia, or any South Asian languages, is necessary.

metaLAB SHARP 2020 Fellow: Curricle Lens

Work brief includes: historical research, design work, and storytelling.

Mentoring: Mentored by metaLAB team, incl. Professor Jeffrey Schnapp and Matthew Battles, working in collaboration with metaLAB's visualization design consultant, Kim Albrecht.

Research themes: Harvard’s curricular and institutional history; the role of the liberal arts in society; design, data analysis, and visualization.

Curricle

Curricle sets the stage for a new experience of course selection and planning, providing students with powerful tools for browsing, discovering, and selecting courses at Harvard. Currently undergoing testing, the platform enables students to see the broader landscape within which they navigate the curriculum, offering opportunities for choice, customization, and sharing with advisors and peers.

To supplement the core platform, metaLAB has developed a web-native publication channel, entitled "Curricle Lens," to visualize the history of the Harvard curriculum and evolving roles of the liberal arts in society. Featuring exemplary stories excavated from the university archives as well as compelling experiments with the visualization of curricular data over time and across Harvard's schools, Lens tells the story of Harvard curricula in the making, understanding course offerings as a conversation between the university, its students, and the wider world.

Specific role for SHARP fellow

The SHARP fellows will be involved in researching, developing, and delivering content for Curricle Lens. This will involve research for historical micro-narratives, including interviewing notable alumni about their curricular choices and archival research into historical curricula at Harvard and Radcliffe, as well as work in the University Archives. Working with the Curricle project team, the fellows will also develop design scenarios using data visualization, text, and audiovisual media. The SHARP fellows will participate in weekly metaLAB and Curricle team meetings, and will have the chance to suggest and develop new paths of inquiry. There will also be the opportunity for metaLAB’s SHARP fellows to participate in metaLAB’s ongoing design and technology projects.

With the help of SHARP fellows through summers 2017-2019, the metaLAB team developed a robust, elegant platform for telling richly-annotated, data-situated stories of curricular change. We've designed a workflow that will enable our storyteller-intern to transform archival research, original media, and course data into stories efficiently and robustly. The 2020 intern will work with us to identify two or three stories and arguments to make about the history of the curriculum (examples might include changes in the teaching of ethics, the role of pop music in courses of study, or changing understandings of course selection in relation to career outcomes). The intern will research these stories in the Harvard University Archives and other repositories, complement archival findings with video, audio, and still photographic media where appropriate, and develop timeline visualizations of course histories on the Curricle Lens platform.

We're seeking an independent and organized student interested in furthering their experience in telling stories and producing knowledge. Preference will be shown for a fellow with interests in design, interdisciplinary studies, computation, and the history of education. The student will have a chance to contribute meaningfully to this exciting new tool, and to work with a small research lab comprised of designers, coders, artists, and scholars.

Poetry in America

Project Supervisor

Professor Elisa New, Creator and Host of Poetry in America; Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature

Overview

I am currently at work on Poetry in America, a multiplatform humanities and media initiative at Harvard. Poetry in America began as a series of HarvardX modules, and has now expanded to a PBS television series, as well as a wide range of multimedia educational initiatives across Harvard and with WGBH, public television’s preeminent production house. Season 1 of the Poetry in America television series aired nationally in 2018, and I am currently producing Seasons 2 and 3 of the series (set to premiere April 2020 and April 2021, respectively) . In addition, my team is working to create state-of-the-art online course materials and teacher training materials in partnership with HGSE and DCE that connect the reading of poetry with other disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. In partnership with the National Education Equity Lab, the Harvard Extension School, and Arizona State University, we are also piloting an initiative to offer low-cost college credit to high-schoolers in Title I high schools around the country.

Opportunities

In the next 12 months my Production Team will be developing footage for the third season of the Poetry in America television series, as well as working with our Education Team to update and add to our suite of online courses aimed at K-12 teachers and students. Over the spring and summer months, our Education Team will also be analyzing survey and student performance data following the Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 runs of our National Pilot program for high-schoolers in order to reflect and report on outcomes, and to make changes to future runs of the program.

We seek a SHARP fellow to assist with online course development and educational program evaluation. The fellow will work with project mentors to devise a project suited to his or her interests, but a few possible areas of focus include: conducting research on online education and Dual Enrollment models; reviewing existing and developing new assessments for our online courses; developing materials for teachers and students participating in our National Pilot program; and assisting with the rollout of the Fall 2020 run of the Pilot.

In addition, after launching our first successful Poetry in America for Teachers course in 2017, we received funding to begin developing video content and curricula on Shakespeare and on World Literature (in partnership with Stephen Greenblatt and Martin Puchner, respectively) for use in the K-12 classroom and for K-12 teacher education. If a SHARP fellow were interested in humanities education beyond poetry, this could be one possible avenue for research and work this summer.

The SHARP fellow will hone close-reading and research skills. She/he will become familiar with our library of footage, and become adept at watching, editing, and reviewing educational media, identifying key teaching moments, and developing curricula or assessments tailored to learning outcomes. The SHARP fellow will gain a nuanced understanding of copyright law, and assist the Poetry in America team with copyright compliance and rights acquisition.

Selection Criteria

The ideal candidate for this SHARP fellowship will be a self-motivated, organized, creative, and energetic undergraduate, preferably a rising junior or senior. The applicant should have some experience in literature, history, and/or the arts, and an interest in the digital humanities, multimedia education, and K-12 education. Students with an interest or background in film production or Web design are also welcome to apply; however, none of these skills are required, and there will be opportunities for learning on the job if applicants are interested in these areas.

SHARP Independent Research Fellowships

In addition to the menu of SHARP projects presented by faculty or led by our institutional partners, this year SHARP is inviting students to propose their own independent research projects on topics in the arts and humanities, broadly defined. For SHARP independent research projects, applicants must describe the proposed research project in detail and the scope of the work for the 10-week summer research period, including specific information about the resources and materials to be engaged on campus. Students must also identify a faculty mentor for the research project. In the SHARP application, your independent project proposal will be included as your first essay response.

Please note: For students proposing independent research projects, the academic reference letter should, in part, specifically address the project and your preparedness to undertake it.

Research Mentor Confirmation Letter

A brief note from your research mentor is also required, providing details about the proposed project and their involvement over the summer. If your academic recommender is also your summer research mentor, the letter of recommendation can also count as the confirmation, and you do not need to provide a separate mentor letter.

When confirmed, the faculty mentor should email their confirmation letter in pdf format to undergradresearch@fas.harvard.edu with SHARP and [YOUR LAST NAME] in the subject line. If you do not have your mentor confirmed by the application deadline, please have them email their confirmation letter as soon as possible.

Faculty Mentor

Suzanne Preston Blier, Allen Whitehill Clowes Chair of Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies

Project Description

This project addresses Harvard Square, its history, and its ongoing economic and cultural vitality.  Goals for the summer: We are looking for an individual who will help research and engage with local citizens and merchants here in helping to enhance the vitality of Harvard Square. Tasks will involve analysis of spatial use, mapping, research in Cambridge archives (such as the Historical Commission) and community outreach. We are looking for someone with a deep interest in contributing to the understanding and vitality of Harvard Square. This person will help to build new content (for example a set of web-based tours featuring Harvard Square historical events or cultural issues. A typical day: might include a two-hour interview with a local person knowledgeable in the history of a key period. Transcribing the interview, plotting out a walking tour that would illuminate key related places in the area, and exploring other online walking tours to identify effective examples of this.

Mentoring Plan

I will meet with the student twice a week (in some cases with other neighborhood or city leaders and we will map out a work schedule for the week with specific goals. Through this project the student will learn important skills of online mapping, local research, effective community engagement, and well as other skills important to developing projects that emerge through this summer program. These skills will be important in terms of larger academic trajectory in areas ranging from urban planning, sociology, history, architecture and the environment. I do not plan to be away during the summer, but if it should happen I will ask the student to meet with one of the other leaders of this larger Harvard Square project.

Prerequisites

I am looking for a self-starter who is willing to work with a diversity of others, someone who listens and is also able to provide new insights and is results oriented. No specific academic background per se is required, although a deeper interest in urban planning and social engagement will be important. Basic data gathering and analysis skills (including statistical analysis) are required, including basic proficiency in MS Office Suite (excel included).

Project Supervisor

Peter J. Burgard, Professor of German

Project Description

This is a project in the study of art. The book is one-third complete in draft and will be the sole focus of my research this summer. It addresses two phenomena that I consider central to Caravaggio’s art: dissimulation and doubt. Thus far, there is a long section on The Calling of St. Matthew and a shorter one on The Incredulity of St. Thomas.

Besides reviewing what I have already written, revising it, and bringing the incorporation of art-historical scholarship up to date, I will be conducting new research and developing arguments on further paintings, such as The Calling of SS. Peter and Andrew, The Fortune Teller, The Cardsharps, the two Supper at Emmaus paintings, The Conversion of St. Paul, The Taking of Christ, Amor Vincit Omnia, St. Francis in Ecstasy, The Sacrifice of Isaac, Narcisse, Bacchus, and Sick Bacchus.

What I seek

A student who is eager to learn what it is like to conduct research in the Humanities, who is interested in the topic, and who is excited at the prospect of spending a summer working on it with me.

What you would be doing

Throughout the 10-week program, we would meet either once a week for two hours or twice a week for an hour of discussion, as suits the current work, and otherwise touch base as needed. At the start of the following phases of work, we would also meet for instruction on how to approach each of them:

• ±2 weeks studying (i.e., looking at and thinking about) some Caravaggio and other Baroque paintings and discussing with me what you see and what you think.
• ±3 weeks reading what I have already written (including a chapter of my new book on the Baroque) and discussing with me matters of understanding / clarification and aspects you might wish to question. During this time you would also begin conducting searches for recent scholarship on Caravaggio in general and on specific paintings.
• ±3 weeks reading the scholarship I select from the list you have compiled, reporting on it to and discussing it with me.
• ±2 weeks wrapping up remaining research work and discussing with me how your work has furthered the project and how I will proceed as a result of our collaboration.

What you would gain from the experience

Understanding of the nature and means of artistic expression; analytical and research skills; knowledge of art history and scholarship on art; better understanding of academic writing; insight into the research life of a humanities scholar.

Prerequisites

Some study of art and the desire to become more proficient in such study; some experience with online searches of scholarship (e.g., library databases, JSTOR, EBSCO) or determination to learn quickly; foreign language reading ability is welcome (e.g., Italian, German, French), but is ABSOLUTELY NOT A REQUIREMENT.

Project Supervisors

Kate Donovan, Associate Librarian for Public Services James Capobianco, Reference Librarian

Project Overview

Houghton Library is pleased to invite Harvard undergraduates to work with our collections in the summer with support of SHARP Independent Research Fellowships. These competitive fellowships are designed to fully support a summer of work at Houghton, Harvard’s world-class rare books and manuscripts library.

We invite proposals for this summer on any topic or discipline supported by our collections. Creative, digital, research, and performance projects are all welcome, as are those we haven't thought of yet. Successful project proposals tend to be driven by your passions and questions and include concentrated work with collection materials at Houghton.

Proposing a Project

Applicants should be prepared to describe their proposed project in detail and the scope of the work for the 10-week summer research period, including specific information about the Houghton Library materials or kinds of materials the project would make use of as well as the outcomes or manifestation/s for the project. Applicants should identify and secure the participation of a faculty mentor in their project. The faculty mentor must be available to provide in-person guidance, instruction and oversight of their research during the SHARP program.

Please refer to the SHARP Independent Research Proposals section of the SHARP website for additional information regarding references and details for providing a Research Mentor Confirmation Letter.

This proposal narrative is limited to approximately 500 words. In the SHARP application, this proposal will be included as your first essay response.

To schedule a time to talk with a Houghton librarian about your project in advance, please email us at: houghton_library@harvard.edu.

Project Supervisor

Rachel Guberman, Digital Humanist, Long 19^th Amendment Project, Schlesinger Library

Project Description

Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is part of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and is the only Harvard library dedicated to documenting and preserving the history of women. 2020 marks the centennial of the 19^th Amendment, which removed barriers to women’s suffrage throughout the United States. To mark the occasion, the Library has launched a major project to commemorate, interrogate, and redefine the narrative of women’s suffrage history and citizenship. The Suffrage Research Portal is a central part of that effort. It will offer researchers, students, and the public open access to a vast array of archival sources, data, teaching materials, scholarly essays, and online exhibits about the history of women and the vote. One significant component of the Portal will be a “ data hub” that will allow users to interrogate and map the history of women’s rights, women’s political involvement, and women’s electoral history across the U.S. over time.

