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UROP OPPORTUNITIES IN HISTORY

Many members of the MIT History faculty offer students the opportunity to assist them in their research. There are UROP opportunities in modern Chinese history, in the material culture of eighteenth-century Europe, and in other areas. Knowledge of a foreign language is occasionally helpful, as are web skills, but the most important qualities for successful UROP students in History are curiosity about the past and enthusiasm for original research.
 
Eighteenth-Century Dutch Material Culture

Professor Anne McCants, E51-293, x 8-6669, who employs economic and quantitative approaches to the study of the European past, has embarked on a large project to study the material lives and daily routines of residents of Amsterdam in the eighteenth century. UROP students have the option of helping her in any of a number of areas: the reconstruction of family networks via marriage, birth, and death records; debts and debt networks; people's possessions and their placement in domestic settings; and wealth inequality in the urban context of the Dutch capital.

Email: amccants@mit.edu


French Politics and Theater of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
 

Professor Jeff Ravel, E51-179, x 3-4451, studies French political culture from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Current projects include the cultural, social, economic, and political aspects of fraud and deception in France from the Old Regime to the nineteenth century; and the digitization of the daily receipts registers of the Comedie-Francaise theater troupe in Paris from 1680 to 1800, in conjunction with MIT's HyperStudio.

Email: ravel@mit.edu



Nineteenth-Century British Environmental History
 
Professor Harriet Ritvo, E51-284 xt 3-6960, specializes in British history, environmental history, and the history of human-animal relations.

Email: ritvo@mit.edu



Russian and Soviet History
 
Professor Elizabeth Wood, author of two books on poltics nad culture in the 1920s in the Soviet Union, is now working on a project on the performance of politics in contemporary Russia under Vladimir Putin, drawing on insights from her work in that earlier era of Soviet history. She is looking for a UROP student to do reseach in an enormous database of Russian newspapers today to obtain information about images of Putin that are being generated by central and regional authorities for mass consumption.

Email: elizwood@mit.edu


Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America
 

Professor Christopher Capozzola specializes in the political and legal history of the United States in the twentieth century. His current research focuses on the U.S. military in the Philippines; in the coming year research will focus on U.S.-Asian relations in the Cold War era. Another UROP project for 2009-10 looks at civilian workers and diplomats in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is based on a newly opened collection of oral history interviews. No specialized knowledge or languages are needed; almost all research can be done at home or at MIT libraries. Students interested in a UROP for pay must secure UROP Direct Funding.

Email: capozzol@mit.edu

 

Science and Technology in American History

 

 

Professor Pauline Maier, E51-279, xt 3-2646. Science and technology in American history from the 17th century to 1801. Ratification of the Federal Constitution.

Email: pmaier@mit.edu

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
     


 
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