We seek two SHARP Fellows to begin research for this mapping project. The Fellows will research in both the Schlesinger’s collections and other collections available through Harvard Libraries to gather data on topics such as: Black women’s political organizations, women’s legal status on a state-by-state level before 1920, women candidates for office, suffrage protests and tactics, women’s organizing against suffrage, and more. The Fellows will contribute to the creation of datasets on various aspects of women’s rights, the fight for women’s suffrage, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. They will do this by conducting broad and deep research in archival collections and working with specialist librarians. They will work closely with the Schlesinger’s digital Long 19^th Amendment Project digital humanist to create GIS-ready datasets that can be used to make maps and other data visualizations that help illuminate broad trends in the history of women’s rights, voting, and citizenship over time.

Learning Outcomes & Skills

The SHARP Fellow will develop and hone archival & historical research skills, will become well-versed in the history and debates surrounding the passage of the 19^th amendment, and will become familiar with library, archival, and digital scholarship methodologies. They will also develop valuable digital scholarship skills including creating structured datasets and working with digital scholarship tools such as Open Refine, ArcGIS, and Tableau.

Selection Criteria

We seek SHARP Fellows with strong research and writing skills and an interest in history, government, law, digital humanities, women’s studies, gender, and sexuality, or other related fields. No prior library or museum experience is required. Strong technical skills are desirable, but not required. Most important is the willingness to learn and explore, and a genuine curiosity and excitement about the project.

Project Supervisors

Narayan Khandekar Director, Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Kate Smith Conservator of Paintings and Head of Paintings Lab

Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies & David Odo, Director of Student Programs and Research Curator of University Collections Initiatives

Project Description

Harvard Art Museums welcomes applications from undergraduates interested in public humanities to spend the summer conducting research for special projects at the Harvard Art Museums. Students will also develop and deliver regularly scheduled tours for visitors, acting as the public face of the Harvard Art Museums throughout the summer. This work will include collections research, workshops with Museums staff from curatorial, education, conservation, and other departments, and the development of interpretive programming for special projects and exhibitions.

SHARP interns will conduct their research, writing, and conservation work in the rich collections of the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler Museums, newly united in a state-of-the-art facility designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Expanded galleries feature works from the ancient world to the present, and from the Americas, Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Asia.

Agenda:

All SHARP interns will spend the summer researching and designing public tours for visitors to the Harvard Art Museums. Interns will participate in a rigorous training program with Harvard Art Museums staff to gain knowledge of the Museums’ collections, develop skills in critical thinking, visual analysis, public speaking and leadership. Training will draw on scholarship and practice from multiple fields of knowledge, including curatorial practice, artistic practice, art history, conservation science, social sciences, and other areas, and will culminate in the creation of a unique, thematic tour of the Museums’ collections.

Tours will ideally integrate research and thinking from the intern’s focal project area. In addition to creating a tour, each SHARP intern will work closely with Harvard Art Museums staff on researching and developing interpretive material for one of the following special projects:

Painting Conservation Project

The project intern will be introduced to painting conservation techniques by executing the treatment (supervised by the paintings conservation staff) of a portrait of Sarah Wyman Whitman by Helen Bigelow Merriman, which hangs in Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe. https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/101775?position=0 It has been deinstalled for library renovations and is in need of conservation treatment before being reinstalled in the fall of 2019. Fundamentals of conservation documentation, removal of surface grime, structural treatment of canvas undulations, varnish application and inpainting of losses will be taught to and implemented by the intern. Conservation readings will be assigned to provide context to the work. The intern will also investigate the artist and subject of the painting by reading the curatorial file and related literature to compose a document of the painting.

Other activities will introduce the intern to the principles of preventative conservation, to include monitoring light levels and adjusting protective window shades, dusting paintings, and inpainting frame losses in the galleries before opening hours. With the paintings conservator in charge of campus loans, the intern will tour the campus to view the Harvard portrait collection on view. The intern will also spend time in the other specialization labs (paper, objects, analytical) to learn more about the work that happens across the entire conservation department.

Outcomes

Interns will gain experience conducting research for special projects and exhibitions, developing interpretive materials and programs for the public, and working closely with curators and Museums staff in the final stages of special projects and exhibitions. In addition, interns will gain in-depth knowledge of specific objects and collection areas they will research to prepare their tours, as well as general knowledge of museum practice through structured and unstructured learning opportunities with a professional staff of curators, conservators, and technologists. By the end of the program, the intern should have knowledge of Harvard Art Museums collections, familiarity with fundamental principles and techniques of art conservation, improved research and writing skills, familiarity with different models for public engagement in museums, and experience writing and creating interpretive or programmatic materials for public audiences.

Selection Criteria

No art history or museum experience necessary, but an enthusiasm and excitement about the Harvard Art Museums is required. Excellent research and writing skills are required. We are seeking students with a welcoming and engaging demeanor and a comfort with public speaking; prior teaching/tutoring experience preferred.

Project Supervisor

Peter Der Manuelian, Philip J. King Professor of Egyptology; Director of the Harvard Semitic Museum

Project Description

The Harvard Semitic Museum is planning a renovation and new installation for our first floor gallery, with a possible deadline towards the end of 2019. To complement the already existing, full-sized reproduction of a house from ancient Israel, we envision using an entire gallery wall to reproduce an archaeologically excavated shipwreck in the Mediterranean. We hope to install a realistic cross-section of an Iron Age Phoenician shipwreck discovered off the north coast of Sinai by a Museum-sponsored project in 1999–2000. The Museum has the amphorae (ceramic vessels) and other objects recovered from the wreck which will be displayed “in situ” in a portion of the recreated hull of the ship. We plan to add video footage of the discovery, highlighting the international connections of the ancient Mediterranean world.

The SHARP intern will assist with both the Israelite house reconfiguration and the shipwreck exhibit, researching and creating individual object label information. For the Israelite house, these could be used in a digital exhibit/presentation of the objects exhibited in the house, to be posted on the Museum’s website for visitor access/gallery augmentation. Some objects (such as the threshing sledge or goddess figurine) could get special featured-artifact treatment with additional details, answering the questions: “What is that? How was it used?” etc. The student might assist with new object photography or creating video of experts discussing either the house or the shipwreck exhibit.

The student will work primarily under the supervision of the Museum director, deputy director, and curator in the Harvard Semitic Museum storage collections, where other summer staff and volunteers will be on hand. We believe this project will provide valuable exposure to all aspects of museology, archaeology, and public presentation.

We seek students interested in museums and exhibits, archaeology, and artifact research. The chosen intern will have excellent research and writing skills, show attention to detail, and be able to work unsupervised for periods of time. Basic computer literacy (word-processing, spreadsheets/databases) and photography skills are a plus.

Project supervisors

Jessica Martinez, Director of Academic and Public Programs & David Odo, Director of Student Programs and Research Curator of University Collections Initiatives

Project Description

Harvard Art Museums welcomes applications from undergraduates interested in public humanities to spend the summer conducting research for upcoming exhibitions and special projects at the Harvard Art Museums. Students will also develop and deliver regularly scheduled tours for visitors, acting as the public face of the Harvard Art Museums throughout the summer. This work will include collections research, workshops with Museums staff from curatorial, education, conservation, and other departments, and the development of interpretive programming for special projects and exhibitions.

SHARP interns will conduct their research and writing work in the rich collections of the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler Museums, newly united in a state-of-the-art facility designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Expanded galleries feature works from the ancient world to the present, and from the Americas, Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Asia.

Agenda

All SHARP interns will spend the summer researching and designing public tours for visitors to the Harvard Art Museums. Interns will participate in a rigorous training program with Harvard Art Museums staff to gain knowledge of the Museums’ collections, develop skills in critical thinking, visual analysis, public speaking and leadership. Training will draw on scholarship and practice from multiple fields of knowledge, including curatorial practice, artistic practice, art history, conservation science, social sciences, and other areas, and will culminate in the creation of a unique, thematic tour of the Museums’ collections.

Tours will ideally integrate research and thinking from the intern’s focal project area. In addition to creating a tour, each SHARP intern will work closely with Harvard Art Museums staff on researching and developing interpretive material for one of the following special project:

Undergraduate Student Conference report project

This project relates to the Undergraduate Student Museum Conference held yearly at the Harvard Art Museums. The intern will be responsible for creating a draft of the yearly Conference Report, which is disseminated to all conference participants. Drawing on transcripts and video recordings from the conference, as well as research into current concerns in undergraduate museum education, the intern will put together a draft of a report that summarizes the key topics and themes of the conference. Interested applicants are encouraged to attend the public sessions of the conference, which will be held on April 6, 2019.

Outcomes

Interns will gain experience conducting research for special projects and exhibitions, developing interpretive materials and programs for the public, and working closely with curators and Museums staff in the final stages of special projects and exhibitions. In addition, interns will gain in-depth knowledge of specific objects and collection areas they will research to prepare their tours, as well as general knowledge of museum practice through structured and unstructured learning opportunities with a professional staff of curators, conservators, and technologists. By the end of the program, the intern should have knowledge of Harvard Art Museums collections, improved research and writing skills, familiarity with different models for public engagement in museums, and experience writing and creating interpretive or programmatic materials for public audiences.

Selection criteria

No art history or museum experience necessary, but an enthusiasm and excitement about the Harvard Art Museums is required. Excellent research and writing skills are required. We are seeking students with a welcoming and engaging demeanor and a comfort with public speaking; prior teaching/tutoring experience preferred.

Project Supervisors

Durba Mitra, Assistant Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality; Rachel Guberman, Digital Humanist, Long 19th Amendment Project, Schlesinger Library

Project Description

Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is part of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and is the only Harvard library dedicated to documenting and preserving the history of women. 2020 marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which removed barriers to women’s suffrage throughout the United States. To mark the occasion, the Library has launched a major project to commemorate, interrogate, and redefine the narrative of women’s suffrage history and citizenship. As part of that effort, the Library is spearheading the creation of a Harvard College undergraduate course that will draw heavily on the Library’s archival collections. The first of these course is “Solidarity: First and Third World Feminisms from Empire to NGOs,” taught by Dr. Durba Mitra takes an intersectional approach to the study of women’s and sexual rights in the transnational perspective from the late nineteenth century to today.  We seek a SHARP Fellow to assist Dr. Mitra in in-depth research to develop this archive-intensive course. The Fellow will conduct broad and deep research into the Library’s rich collections and will be tasked with locating specific materials, surveying collections and identifying potentially relevant artifacts, and other research tasks as assigned.

Learning Outcomes & Skills

The SHARP Fellow will develop and hone archival & historical research skills, will become well-versed in the history and debates surrounding the passage of the 19th amendment, and will become familiar with library and archival methodologies as well as the principles of course design.

Selection Criteria

We seek SHARP Fellows with strong research and writing skills and an interest in history, government, law, digital humanities, women’s studies, gender, and sexuality, or other related fields. No prior library or museum experience is required. Strong technical skills are desirable, but not required. Most important is the willingness to learn and explore, and a genuine curiosity and excitement about the project.

Poetry in America

Project Supervisor

Elisa New, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature

Project Description

I am currently at work on Poetry in America, a multi-platform humanities and media initiative at Harvard. Poetry in America began as a series of HarvardX modules, and has now expanded to a PBS television series, as well as a wide range of multimedia educational initiatives across Harvard and with WGBH, public television’s preeminent production house. Season 1 of the Poetry in America television series aired nationally last year, and I am currently at work producing Seasons 2 and 3 of the series. In addition, we are working to create state-of-the-art online course materials and teacher training materials in partnership with HGSE and DCE that connect the reading of poetry with other disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Over the last six years, we have shot and produced hundreds of hours of video footage for Poetry in America, filmed on location across the country and beyond, in Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Vermont, Colorado, and London. This footage features conversations with distinguished guests including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Nas, Herbie Hancock, Elena Kagan, Tony Kushner, Eve Ensler, Regina Spektor, Bono, Billy Collins, John McCain, Cynthia Nixon, Shaquille O’Neal, and more.

Poetry in America will eventuate in several major outputs

The first is a series of for-credit online courses . These courses are aligned with educational standards, including the Common Core. Teachers will be able to use these courses to strengthen their classroom practice while also developing their careers. These courses are also designed to stimulate and appeal to motivated high school students, thus increasing access to higher-level humanities content in secondary schools across the country.

Second, the PBS television series, with Seasons 2 and 3 now beginning production, will reach viewers of all backgrounds, who will have a chance to see that poetry is connected to every human activity.

Finally, other avenues for this content, including the HarvardX massive open online course and short form educational media appearing in a variety of outlets (including publications like Nautilus and The New Yorker), will provide even more avenues for viewers worldwide to connect to poetry in a way that both entertains and educates. We are currently in discussion with internet and media providers in China around distributing our content to a global audience.

Opportunities

In the next 12 months my production team will be developing footage for the second and third seasons of the Poetry in America television series, as well as updating and adding to our suite of online courses aimed at K-12 teachers and students.

In addition, after launching our first successful Poetry in America for Teachers course in 2017, we received funding to begin developing video content and curricula on Shakespeare and on World Literature (in partnership with Stephen Greenblatt and Martin Puchner, respectively) for use in the K-12 classroom and for K-12 teacher education. If a SHARP fellow were interested in humanities education beyond poetry, this could be one possible avenue for research and work this summer.

We seek a SHARP fellow to assist with all stages of these projects, from research and development, to production and post-production. Involvement will be suited to the fellow’s interests and skills.

The SHARP fellow will hone close-reading and research skills. She/he will become familiar with our library of footage, and become adept at watching, editing, and reviewing educational media, identifying key teaching moments, and developing curriculums or assessments tailored to learning outcomes. The SHARP fellow will gain a nuanced understanding of copyright law, and assist the Poetry in America team with copyright compliance and rights acquisition.

Selection Criteria

The ideal candidate for this SHARP fellowship will be a self-motivated, organized, creative, and energetic undergraduate, preferably a rising junior or senior. The applicant should have some experience in literature, history, and/or the arts, and an interest in the digital humanities, multimedia education, K-12 education, and/or film production. Students with a concentration in VES and a background in video production or web design would be especially well suited for this project, but none of these skills are required and there will be opportunities for learning on the job.

Atlas Unlimited

Mentor

Karthik Pandian, Assistant Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies

Project Description

Visual artist and professor of video, sculpture and performance, Karthik Pandian, invites a creative, organized and motivated undergraduate to assist him in his studio in Harvard Square in the production, documentation and publicizing of his current project Atlas Unlimited, an on-going series of exhibitions produced in collaboration with choreographer Andros Zins-Browne and many others. Atlas Unlimited combines sculpture and performance, tracing the flows of people, art and artifacts across geographies and cultures in the past, present and future. Students with an interest in contemporary art, art history, architecture, conservation, storytelling and migration will find the studio a lively environment in which we will be planning an exhibition opening in New York City in the Fall of 2019, making models and prototyping sculptures for that exhibition as well as organizing, editing and disseminating documentation of previous exhibitions on the web and social media platforms.

The student will work closely with Professor Pandian on a daily basis Monday to Friday in the studio, which is set up for both “clean” digital work and “dirty” sculpture work. It is critical that the student is excited and physically able to do both of these types of work. Some familiarity with the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign) including basic video editing skills in Premiere is critical. Experience 3D modeling in Sketchup and/or designing websites is an added plus. Some experience, formal or informal, with building – whether architectural, model-making, or sculptural – is also a plus. Work could also include placing heavy objects so the ability to lift something up to 40lbs is a must. Whether a student has some or even all of these skills, organization, problem-solving, communication and a willingness to learn new things are the most important qualifications.

Based on the student’s interests and skills, we will set goals for the summer, as well as bi-weekly and daily goals, to give the student a clear set of expectations. Projects will include: organizing and editing photo, sound and video documentation of previous iterations of Atlas Unlimited; creating a scale model of the exhibition in New York; creating a website for the project. A typical day could include both a short-term project such as working on a model in foam core as well as longer-term work on subtitling an hour long performance video. Weekly meetings and daily check-ins will ensure good communication and feedback on progress. A single substantive project as well as check-ins over Skype will be assigned for the period of July 1 -14, when Professor Pandian will be out of the studio. A lunch at the beginning and another at the end of the summer will be time earmarked for mentorship and discussion about the student’s interests and professional aspirations.

Project

Work brief includes: historical research, design work, and storytelling.

Mentoring

Mentored by metaLAB team, incl. Professor Jeffrey Schnapp, Jessica Yurkofsky, Matthew Battles, and Alexandra Dolan-Mescal, and working in collaboration with metaLAB's visualization design consultant, Kim Albrecht.

Research themes

Harvard’s curricular and institutional history; the role of the liberal arts in society; design, data analysis, and visualization.

Project Description

Curricle sets the stage for a new experience of course selection and planning, providing students with powerful tools for browsing, discovering, and selecting courses at Harvard. Currently undergoing testing, the platform enables students to see the broader landscape within which they navigate the curriculum, offering opportunities for choice, customization, and sharing with advisors and peers.

To supplement the core platform, metaLAB is developing a web-native publication channel, entitled "Curricle Lens," to highlight interesting facets of the history of the Harvard curriculum, the research and design challenges that using curricular data to explore teaching and learning entails, and the evolving role of the liberal arts in society. Featuring exemplary stories excavated from the university archives as well as compelling experiments with the visualization of curricular data over time and across Harvard's schools, Lens will tell the story of Curricle in the making, sharing the intellectual journey of the project beyond the limits of the software platform itself.

Specific role for SHARP fellow

The SHARP fellows will be involved in researching, developing, and delivering content for Curricle Lens. This will involve research for historical micro-narratives, including interviewing notable alumni about their curricular choices and archival research into historical curricula at Harvard and Radcliffe, as well as work in the University Archives. Working with the Curricle project team, the fellows will also develop design scenarios using data visualization, text, and audiovisual media. The SHARP fellows will participate in weekly metaLAB and Curricle team meetings, and will have the chance to suggest and develop new paths of inquiry. There will also be the opportunity for metaLAB’s SHARP fellows to participate in metaLAB’s ongoing design and technology projects.

We're seeking two independent and organized students who are interested in furthering their experience in telling stories and producing knowledge. Preference will be shown for a fellow with interests in design, interdisciplinary studies, computation, and the history of education. The student will have a chance to contribute meaningfully to this exciting new tool, and to work with a small research lab comprised of designers, coders, artists, and scholars.

SHARP Independent Research Fellowships

In addition to the menu of SHARP projects presented by faculty or led by our institutional partners, this year SHARP is inviting students to propose their own independent research projects on topics in the arts and humanities, broadly defined. For SHARP independent research projects, applicants must describe the proposed research project in detail and the scope of the work for the 10-week summer research period, including specific information about the resources and materials to be engaged on campus. Students must also identify a faculty mentor for the research project.  In the SHARP application, your independent project proposal will be included as your first essay response.

Please note: For students proposing independent research projects, the academic reference letter should, in part, specifically address the project and your preparedness to undertake it. 

Research Mentor Confirmation Letter

A brief note from your research mentor is also required, providing details about the proposed project and their involvement over the summer. If your academic recommender is also your summer research mentor, the letter of recommendation can also count as the confirmation, and you do not need to provide a separate mentor letter. 

When confirmed, the faculty mentor should email their confirmation letter in pdf format to undergradresearch@fas.harvard.edu with SHARP and [YOUR LAST NAME] in the subject line. If you do not have your mentor confirmed by the application deadline, please have them email their confirmation letter as soon as possible.

Literati in Middle Period China

Project Supervisor

Peter K. Bol, Vice Provost for Advances in Learning and Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Project Description

This project is aimed at understanding how Chinese literati reacted to the Mongol conquest of China in the 13th century. The Fellow will be using the China Biographical Database to explore changes in social networks as Chinese literati come into contact with Mongols and Central Asians in China.

This research opportunity is part of the China Biographical Database project. The China Biographical Database is a freely accessible relational database with biographical information on about approximately 400,000 men and women, primarily from the 7th through 19th centuries. With both online and offline versions, the data is meant to be useful for statistical, social network, and spatial analysis as well as serving as biographical reference. The long term goal of CBDB is systematically to include all significant biographical material from China’s historical record and to make the contents available free of charge, without restriction, for academic use. The database is regularly being enriched and new biographical entries are being created for Tang, Five Dynasties, Liao, Song, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing figures.

The SHARP Fellow will work with faculty, project staff, and collaborators from China, Taiwan and Europe in conducting research on scholarly networks during the Yuan and early Ming dynasties (13th-15th c.). This research requires some ability to read Chinese, preferably literary Chinese. It does not require any technical expertise but the Fellow should want to learn various digital humanities tools. The research uses large amounts of biographical data to explore how scholars established strong local networks across kinship ties and used these networks to establish national connections, thus better to understand the spread of Neo-Confucian moral philosophy and new modes of literary culture during the period of Mongol rule in particular.

During the course of the project the Fellow will learn how to use a variety of historical sources and how to apply fundamental technological and analytic skills of the digital humanities to historical questions.

Trajectory over ten weeks

1. Fundamentals of database design and database queries

2. Computational methods for extracting information from text corpora

3. Social network analysis

4. Geospatial analysis

5-6. Comparative analysis of Neo-Confucian teacher-student relationships and philosophical publications in three different regions

7-8. Comparative analysis of literary exchanges in three different regions

9-10. Temporal analysis of changing relationships between literati and government

This work will help provide a comparative context for my current project on the formation of literati communities in the southeast during the middle period, the construction of a new definition of “Chinese culture,” and efforts to establish a leading role for literati as the bearers of that culture. The Fellow will have space in the Database project office and will meet with me weekly and with other project staff daily.

Women’s Suffrage Centennial Exhibition Research

Project Supervisors

Tamar Brown, Research Librarian, Schlesinger Library, and the exhibition’s guest curator, to be appointed in January 2018.

Project Description

Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is part of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and is the only Harvard library dedicated to documenting and preserving the history of women. The library’s vast collections were formed in 1943 with a gift of letters, newspapers, books, and other ephemera documenting the women’s suffrage movement that was aggregated by Boston suffragist Maud Wood Park. 2020 is the centennial of the 19th amendment. As part of a larger project to commemorate, interrogate, and redefine the narrative of women’s suffrage history and citizenship, the Library will mount two large-scale exhibitions to commemorate the long, complex history of the woman suffrage movement. We seek a SHARP Fellow to begin research for the first of these exhibitions, which will center on the final push for the 19th Amendment, attempting to make visible through our collections that complex political achievement, its historical context, its considerable victories, and its unresolved contradictions. The SHARP Fellow will conduct broad and deep research into the Library’s rich collections that document the woman suffrage movement (https://guides.library.harvard.edu/schlesinger/suffrage). The Fellow will survey archival collections and identify important and visually interesting documents and objects for the exhibition. The Fellow will work closely with Schlesinger librarians and the exhibition’s guest curator – a scholar in the field of suffrage history – to begin drafting narrative and thematic content for a multimedia exhibition.

Learning Outcomes & Skills

The SHARP Fellow will develop and hone archival & historical research skills, will become well-versed in the history and debates surrounding the passage of the 19th amendment, and will become familiar with library, archival, and museum studies methodologies. The SHARP Fellow will gain experience in working in a professional academic environment.

Selection Criteria

We seek a SHARP Fellow with strong research and writing skills and an interest in history, government, law, digital humanities, studies of women, gender, and sexuality, or other related fields. No prior library or museum experience is required. Strong technical skills are desirable, but not required. Most important is the willingness to learn and explore, and a genuine curiosity and excitement about the project.

Project Supervisor

Emilie Hardman, Research, Instruction, and Digital Initiatives Librarian

Project Overview

Houghton Library is pleased to invite Harvard undergraduates to work with our collections in the summer with support of SHARP. These competitive fellowships are designed to fully support a summer of work at Houghton, Harvard’s world-class rare books and manuscripts library.

Houghton is home to the world famous and the almost entirely unknown, the ancient and the contemporary, the enduring and the ephemeral; as a researcher, a practitioner, an experimenter, we want to know what you can do with these materials. During the course of a fellowship, fellows work closely with library staff to discover new areas of interest or to delve into ongoing projects. Past fellows created an opera; identified and filled gaps in the literature about the American and British birth control movements; produced a series of podcasts on poetry and the archives; made surprising discoveries about the origins of American theater at Harvard; explored the life and works of John James Audubon; and the development of W.V. Quine's philosophical work; created interactive fiction; used the world’s largest collection of materials on altered states of being, written books and poetry; made art and created exhibitions. We invite proposals for this summer on any topic or discipline supported by our collections. Creative, digital, research, and performance projects are all welcome, as are those we haven't thought of yet.

Successful project proposals tend to be driven by your passions and questions and include concentrated work with collection materials at Houghton. Fellows will have the opportunity to be in residence at Houghton Library working in the Reading Room with guidance from staff throughout the summer. Fellows attend workshops on book history, book arts, archives, and other associated topics and also meet weekly with mentors and as a research cohort throughout the program.

Proposing a Project

Applicants should be prepared to describe their proposed project, including specific information about the Houghton Library materials or kinds of materials the project would make use of as well as the outcomes or manifestation/s for the project. This proposal narrative is limited to approximately 500 words. In the SHARP application, this proposal will be included as your first essay response.

To schedule a time to talk with a Houghton librarian about your project in advance, please use this form. You may also email us at: houghton_library@harvard.edu.

Project Supervisor

Deidre Lynch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of English Literature

Project Description

We often hear about how in the twenty-first-century we’ve moved from being a culture that mainly stores its information in printed books to a culture that mainly stores it in electronic databases. People commenting on this shift, as on the shift between reading and e-reading, often highlight how such changes have cast into doubt customary definitions of the book.  The nature of the book at the present moment, we’re told, is far from self-evident. My recent research has taught me, though, that comments like these have projected into the past a rather homogenized and idealized account of books and reading. For the past few years, I’ve been looking to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a time historians often identify as the high-water mark in the stability of print, aiming to recover the “bibliodiversity” of the past.  I’ve been aiming in particular to bring back into view the many uses to which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century put their blank books--products of the stationers’ trade which became highly fashionable commodities in the English-speaking world around 1750 (a century later they would be displaced by photograph albums).  For the past few years, I’ve been investigating how ordinary people filled up the pages of those blank books: sometimes with original poetic or artistic content , sometimes with things (old tickets or menus, or dried plants or feathers), and very often with transcriptions, mistranscriptions, copies, and clippings of the poems and images they encountered in printed books and magazines.

The so-called commonplace books, family books, scrapbooks, and albums (and “cabinets of music, poetry and drawing” and “leisure hours amusements of young ladies”) that these people created testify to their desire to customize and to curate the print record--reworking it for private editorial requirements.  They also suggest these people’s readiness to challenge some of their culture’s dominant definitions of what a book was. If we include these books (or “books”?) when we describe the media ecology of the past, how does that change our understanding of what, for instance, a poem is or an author is? This is the kind of question I hope this research --and the book it will inform and which I’ve started to write--can illuminate.

Most of my research so far has involved examples in special collections libraries and archives in England and Canada.  But the practices of collecting, cutting, pasting, and amateur book-making that interest me were also pursued with great zeal in the new United States, and this handiwork is scattered across the Harvard libraries. I am hoping to have the assistance of one or two undergraduates this summer as I identify and take stock of our local holdings. The undergraduate(s) I work with would in addition help me systematize the research I’ve already done--with a view, in part, to preparing a small digital exhibition for the website Romantic Circles Gallery. 

Project Trajectory

We’ll start our ten weeks together by reading a bit in recent scholarship by historians and literary scholars who have looked beyond print to think about the nature of the book in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the same time we’ll go to the Houghton Library together to look at specimens of these handmade books there.  In Weeks 3-4 we would move to research at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America; in weeks 5 and 6, to research among the “class books” and commonplace books preserved at the University Archives. Our final month would be spent on working on a systematized database of the contents of the books we’ve examined--and then on curating the web exhibition.    

Learning Outcomes and Skills

In some ways the most challenging part of this work involves learning to read a book all over again, when the book in question doesn’t conform to one’s usual bibliographical expectations. In addition to obtaining new skills in handling and interpreting archival materials (as you learn how to take notes on books of this sort), you’ll also learn to think like a book historian--you’ll learn, that is, think about how the material format of a text or an image shapes its meaning. We also be learning together to think strategically about how to use database tools to organize research and about how to design a web exhibition that will both entertain and instruct people about the bibliodiversity of the past.

Selection Criteria

I seek SHARP fellows with interests in literature and in art and in the strategies that ordinary people have used to incorporate their experiences of both into their everyday lives. You should be willing to spend sunny days inside libraries.  Other skills sets--for instance, in web design and in using excel--would be appreciated but are not necessary. 

The Unknown Archives of Harvard Semitic Museum Founder David Gordon Lyon

Project Supervisor

Peter Der Manuelian, Philip J. King Professor of Egyptology; Director of the Harvard Semitic Museum

Project Description

Harvard Professor David Gordon Lyon (1852–1935), founder of the Harvard Semitic Museum, passionately sought to highlight the contributions of the diverse Semitic cultures of the Holy Land to world civilization. He did this through archaeology, teaching, and the formation of a distinguished collection of antiquities. It is time to study, assess, and organize his personal and professional archive.

The Semitic Museum at Harvard stands today at an important and exciting crossroad. With renewed energy and clearly defined sense of purpose, our goal is to transform 6 Divinity Avenue into a must-see stop for students and any visitors to the Harvard campus. Eventually, we plan to publish a highlights and history of the Museum volume. This project will feed directly into that endeavor.

The Museum’s founder and first director was Prof. David Gordon Lyon. Lyon traveled throughout the Middle East, all in the service of Harvard, what would become the NELC Department, and the Semitic Museum. Details of his experiences are augmented by excerpts from his sixty-five years of daily diary entries (1870–1935), his turn-of-the-century photographs during several trips abroad, and his purchase of full-scale plaster casts of famous antiquities housed in the great museums of Europe. Lyon’s primary patron was New York financier and philanthropist Jacob Schiff, sometime rival to J.P. Morgan. Another acquaintance was Newport businessman Theodore M. Davis, who donated several Egyptian objects from his excavations in the famed Valley of the Kings and elsewhere at Thebes. Lyon also taught Egyptologist George Reisner and in 1905 assisted his student in establishing the wildly successful and long-running Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Expedition (1905–1947).

We seek an undergraduate assistant intern, from June to August, to help in organizing Lyon’s papers and correspondence in the Harvard Semitic Museum Archives. We have letters, invoices, and other documents that need transcribing, occasional scanning, and most importantly intellectual assessment. Thanks to recent efforts, the papers are housed in orderly conditions, but they have not received proper study.

While no particular prerequisite skills are required, we hope to take on a student interested in some or all of the following: archaeology, the ancient Near East, history (including 20^th century Harvard history and Lyon’s interactions with Presidents Eliot and Lowell), biography, museum studies, and archival work. A combination of some of the following interests will be helpful: excellent organizational and project management skills, a sharp eye for reading difficult handwriting; basic computer database and scanning abilities, and perhaps even some archival research experience. The student will assist with researching Lyon’s Harvard career and travels through Middle East, and his interactions with all manner of important scholars and dealers all over the world. A particular focus will be his interactions on the Egyptian front, since that is the primary research focus of the current Museum director (Manuelian). An Egyptian focus also reflects the career of Lyon’s best pupil, Egyptologist/archaeologist George A. Reisner (1867-1942).

Learning outcomes for the student will include all the critical thinking skills associated with researching the intellectual history of this historic archive and the motivating factors behind Lyon’s philosophy. Working together with Manuelian and the Museum’s curators, by the end of the project, the intern should have a firm grasp on how such personal archival research is done, how to assess and organize it, and decide what the highlights are and how to make them accessible to a wider audience.

I plan to be in Boston through most of the summer of 2018, and my assistant director and curator will also work directly with the student on a daily basis.  The student will work primarily in the Harvard Semitic Museum storage collection, where other summer staff and volunteers will be on hand. We believe this archival work will provide valuable exposure to all aspects of museum work, as well as biographical, object and archival research, while illuminating a little-known chapter in Harvard’s archaeological history.

Project supervisors

Jessica Martinez, Director of Academic and Public Programs

David Odo, Director of Student Programs and Research Curator of University Collections Initiatives

SHARP-Harvard Art Museums

Harvard Art Museums welcomes applications from undergraduates interested in public humanities to spend the summer conducting in-depth research for upcoming exhibitions and special projects at the Harvard Art Museums. During the course of the summer, fellows will explore in depth how museums communicate, educate and generate interest for art, installations and exhibitions to a broad audience. They will address this, in part, by developing and delivering regularly scheduled tours for visitors, acting as the public face of the Harvard Art Museums throughout the summer. Their work will include collections research, workshops with Museums staff from curatorial, education, conservation, and other departments, and the development of interpretive programming for special projects and exhibitions.

SHARP fellows will conduct their research and writing work in the rich collections of the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler Museums, newly united in a state-of-the-art facility designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Expanded galleries feature works from the ancient world to the present, and from the Americas, Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Asia.

Agenda

SHARP fellows will begin the program by performing in-depth research of a small number of related objects, selecting them from the collections currently on display or from those to be included in one of the three exhibitions in preparation, described below. They will be asked to develop a profound understanding of each of their selections, asking questions about the multiple contexts of their creation, what each object reveals about these contexts, and how they work together to tell an engaging story. Throughout the course of the summer, fellows will explore the questions of intellectual and physical accessibility, first in relation to these objects, then to museum collections more largely, and how to communicate their interest to a broader public. In order to do this, SHARP fellows will participate in a rigorous training program with Harvard Art Museums staff to gain knowledge of the Museums’ collections, develop skills in critical thinking, archival and visual analysis, public speaking and leadership. Training will draw on scholarship and practice from multiple fields of knowledge, including curatorial practice, artistic practice, art history, conservation science, social sciences, and other areas, culminating in the creation of unique, thematic tours and presentations of the Museums’ collections.

The tours would ideally integrate research and/or the various approaches to objects they developed during the fellows’ initial focal project with the upcoming Bauhaus, Teresita Fernández public art project, or African ceramics exhibitions, which are to be central to the second phase of their SHARP experience in the museum collections. In addition to creating a tour, each SHARP fellow will work closely with a Harvard Art Museums specialist-mentor on performing curatorial research and developing interpretive and educational materials for one of the following upcoming exhibitions or special projects:

Bauhaus exhibition research project

This project relates to the Harvard Art Museum’s major special exhibition “The Bauhaus and Harvard” (February 8 – July 28 2019), which marks the centennial of the founding of the Bauhaus school of art, design, and architecture in Germany and explores its key relationship to Harvard, which is now home to the largest Bauhaus collection outside of Germany. The SHARP fellow will perform library and archival research, and develop educational/interpretive materials and programming related to the Harvard Graduate Center, which was designed by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and his Cambridge-based architectural firm. Built in 1950, it is the first example of modern architecture on campus and featured art and furnishings commissioned from former Bauhaus affiliates and other modern artists. The Harvard Graduate Center project will be the focus of the final section of the exhibition.

Teresita Fernández public art project

This project relates to a Harvard University Committee on the Arts initiative, a public art installation entitled Autumn (…Nothing Personal) by artist Teresita Fernández, to be installed in fall 2018. The SHARP fellow will perform library, archival and other curatorial research with their mentor to develop educational/interpretive strategies and programming ideas for the public installation, centered on an exploration of the text Nothing Personal by James Baldwin. Produced in collaboration with the photographer Richard Avedon in 1965, Nothing Personal is at the conceptual center of this 2018 installation by Teresita Fernández. Taking Baldwin’s text as inspiration, guide, and reference point, Fernández hopes the public installation will unfold as both a physical site and public conversation. As such, the focus for the fellow and mentor rests strongly on the question of how to create interactive, interdisciplinary, and engaging programs to encourage people to use this installation as a space to gather, debate, and protest.

African ceramics project

This project relates to an upcoming exhibition that is being organized by the Museums entitled Clay: Design in Africa, scheduled to go on view beginning in fall of 2018. Framed broadly around the lens of design, this exhibition will focus on four regions—Egypt, Algeria, Kongo, and Liberia—allowing for a consideration of ceramics across time and culture. The installation will also explore design in other media, aesthetics of surface, and the relationship of clay to the body. The SHARP fellow focusing on this project will conduct extensive research into the objects included in the exhibition, culminating in the writing and editing of interpretive object labels or digital tools. The fellow will gain experience with best practices in museum interpretation, and writing for a public audience, along with extensive knowledge of African art and ceramics.

Outcomes

Fellows will gain experience conducting archival and library research with a very precise curatorial focus for special projects and exhibitions. They will learn how to develop and write educational/interpretive materials and create programs for the general public by working closely with curators and Museums staff in the final stages of special projects and exhibitions. In addition, fellows will gain a very informed view and experience of museum practices through structured and unstructured learning opportunities with a professional staff of curators, conservators, and technologists. By the end of the program, the fellows should have knowledge of Harvard Art Museums’ collections, improved research and writing skills, and familiarity with different models for public engagement in museums.

Selection criteria

No art history or museum experience necessary, but an enthusiasm and excitement about the Harvard Art Museums is required. We are seeking students with a welcoming and engaging demeanor and a comfort with public speaking; prior teaching/tutoring experience preferred. All applicants should indicate which of the three exhibitions/special projects they would prefer to work on, as well as whether they would be willing to work on any of the three

Project Supervisor

Professor Elisa New, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature

Project Description

I am currently at work on Poetry in America, a multiplatform humanities initiative at Harvard. Poetry in America began as a series of HarvardX modules, and has now expanded to a wide umbrella of multimedia educational initiatives in collaboration with FAS, HGSE, DCE, and WGBH, public television’s preeminent production house. I am currently at work producing a Poetry in America TV series with WGBH, and creating state-of-the-art online course materials and teacher training materials in partnership with HGSE and DCE that connect the reading of poetry with other disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Over the last three years, I have shot and produced hundreds of hours of video footage for Poetry in America, filmed on location across the country and beyond, in Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Vermont, and London. This footage features conversations with distinguished guests including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Nas, Herbie Hancock, Elena Kagan, Tony Kushner, Eve Ensler, Michael Pollan, Billy Collins, John McCain, Cynthia Nixon, Shaquille O’Neal, and more.

Poetry in America will eventuate in several major outputs:

The first, Poetry in America for Teachers, is a series of for-credit professional development graduate courses, developed with the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) to support K-12 classroom teachers. These courses are aligned with educational standards, including the Common Core. Teachers will be able to use this course to strengthen their classroom practice while also developing their careers. This project will also produce classroom-ready video content designed to stimulate and appeal to middle and high school students, thus enabling teachers to bring the content of their professional development directly into the classroom. This project will give teachers the confidence and tools to discuss poetry while also meeting English Language Arts goals and providing teachers with professional development opportunities.

Second, the TV element of this project, with Season 1 currently wrapping up post-production and airing in April 2018, will reach viewers of all backgrounds, who will have a chance to see that poetry is connected to every human activity. We hope to begin work on Season 2 in May 2018, continuing throughout the summer and fall.

Finally, other avenues for this content, including the HarvardX massive open online course and short films appearing in The Atlantic, Nautilus, and The Nantucket Project, will provide even more avenues for viewers worldwide to connect to poetry in a way that both entertains and educates. We are currently in discussion with internet and media providers in China around distributing our content to a global audience.

Opportunities

In the next 12 months my production team will be drawing on the footage that we have filmed to create materials for Poetry in America for Teachers. The first Poetry in America for Teachers course focused on the urban environment-- our next course, Poetry of Earth, Sea, and Sky, will focus on the natural world.

In addition, after launching our first successful Poetry in America for Teachers course in 2017, we received funding to begin developing video content and curricula on Shakespeare and on World Literature (in partnership with Stephen Greenblatt and Martin Puchner, respectively) for use in the K-12 classroom and for K-12 teacher education. If a SHARP fellow were interested in humanities education beyond poetry, this could be one possible avenue for research and work this summer.

We seek a SHARP fellow to assist with all stages of these projects, from research and development, to production and post-production. Involvement will be suited to the fellow’s interests and skills.

The SHARP fellow will hone close-reading and research skills by helping to locate and select poems for use in the classroom. She/he will become familiar with our library of footage, and become adept at watching, editing, and reviewing educational media, identifying key teaching moments, developing curriculums or assessments tailored to learning outcomes, and assisting in discussion and planning with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, WGBH television, and other educational and media partners. The SHARP fellow will gain a nuanced understanding of copyright law, and assist the Poetry in America team with copyright compliance and rights acquisition.

Selection Criteria

The ideal candidate for this SHARP fellowship will be a self-motivated, organized, creative, and energetic undergraduate, preferably a rising junior or senior. The applicant should have some experience in literature, history, and/or the arts, and an interest in the digital humanities, multimedia education, K-12 education, and/or film production. Students with a concentration in VES and a background in video production or web design would be especially well suited for this project, but none of these skills are required and there will be opportunities for learning on the job.

Project Supervisors​

Mentored by metaLAB team, incl. Jeffrey Schnapp, Jessica Yurkofsky, Matthew Battles, and Sarah Newman, and working in collaboration with metaLAB graduate student Mindy Seu. 

Project Description

Curricle is a prototype for a new experience in course selection: a digital platform that gives  students powerful tools in data visualization and analytics for browsing, discovering, and  selecting courses at Harvard. The platform will enable students to see the broader  landscape within which they navigate the curriculum, offering more opportunities for  choice and customization. Additionally, it will offer a historical research side for students  and scholars to explore and visualize Harvard’s curricula over time.  Curricle's power—and  its design challenge—consists in this use of data visualization both to map today's  curriculum, and to visualize its historical development in previously unseen ways.

Work includes

Design work, historical research, user testing, student outreach, alumni interviews 

Research themes​

Design, digital humanities, data visualization, interdisciplinarity, and the role of the liberal arts in society

Specific role for SHARP fellow

The SHARP fellow will be involved in the final phase of Curricle's development at metaLAB.  This will include: student outreach to convey the utility of the platform, additional archival  research for historical micro-narratives, including interviewing notable alumni about their  curricular choices; testing the interface with Harvard students; and archival research into  historical curricula at Harvard and Radcliffe. The SHARP fellow will participate in weekly  metaLAB and Curricle team meetings, and will have the chance to suggest and develop new  paths of inquiry. There will also be the opportunity for metaLAB’s SHARP fellow to  participate in metaLAB’s ongoing design and technology projects.   We're seeking an independent and organized student who is interested in furthering his or  her experience in working with a beta version of a new technological tool; preference will  be shown for a fellow with interests in design, interdisciplinary studies, progrmaming, and  the history and role of the liberal arts in society. The student will have a chance to  contribute meaningfully to this exciting new tool, and to work with a small research lab  comprised of designers, coders, artists, and scholars.  

Sentinel Musicians. Sounding African Lives in Global Motion & Soundscapes. Exploring Music in a Changing World

Project Supervisor

Kay Kaufman Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and Professor of African and African American Studies

Project Description

I have two big publication projects in process during summer, 2018, for which I would very much appreciate the collaboration of a student research partner through SHARP. First, I will be completing the manuscript of my ethnography on musicians who have immigrated to the United States from the Horn of Africa; it is titled Sentinel Musicians. Sounding African Lives in Global Motion. Second, I will also be revising my world music textbook, Soundscapes. Exploring Music in a Changing World, for its fourth edition. My publisher (W.W. Norton) and I are also discussing producing a new Soundscapes modular volume that would involve new case studies, including chapters by other ethnomusicologists. I would envision that a student’s day would be divided between editorial tasks such as editing text and checking references for manuscripts, as well as considerable time spent researching new literature and suggesting additions/ revisions to both books.

For Sentinel Musicians, the SHARP participant would aid with editing and a variety of bibliographical and other research tasks involved in preparing a manuscript for submission to a press. For Soundscapes 4, we would be correcting and amending existing case studies in the 3^rd edition of the book with updates. If our plan to add a new, modular volume of case studies to the Soundscapes 4 edition materializes, there would be work in helping to organize contributions by other authors to that volume and aiding me in writing new introductions to the six divisions of this new book. Thus a research assistant would gain experience in a wide swath of materials from world music, with particular attention to music and migration, as well as participate in much of the process of preparing books for publication. The books include a scholarly monograph (Sentinel Musicians) and a textbook (Soundscapes), so there are different modalities of writing style ad audience involved as well. A student with whom I worked under the SHARP framework several years ago also spent time researching on line sites for musicians in my project, so our work will span different media, including recordings. 

I plan to be in the Cambridge area most of the summer and will meet with the student regularly to consult on research/writing and other tasks. I will be involved full time in these projects myself, so this will be a collaborative venture. Should I be away for more than a week, we will skype and talk on the phone during that period.

It would be helpful to have a student research associate who is interested in music in its varied cultural setting and who is comfortable working across cultural boundaries. A background in ethnomusicology, anthropology, or performance studies would be great, as would some musical interest/expertise. These are projects that call for intellectual curiosity and versatility, as well as an interest in unfamiliar materials. Technical musical skills are probably less important than excellent writing skills and an interest in music in fast-changing environments.

Sermons in Song: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination

Beyond the Song: Virtuality, Materiality, Mediality and the Sound of Black Ecstasy

Project Supervisor

Braxton D. Shelley, Assistant Professor, Department of Music and Stanley A. Marks and William H. Marks Assistant Professor, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

Project Description

During the summer of 2018, I plan to work intensively towards the completion of my first monograph, Sermons in Song: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination. This book consists of two parts, the first of which will be a re-working of my doctoral dissertation; the second contains three programmatic essays that consider the textual, temporal, and ontological issues that arise at gospel music’s intersection of sound and belief. Having discussed the project with several presses, the plan is to complete a draft manuscript over the summer, and to submit the manuscript late this fall. I would look forward to collaborating with a SHARP fellow in this endeavor. As I see it, the fellow’s work would be divided among three tasks: editing manuscript text, notes, and bibliography; researching new literature for the book’s final chapters; as well as locating and organizing the roughly one hundred audiovisual examples that will be featured on the book’s companion website.

A 2018 SHARP fellow would also assist in jumpstarting the next item on my research agenda, Beyond the Song: Virtuality, Materiality, Mediality and the Sound of Black Ecstasy, a study of the music that often accompanies ecstatic dance in many Black Christian churches. Unlike the songs that are the central foci of the first book project, this ecstatic music, often called “shouting music,” circulates in a kind of public domain, mediated by online venues including, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Unlike the traditional musical entity called song, there are no composers, no dates of composition, no authoritative recordings of these musical materials, yet they pervade the worship practices of churches across the United States, from some of the country’s smallest congregations to many of the largest. How, then, to handle with the tens of thousands of videos, most of which last for only a couple minutes? The SHARP fellow and I would grapple with this question collaboratively, setting a goal of archiving and categorizing 500 representative video clips, using this sample to develop a more systematic approach to this ever-expanding musical corpus.

Taken together, the two endeavors would offer a prospective fellow the opportunity to work closely over a ten-week period with a faculty mentor on one project that is nearing completion and another that is just beginning—one project for which the digital archive is supplementary and another for which it is foundational. The SHARP fellow would leave the summer having participated in substantial ways by performing research, contributing to the content, the direction and overall design of these works, while gaining insight into the writing and publication processes. Additionally, the fellow would leave this work having been deeply immersed in the material of a particular music culture while developing skillsets that are transportable to any number of humanities disciplines.

I am scheduled to spend the majority of the summer in Cambridge, working full-time on these research projects. Thus, I expect to maintain a regular (weekly) meeting schedule with the fellow I am assigned. When I travel, it will be for only a couple days. And when I am not in Cambridge, I will maintain virtual communication with my fellow.

While my work would benefit from engagement with any SHARP fellow, a student with background and interest in music, religion, or media would be especially well suited for the proposed tasks. Although my project includes a fair amount of music analysis, such technical skill is not required of a potential SHARP fellow. What matters most is intellectual curiosity, oral and written communicative skill, and attention to detail, a combination that should abound among Harvard undergraduates.

Creating & Unveiling a Digital Exhibition for Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America

Project Supervisors

Amanda Strauss, Manager for Special Projects & Digital Services, Schlesinger Library. This project will also be guided by Jen Petrelli, graduate student in Museum Studies from Harvard Extension School.

Project Description

2018 marks the 75th anniversary of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. The library is part of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and is the only Harvard library dedicated to documenting and preserving the history of women. To commemorate this milestone, the library has mounted a large exhibition, 75 Stories, 75 Years: Documenting the Lives of American Women at the Schlesinger Library, that will open on February 5, 2018 and includes more than 150 document and objects. The SHARP Fellow will work with librarians and a graduate student from the Museum Studies program at the Harvard Extension School in consultation with the Radcliffe Institute’s Arts Program Manager and Communications department to bring this monumental exhibition online. The objects and documents have been artistically photographed and transformed into digital assets. The content now awaits the careful attention of a SHARP Fellow to research and write short contextual essays for the objects and to assist with creating and designing the digital exhibition. The SHARP Fellow will also work on creating outreach material related to the exhibition and may also collaborate on the design and creation of print material.

Learning Outcomes & Skills

The SHARP Fellow will develop and hone archival & historical research skills, will become practiced in writing for a general audience and writing for the Web, and will become familiar with library, archival, and museum studies methodologies. The SHARP Fellow will gain experience in working in a professional academic environment.

Selection Criteria

We seek a SHARP Fellow with strong research and writing skills and an interest in history, material and visual culture, digital humanities, studies of women, gender, and sexuality, or other related fields. No prior library or museum experience is required. Strong technical skills are desirable, but not required. Most important is the willingness to learn and explore, and a genuine curiosity and excitement about the project.

SHARP Independent Research Fellowships

In addition to the menu of SHARP projects presented by faculty or led by our institutional partners, this year SHARP is inviting students to propose their own independent research projects on topics in the arts and humanities, broadly defined. For SHARP independent research projects, applicants must describe the proposed research project in detail and the scope of the work for the 10-week summer research period, including specific information about the resources and materials to be engaged on campus. Students must also identify a faculty mentor for the research project.  In the SHARP application, your independent project proposal will be included as your first essay response.

Please note: For students proposing independent research projects, the academic reference letter should, in part, specifically address the project and your preparedness to undertake it. 

Research Mentor Confirmation Letter

A brief note from your research mentor is also required, providing details about the proposed project and their involvement over the summer. If your academic recommender is also your summer research mentor, the letter of recommendation can also count as the confirmation, and you do not need to provide a separate mentor letter. 

When confirmed, the faculty mentor should email their confirmation letter in pdf format to undergradresearch@fas.harvard.edu with SHARP and [YOUR LAST NAME] in the subject line. If you do not have your mentor confirmed by the application deadline, please have them email their confirmation letter as soon as possible.

Project Contact

Hannah Swartz, PEM New Initiatives Manager

SHARP-PEM Fellowship

The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) and SHARP are partnering to provide a 10-week summer immersion experience to two Harvard undergraduates seeking a formative experience in humanities or arts-based research. This unique opportunity enables two selected candidates to participate in a project that is meaningful to both PEM and the student. Summer researchers will have access to PEM’s staff, resources, and unique collection; learn what it is like to work within an organization of PEM’s scale and focus; participate in onsite and offsite field trips to learn more about the museum field; network with academic colleagues and peers from across disciplines, as well as other PEM and Harvard College interns and fellows; build skills in creative thinking, project management, teamwork and leadership. This is a rare opportunity for both research and professional development.

Project #1: Build a Network: New England Women Artists at the Peabody Essex Museum

Project Supervisor

Austen Barron Bailly, The George Putnam Curator of American Art

Project Goal

Through research and documentation, develop a strong understanding of the opportunities, accomplishments, and impact of women artists active in New England between 1830 and 1960 and their art. Research and reports on the women artists and the paintings in PEM's historical American art collection will directly inform the forthcoming total reinstallation and reinterpretation of the American art galleries at PEM.

Thanks to recent gifts to the museum, PEM has added works by a dozen female artists working professionally in New England in the early twentieth century to its core collection in the last 2 years. These talented women forged careers as artists and teachers but remain little known. The SHARP fellow will have the opportunity to research and document the art and lives of these women artists and in so doing contribute to new scholarship exploring New England’s role in fostering professional networks and activities of women artists.

Basic project structure:

• Develop bibliographic and biographical research for all historical women artists in the collection
• Create annotated bibliographies of key texts / relevancies and points of connection to objects and artists of study
• Research and document the role of New England artists’ organizations, schools, professional societies, and exhibitions in supporting the training and careers of women artists
• Conduct art historical research and interpretation of works by women artists in the collection
• Prepare summary reports of research
• Write label texts for select objects for use online or in gallery

Project #2: Storytelling and Interpretation through Integrated Media

Project Supervisor

Ed Rodley, Associate Director of Integrated Media

Project Goal

This fellowship is a hands-on learning experience geared towards students who want to see how digital media integrate into the museum content development process. The SHARP Fellow will work with the Integrated Media (IM) team to re-imagine how we tell meaningful stories with our digital collections. The Fellow will work closely with the IM team, curators, and other PEM staff to create imaginative experiences around museum content and services. Particular emphasis may be paid to existing platform partners like Wikipedia, Google Cultural Institute, YouTube, and Social Media platforms to seed new content.

The Fellow will collaborate in the creative and technical aspects of making digital media pieces, interface with other departments, and assist in keeping multiple IM projects on track. Potential projects include: Wikipedia edit-a-thons and image donations, Google Art Project exhibits and image uploads, and/or social media content initiatives.

SHARP-PEM Qualifications

Candidates must be rising-juniors, rising-seniors or 2017 graduates; interested in museums, history and/or the arts; exhibit analytical thought, strong writing skills, and creativity; willing to work independently and within a team, reporting to a senior staff member; museum work/volunteer experience is not necessary but preference will be given to students who demonstrate a critical eye toward museums and a genuine interest in the improvement of the museum field.

Important note on application process

Follow the guidelines for applying to SHARP. However, please download and complete the SHARP-PEM Supplemental Form in lieu of the general SHARP supplemental form.  If you are also applying for other SHARP projects, you will need to complete the general SHARP form available in the SHARP application dropdown menu.

Information Session and Tour at the Peabody Essex Museum

The info session will be held on Thursday, February 16, from 4:30-5:30pm, preceding PEM’s monthly after hours PEM/PM party. Please RSVP to Hannah Swartz at hannah_swartz@pem.org to register and receive free admission for the evening.

Visit www.pem.org/visit/pempm for information on the party.

PEM Background

The Peabody Essex Museum is America’s oldest continuously operating museum. It was founded in 1799 by some of the country’s earliest, most successful entrepreneurs. During the past twenty years, PEM has been among the fastest growing art museums in North America and the museum is internationally recognized for creativity, innovation, outstanding exhibitions, education programs, publications, and financial management. The Museum’s collections rank among the finest of their kind in several areas and encompass American, Asian, African, Native American, Oceanic, contemporary and maritime art, plus photography and 23 historic properties.

PEM’s mission is to celebrate art, culture, and creativity in ways that transform people’s lives. To fulfill this mission, the museum is dedicated to creating new kinds of art and art museum experiences through innovative interpretive ideas and methods based on multiple disciplines including neuroscience, museum visitor research, new technologies, and a variety of other knowledge bases.

This winter, PEM broke ground on a 40,000 sq. ft. expansion that will add three floors of gallery space, a vaulting atrium, and an outdoor garden.  Over the next five years, the museum plans to reconceive every one of its galleries and reinstall its collection, adding novel spaces devoted to experimentation, meditation and sound. The result will be a museum that emphasizes the interconnectedness of cultures, takes broad views off creativity, and features programming that explores the intersection of art, the humanities and sciences.

Project Supervisors

Emilie Hardman, Research, Instruction, and Digital Initiatives Librarian; Heather Cole, Assistant Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts; and Houghton colleagues

Project Overview

Houghton Library is pleased to invite Harvard undergraduates to work with our collections in the summer with support of an Undergraduate Fellowship. These competitive fellowships are designed to fully support a summer of work at Houghton, Harvard’s world-class rare books and manuscripts library.

Houghton is home to the world famous and the almost entirely unknown, the ancient and the contemporary, the enduring and the ephemeral; as a researcher, a practitioner, an experimenter, we want to know what students can do with these materials. During the course of a fellowship, undergraduates work closely with library staff to discover new areas of interest or to delve into ongoing projects. Past fellows created an opera; identified and filled gaps in the literature about the American and British birth control movements; produced a series of podcasts on poetry and the archives; made surprising deiscoveries about the origins of American theater at Harvard; explored the life and works of John James Audubon; and the development of W.V. Quine's philosophical work. We invite proposals for this summer on any topic or discipline supported by our collections. Creative, digital, research, and performance projects are all welcome, as are those we haven't thought of yet.

The Fellowship supports concentrated work with collection materials at Houghton. Fellows will have the opportunity to be in residence at Houghton Library working in the Reading Room with guidance from staff throughout the summer. A public program showcases fellowship projects in the fall.

Proposing a Project

Applicants should be prepared to describe their proposed research project, including specific information about the Houghton Library materials or kinds of materials the project would make use of. This proposal narrative is limited to approximately 500 words. In the SHARP application, this proposal will be included as your first essay response. 

To schedule a time to talk with a Houghton Librarian about your project in advance, please use this form. You may also email us at: houghton_library@harvard.edu.

Project Supervisor

Peter Burgard, Professor of German

Project Description

This summer I am completing a book project — on European Baroque art and architecture and German Baroque literature — that I have worked on for a number of years. Doing so entails reviewing and revising what is already written, with regard both to content (the book’s argument) and structure (the book is performative in its structure, and this requires review and discussion), and incorporating scholarship on Baroque art and literature that has appeared in recent years.

The summer research project entails collaborating on the project with my guidance and mentoring, being my reader and my critic, including a weekly meeting to discuss all matters pertaining to the book. Your final product will be a report on the current state of scholarship on Baroque art and literature and on how it relates to my theory of the Baroque aesthetic. Your research will be an important contribution to scholarship on one of the most important periods in European cultural history.

The purpose of the book, Figures of Excess: Toward an Aesthetic of the Baroque, is twofold: first, to set forth an aesthetic of the Baroque, without respect to national boundaries, that accounts for and explains the underlying conceptual tendencies of its various literary, artistic, and architectural productions, and thus the conceptual grounds of their styles and themes. Second, it is my aim to demonstrate what the Baroque is that explains it as well for Italian as for Dutch and Spanish art and for German literature, that is, to set forth an aesthetic of the Baroque that makes use, specifically, of seventeenth-century German literature and thereby incorporates that literature into the general European aesthetic phenomenon called Baroque. In articulating this aesthetic, I focus on the Baroque critique of the devotion to system in the Renaissance and the Baroque subversion of systematic principles of composition in the arts and of systematic thought itself. The means of this critique and subversion is the exploration and performance of excess.

Project Trajectory

The book is written in four main parts. Each of the first four weeks will be devoted to a critical reading of one of them, discussion with me, and exploration of the most recent pertinent research. Two weeks following that will be spent on consolidating the results of the discussions and research of the first weeks. The next two weeks will focus on consideration of the structure of the book, and the final two weeks on possible refinements of the choice of illustrations and final editing. This may of course change in response to the work we do together, as we may find some things require more attention than others.

Learning Outcomes

Because this project is closer to its end than its beginning, but must also to some extent be started up again, since I haven’t been able to work on it for some time and will have been spending the spring term working my way back into it and completing as much as possible, this fellowship may offer some significantly different scholarly experiences than others. You will work your way into an almost fully articulated book-length argument, engage both intellectually and practically with what I have written, conduct research into scholarship on the various topics addressed in the book. In all this, you will gain experience both in editing and in copy-editing.

The experience will be one of direct and intense involvement in wide-ranging, comparative, and interdisciplinary scholarship in the Humanities. For Humanities students potentially interested in pursuing further studies, as well as for students with a Senior Thesis somewhere on the horizon, this offers a unique opportunity to experience the life of a scholar in the Humanities — mine and your own.

Requirements

1) excellent proficiency in reading German; 2) strong interest in studying literary texts, painting, sculpture, and architecture; 3) some interest in philosophical discourse; 4) some experience in the interpretation of literature and/or art. It is also important to be organized, energetic, and committed to intellectual inquiry in general.

SHARP Independent Research Fellowships

In addition to the menu of SHARP projects presented by faculty or led by our institutional partners, this year SHARP is inviting students to propose their own independent research projects on topics in the arts and humanities, broadly defined. For SHARP independent research projects, applicants must describe the proposed research project in detail and the scope of the work for the 10-week summer research period, including specific information about the resources and materials to be engaged on campus. Students must also identify a faculty mentor for the research project.  In the SHARP application, your independent project proposal will be included as your first essay response.

Please note: For students proposing independent research projects, the academic reference letter should, in part, specifically address the project and your preparedness to undertake it. 

Research Mentor Confirmation Letter

A brief note from your research mentor is also required, providing details about the proposed project and their involvement over the summer. If your academic recommender is also your summer research mentor, the letter of recommendation can also count as the confirmation, and you do not need to provide a separate mentor letter. 

When confirmed, the faculty mentor should email their confirmation letter in pdf format to undergradresearch@fas.harvard.edu with SHARP and [YOUR LAST NAME] in the subject line. If you do not have your mentor confirmed by the application deadline, please have them email their confirmation letter as soon as possible.

Project Supervisor

Peter Bol, Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Project Description

This project is aimed at understanding  how Chinese literati reacted to Mongol conquest of China in the 13^th century. The Fellow will be using the China Biographical Database to explore changes in social networks as Chinese literati come into contact with Mongols and Central Asians in China.

This research opportunity is part of the China Biographical Database project. The China Biographical Database is a freely accessible relational database with biographical information on about approximately 400,000 men and women, primarily from the 7th through 19th centuries. With both online and offline versions, the data is meant to be useful for statistical, social network, and spatial analysis as well as serving as a kind of biographical reference. The long term goal of CBDB is systematically to include all significant biographical material from China’s historical record and to make the contents available free of charge, without restriction, for academic use. The database is regularly being enriched and new biographical entries are being created for Tang, Five Dynasties, Liao, Song, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing figures.

The SHARP Fellow will work with faculty, project staff, and collaborators from China, Taiwan and Europe in conducting research on scholarly networks during the Yuan and early Ming dynasties (13^th-15^th c.). The research uses large amounts of biographical data to explore how scholars established strong local networks across kinship ties and used these networks to establish national connections, thus better to understand the spread of Neo-Confucian moral philosophy and new modes of literary culture during the period of Mongol rule in particular.

This work will help provide a comparative context for my current project on the formation of literati communities in the southeast during the middle period, the construction of a new definition of “Chinese culture,” and efforts to establish a leading role for literati as the bearers of that culture. The Fellow will have space in the Database project office and will meet with me weekly and with other project staff daily. 

Project Trajectory

Week 1. Fundamentals of database design and database queries
Week 2. Computational methods for extracting information from text corpora
Week 3. Social network analysis
Week 4. Geospatial analysis
Weeks 5-6. Comparative analysis of Neo-Confucian teacher-student relationships and philosophical publications in three different regions
Weeks 7-8. Comparative analysis of literary exchanges in three different regions
Weeks 9-10. Temporal analysis of changing relationships between literati and government

Learning Outcomes

During the course of the project the fellow will learn how to use a variety of historical sources and how to apply fundamental technological and analytic skills of the digital humanities to historical questions.

Requirements

This research requires some ability to read Chinese, preferably literary Chinese. It does not require any technical expertise but the Fellow should want to learn various tools.

Project Supervisor

Eugene Wang, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art

Project Description

The goal is to produce a multimedia platform or website that showcases the depth and range of the rich visual, theatrical, and literary culture centered on The Romance of the Western Wing. Alternatively known as the Romance of the Western Chamber, the 13^th century Chinese play has ever since remained the most popular comedy of all time in China. At the outset, there is nothing remarkable about the boy-meets-girl plot. What is unusual, however, is that all that is not supposed to happen happens: the young man is not supposed to be distracted from his preparation for the imperial examination; the young woman is not supposed to let her mind wander while mourning for her newly deceased father; romance is not supposed to blossom in a Buddhist monastery. Yet all these happen even when they are not supposed to. So we have the romance in the western wing of the monastery. That is the storyline. The play stands on its head everything one knows about China, supposedly steeped in the straight-laced Confucian ethics and decorum. It has drawn as much ire as admiration. In the end, the fans have won. Not only has the play been repeatedly staged over the centuries, the script has also inspired visualization of all kinds, in the form of paintings, woodblock prints, decoration on ceramic vessels, etc. Illustrated books mixing texts and images suggest a premodern “multi-media” drama-in-print, i.e., a book to be “read” and experienced as a play.

As soon as we get into the realm of visualization, we realize that the matter is not just about a play. The play inspires paintings, but the paintings don’t simply “illustrate” the play. Playfulness means different things for painters and playwrights. Moreover, something more happens when a painting integrates architecture. There are instances in which a painting maps out the play into architecture. So we have a play set in buildings in a painting—a threefold staging. Complexity is therefore what the project is after. The core issue in the project is to grapple with the interface and connectivity of theater, media, art, visualization, and habits of imagination.

Project Opportunities and Trajectory

With the big picture of the complex interface in mind, the project starts with basics. We gather as much as we can the textual and visual materials inspired and generated by the Romance of Western Wing. We sort them out and then try to figure out the best ways of ordering and presenting them on a multimedia platform (website, etc.). Timelines, charts, annotated pictorial compositions and architectural drawings are likely to be in our toolbox. Possibilities of video-game-like AR designs are possible depending on our resources, skill sets, and adventurousness.

Learning Outcomes and Skills

Multimedia design thinking is the ultimate goal and skill set to be acquired, honed, and exercised. The biggest challenge and fun stem from the uniqueness of the project. We are dealing with a kind of “data visualization” at a more advanced and humanistic level. While charts and timelines are part of the design and the big picture, more relevant will be the integration of diverse textual materials into architectural and pictorial spaces, in other words, learning how to annotate pictures, and let future students to access the entirety of the coherent world of the Romance of the West Wing—Chinese culture in a nutshell—with ease and intelligibility, to be both educated and entertained.

Selection Criteria

I seek SHARP fellows who ideally possess the ability to access and use both Chinese and English materials, and who think sharp, write well, and are well-organized. Some degree of reading knowledge of Chinese is preferred.  Additional skill sets will be appreciated, such as web design, using design apps to create architectural and spatial models, and other data visualization skills.

Project Supervisor

Elisa New, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature

Project Description

I am currently at work on Poetry in America , a multi-platform humanities initiative at Harvard. Poetry in America began as a series of HarvardX modules, and has now expanded to a wide umbrella of multimedia educational initiatives in collaboration with FAS, HGSE, DCE, and WGBH, public television’s preeminent production house. I am currently at work producing a Poetry in America TV series with WGBH, and creating state-of-the-art online course materials and teacher training materials in partnership with HGSE and DCE that connect the reading of poetry with other disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Over the last three years, I have shot and produced hundreds of hours of video footage for Poetry in America, filmed on location across the country and beyond, in Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vermont, and London. This footage features conversations with distinguished guests including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Nas, Herbie Hancock, Elena Kagan, Tony Kushner, Eve Ensler, Michael Pollan, Jason Collins, Shane Battier, Billy Collins, John McCain, Cynthia Nixon, Shaquille O’Neal, and more.

Poetry in America will eventuate in several major outputs: The first, Poetry in America for Teachers, is a series of for-credit professional development graduate courses, developed with the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) to support K-12 classroom teachers. These courses are aligned with educational standards, including the Common Core. Teachers will be able to use this course to strengthen their classroom practice while also developing their careers. This project will also produce classroom-ready video content designed to stimulate and appeal to middle and high school students, thus enabling teachers to bring the content of their professional development directly into the classroom. This project will give teachers the confidence and tools to discuss poetry while also meeting English Language Arts goals and providing teachers with professional development opportunities.

Second, the TV element of this project, currently entering post-production and airing in 2018, will reach viewers of all backgrounds, who will have a chance to see that poetry is connected to every human activity.

Finally, other avenues for this content, including the HarvardX massive open online course and short films appearing in The Atlantic, Nautilus, and The Nantucket Project, will provide even more avenues for viewers worldwide to connect to poetry in a way that both entertains and educates.

Project Opportunities and Trajectory

In the next 12 months my production team will be drawing on the footage that we have filmed to create materials for Poetry in America for Teachers. The first Poetry in America for Teachers course focused on the urban environment-- courses in the pipeline will focus on the natural world and the arts, respectively. We seek a SHARP fellow to assist with all stages of these projects, from research and development, to production and post-production. Involvement will be suited to the fellow’s interests and skills.

Learning Outcomes and Skills

The SHARP fellow will hone close-reading and research skills by helping to locate and select poems for use in the classroom. She/he will become familiar with our library of footage, and become adept at watching, editing, and reviewing educational media, identifying key teaching moments, developing curriculums or assessments tailored to learning outcomes, and assisting in discussion and planning with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, WGBH television, and other educational and media partners. The SHARP fellow will gain a nuanced understanding of copyright law, and assist the Poetry in America team with copyright compliance and rights acquisition.

Selection Criteria

The ideal candidate for this SHARP fellowship will be a self-motivated, organized, creative, and energetic undergraduate, preferably a rising junior or senior. The applicant should have some experience in literature, history, and/or the arts, and an interest in the digital humanities, multimedia education, K-12 education, and/or film production. Students with a concentration in VES and a background in video production or web design would be especially well suited for this project, but none of these skills are required and there will be opportunities for learning on the job.

Project Supervisor

Anne Shreffler, James Edward Ditson Professor of Music and Affiliate, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures 

Assisting Librarian

Kerry Masteller, Music Reference and Research Librarian, Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library (kmastell@fas.harvard.edu)

Project Description

I am looking for one, and possibly two, undergraduates to assist in research on political and aesthetic debates in the 1930s and 1940s. This will help me to complete two chapters of my book project, Musical Utopias: Progressive Music and Progressive Politics, about a vital strain of twentieth-century modernist music that was inspired by left-wing ideals. For many years, my research has centered on music and politics in the twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on the political associations of different styles.

The student(s) will research German-language exile journals and other sources in English (and possibly Italian and French, given the relevant language proficiency) to explore and summarize aesthetic debates about modernism at mid-century, particularly in music. Modern idioms such as expressionism and atonality were viewed as integral to a progressive political vision by many of emigrants, partly in reaction to the condemnation of those styles in the Third Reich. Many of the emigrants were left-wing or Communist, so the fact that modern music was also scorned as “formalist” in the Soviet Union made things complicated. While some, like the Austrian composer Hanns Eisler, actively promoted a socialist vision of musical life, others wanted to preserve the cultural values of a free society above all. The debates were vociferous, because aesthetic questions were inextricably linked with politics and so much was at stake.

Scattered literally to the four winds after the Nazi seizure of power, leading cultural figures found themselves in Paris, Prague, London, New York, Moscow, or Shanghai. They founded German-language publishing houses, journals and newspapers to create community and provide a public platform for exile opinion. In the pages of Der Aufbau (New York), Das neue Tage-Buch (Paris), Die neue Weltbühne (Prague), Internationale Literatur (Moscow), Die Sammlung (Amsterdam), and many other journals, exiles reported on the news from Nazi Germany, cultivated resistance, and presented an alternative to Fascist cultural politics. Journals devoted specifically to music include Musica Viva (published in Brussels, in four languages), 23 (Vienna), and Der Auftakt (Prague). English-language music journals such as Modern Music and Musical Quarterly provide additional documentation of major international musical events and debates from the 1930s and 1940s.

The student will carry out original research: searching for the relevant journals, then reading, identifying, and summarizing the material. The end product will include a database of relevant articles, along with prose summaries with information about the journals and authors. Harvard’s libraries contain rare original print runs of many of these periodicals, while others are available on microfilm. Many of these exile journals were short-lived, due to the massively unstable political situation as well as the beginning of the war in 1939. Some hard to find, particularly those published in the Soviet Union. Some are digitized and searchable, while others are not. The student will identify the journals, locate relevant articles, and research the political orientations and background of the journal, the editors, and the authors. We will work with Kerry Masteller, Music Reference and Research Librarian, Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library, to help with digital searches, locating material, and setting up a RefWorks platform for recording and presenting the data. I have a detailed list of about 40 journals which can serve as a starting point.

Project trajectory

Weeks 1 and 2:

• reading background literature on music and migration, modernism, and political contexts of the time
• learning the RefWorks platform and preparing keywords and categories for the database and summaries
• learning how to use the relevant digital collections
• starting work with one selected digitized journal: reading, selecting, and writing summaries of the relevant material

Weeks 3 and 4:

• For the journal you have selected, find out about its print run, political orientation, the biographies of its editors, and other information you think is relevant. Continue to research and write summaries
• Choose one journal or newspaper that is not digitized (either hard copy or microfilm), develop strategies for finding information in it.
• Search publications of the exile presses Querido (Amsterdam) and Éditions du Carrefour (Paris) for relevant titles. As you did with your first selected journal, find out about the background of these presses and their editors.
• Starting working on journals devoted specifically to music, which include Musica Viva (published in Brussels, in four languages), 23 (Vienna), and Der Auftakt (Prague).

Weeks 5 and 6:

• In the American English-language journals Modern Music and Musical Quarterly (both digitized), search for articles by or about immigrants from wartime Europe.
• Identify some of the official party journals of the German Communist Party (KPD) in exile and look for articles about music or aesthetic debates.
• Do the same with the official organs of the German Socialist Party (SPD) and other socialist splinter groups, and with a couple of journals aimed at a readership of socialist workers’ choruses, such as the Schweizerische Sänger-Zeitung.

Weeks 7 and 8:

• Focus on the aesthetic debates in German-language journals published in Moscow, such as Das Wort and Internationale Literatur. (This includes the “Expressionismus-Debatte” of 1937.)
• Search the Deutsche Zentral-Zeitung, published in Moscow, for relevant articles.

Weeks 9 and 10:

• Focus on literary exile journals such as Neue Deutsche Blätter (Prague), edited by Anna Seghers and others, Maß und Wert (Zürich), edited by Thomas Mann and others), and Die Sammlung (Amsterdam), edited by Klaus Mann and others.
• Finish up the work, adding missing summaries and background information to the RefWorks database.
• Prepare a list of “next steps” for future research.

Learning outcomes

Enhanced research skills, familiarity with digital collections of historical material, increased knowledge of music history and of political history before and during World War II, experience reading German texts, mastery of RefWorks (a useful platform for senior thesis bibliographies as well), and practice summarizing articles.

The student for this project could also use this material to expand her/his own interests.  I will work with the student to develop projects.

Skills required

1) Excellent proficiency in reading German 2) Skills in good note taking and written summaries. 3) Musical background would be helpful, although not required.

A student with reading proficiency in French or Italian could research left-wing newspapers and journals in those languages from the same time period.

Project Supervisors

Mentored by metaLAB team, incl. Prof Jeffrey Schnapp, Jessica Yurkofsky, Matthew Battles, and  Sarah Newman, and working in collaboration with metaLAB graduate student Robert Roessler.

Research themes

Design, digital humanities, data visualization, interdisciplinarity, and the role of the liberal arts in society

Project Description

Work includes: design and historical research, user testing, student and alumni interviews, design work (with metaLAB team)
Curricle is a prototype for a new experience in course selection: a digital platform that gives students powerful tools in data visualization and analytics for browsing, shopping, and selecting courses at Harvard. The platform will enable students to see the broader landscape within which they navigate the curriculum, offering more opportunities for choice and customization. Additionally, it will offer a historical research side for students and scholars to explore and visualize Harvard’s curricula over time.  Curricle's power—and its design challenge—consists in this use of data visualization both to map today's curriculum, and to visualize its historical development in previously unseen ways.  

Specific role for SHARP fellow

The SHARP fellow will be involved in a variety of aspects of Curricle's development. This will include: research to ground and contextualize the experience of course selection, including interviewing notable alumni about their curricular choices; design work and implementation (in collaboration with metaLAB team); testing versions of the interface with Harvard students; and archival research into historical curricula at Harvard and Radcliffe. The SHARP fellow will participate in weekly metaLAB and Curricle team meetings, and will have the chance to suggest and develop new paths of inquiry.

We're seeking an independent and organized student who is interested in furthering his or her experience in working with a beta version of a new technological tool; preference will be shown for a fellow with interests in design, interdisciplinary studies, algorithms, and the history and role of the liberal arts in society. The student will have a chance to contribute meaningfully to this exciting new tool, and to work with a small research lab comprised of designers, coders, artists, and scholars.

Project Supervisor

Michael Bronski, Professor of the Practice in Media and Activism

Project Description              

I am editing a four volume collection of the 100 most significant essays on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) history. It is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing as part of their Critical and Primary Sources series.The project is global in nature and will encompass multiple countries and cultures, as well as time periods. Bloomsbury’s Critical and Primary Sources series is sold, primarily, to public and university libraries often in the non-western world.

Much of what is called LGBTQ Studies began in the United States and European countries. Many early germinal essays concerned western themes, incidents, and people. The last four decades has produced a wealth of work from African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and South Asian scholars interrogating their own national histories. This new scholarship has placed individual national histories in transnational contexts. These four volumes attempt to balance, and build upon, the older (often western-centered) work and place them in conversation with newer scholarship that broadens both the reach and the political intentionality of LGBTQ history. At the moment, the four volumes are tentatively arranged to cover: Vol 1 – theoretical work; Vol 2 – the pre-modern world; Vol 3 – the modern world; Vol 4 – contemporary political organizing and movements.

The essays in these four volumes will have been previously published. They will range from the seminal work of Lillian Faderman on female friendships from the early 1970s to Rahul Rao’s contemporary studies of queerness, post-colonialism, and terrorism. This summer’s project, in large part, will be devoted to identifying important, significant works of LGBTQ history and then deciding which, working together, best communicate the fullness and breadth of the field.

Working with me, a SHARP fellow will research and identify the existing scholarship, read and evaluate it, and place it in conversation with other works. The primary research here consists of finding – using Hollis+ as well as other library tools and archives – published articles; while it is thematically complex, basic research skills are all that are necessary.

Once the essays are chosen I will write an Introduction to each volume as well as an Introduction to the collection. We will then shift to another research mode and I will need help mapping out, and documenting, the larger themes here as well as shape them into Introductory essays. I will also look to the student to help with conceptualizing, editing, and proof-reading the Introductions. The work is not clerical in nature.

In the first stage of research the student will draw upon their knowledge and interest of history and sexuality to evaluate, with me, the articles to be chosen. In the second stage of research they will draw upon their research, bibliographic, writing and editing skills to help with the final versions of the Introductions.

Project Opportunities and Trajectory

The scope of this project is large but eminently feasible to complete during the ten weeks of the summer break. I will supervise the student’s work and help them to develop their research and evaluation skills as well as how to compare the articles to form a cohesive set of texts. While the student will be doing research on their own, regular communication as well as meeting at least twice a week will help us both with this work.

Learning Outcomes and Skills

A student who works on this project will grow in a number of ways. Their basic research and text evaluations skills will be increased and sharpened. It is also a great opportunity for a student to broaden and strengthen their knowledge not only of history (and LGBTQ history in particular), but their understanding of gender, sexuality, critical race, and post-colonial theory. There will be ample opportunity for them to use and expand their writing and editing skills in a professional context. Most important, a student who is interested in perusing a career in the  academia or publishing will learn how a book project is conceptualized, researched, compiled, edited, and delivered to a publisher. There is the potential, if my editor at Bloomsbury is open to it, for the SHARP fellow to interact with the editorial department of the publisher as well.

Selection Criteria

Students applying should have an interest, and ideally some reading knowledge of, basic aspects of LGBTQ history and politics, as well as gender and sexuality theory. They must have a desire to engage with these ideas and to be willing to explore them in expansive ways. (The global perspective here will be a learning curve for me as well and some of the learning here will be a joint experience.) Sharp attention to detail in research, note taking, handling of files, necessary communications with the publisher, and overall management of all of the aspects of the project are vital. The most important qualifications – aside from basic writing skills I presume most Harvard students have already – are the ability to engage, be continually curious, and be willing to learn as the research and the project develops.

Project Supervisors

Joyce Chaplin, James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History; Diana Loren and Lainie Schultz, Academic Partnerships Department, Peabody Museum

Project Description

Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is one of the oldest and largest anthropology museums in the world. It stewards over 1.2 million objects, comprised of archaeological, ethnological, osteological, and archival materials, as well as prints and photographs. The Peabody Museum engages in, supports, and promotes the study and appreciation of ancient and contemporary peoples from around the world. The Museum collects, preserves, and interprets cultural and related materials and offers unique opportunities for innovative teaching, research, and enrichment at Harvard and with communities worldwide.

In 2018, the Peabody Museum will mount an exhibition curated by Professor Joyce Chaplin, on the history of food in Cambridge, MA. The exhibition explores how local cuisine became increasingly global through time, highlighting certain events in Harvard’s food history such as the 1766 Butter Rebellion.

The SHARP fellow will contribute to the shaping of this exhibit through hands-on research of Peabody Museum collections, as well as primary and secondary sources potentially located elsewhere on the Harvard campus. This work may include:

• A research review of particular objects, collections, or collectors;
• Identification and exploration of interesting themes related to experiences of cooking and eating in New England;
• Identification of relevant collections located in other Harvard institutions, such as the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Harvard Herbaria, University Archives, Houghton and Schlesinger Libraries;
• Recommendations for the visual display of exhibit themes, suitable to a variety of audiences.

The fellow will be provided with a research space at the Peabody Museum, and will receive regular guidance and supervision from the Museum’s Academic Partnerships Department. The fellow will additionally meet or Skype once a week with Professor Chaplin, to discuss research progress and future directions.

Learning Outcomes

The fellow will enjoy a unique, hands-on experience working with museum collections, while gaining critical skills conducting primary research with non-literary sources. The fellow will learn about the process of exhibit development, and the challenge (and importance) of communicating research through a variety of media to a variety of audiences. The fellow will also receive training in professional museum practices, including object-handling, the use of collections databases, and principles of collections management, conservation, and registration.

Selection Criteria

This research must be conducted and conveyed to project supervisors according to rigorous standards of academic scholarship and citation, and must meet the standards of care and attention required of working with museum collections. Most importantly, the fellow chosen for this project must be able to think critically and creatively, to consider what sort of collections could contribute to the exhibit’s narrative and where they may be located; the narratives to which already-located collections can contribute; the suitability of various collections for display; and how to use collections to convey what may be complex ideas to an unknown visiting public.

Project Supervisors

Jessica Martinez, Director of Academic and Public Programs; David Odo, Director of Student Programs and Research Curator of University Collections Initiatives

Project Description

Harvard Art Museums welcomes applications from undergraduates interested in public humanities to spend the summer researching public tour initiatives at the Museums. Students will develop and deliver regularly scheduled tours for visitors; will explore various models for gallery activities and guided visits for groups; and will develop an intensive guide for use by Phillips Brooks House Association groups and other community organizations who are interested in visiting the Harvard Art Museums. This work will include collections research, workshops with Museums staff from curatorial, education, conservation, and other departments, investigation of guided visit programs at peer institutions, outreach to PBHA groups, and the writing and editing of a final community-oriented group visit guide.

SHARP fellows will conduct their research and writing work in the rich collections of the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler Museums, newly united in a state-of-the-art facility designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Expanded galleries feature works from the ancient world to the present, and from the Americas, Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Asia.

Agenda

SHARP fellows will spend the summer researching and participating in public guided visit programs. Fellows will participate in a rigorous training program with Harvard Art Museums staff to gain knowledge of the Museums’ collections, develop skills in critical thinking, visual analysis, public speaking and leadership. Training will draw on scholarship and practice from multiple fields of knowledge, including curatorial practice, artistic practice, art history, conservation science, social sciences, and other areas.

In addition to developing and delivering regularly scheduled tours, fellows will investigate multiple frameworks for interacting with groups in the gallery space, with an eye towards creating a model for engaging PBHA and other community-oriented groups on campus. They will create an outreach plan for engaging these groups, and their work will culminate in the writing, editing, and distribution of a complete guide to museum group visits for on-campus public service groups.  

Outcomes

Fellows will gain in-depth knowledge of specific objects and collection areas they will research to prepare their tours, as well as general knowledge of museum practice through structured and unstructured learning opportunities with a professional staff of curators, conservators, and technologists. Fellows will also gain a broad understanding of different models for public engagement in museums, as they research peer institutions and participate in gallery activity workshops. Finally, fellows will fully direct the research, writing, and distribution of a museum visit guide aimed at on-campus public service groups. By the end of the program, the fellow should have knowledge of Harvard Art Museums collections, improved research and writing skills, familiarity with different models for public engagement in museums, and experience creating and distributing educational materials for museums.

Selection criteria

No art history or museum experience necessary, but an enthusiasm and excitement about the Harvard Art Museums is required. We are seeking students with a welcoming and engaging demeanor and a comfort with public speaking; prior teaching/tutoring experience preferred. Preference given to students involved in Phillips Brooks House Association groups or programming. Please indicate if you are fluent in Spanish, Chinese/Mandarin or American Sign Language.