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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 in the two centuries before the Revolution of 1789; in particular, his research focuses on the intersection of politics and theater. Previous UROPers have helped him complete a database with over 11,000 entries on the performance and publication of eighteenth-century French plays. He is currently working on a comparative study of private theatricals in France and Great Britain during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as well as a study of politics and culture in France in the 1730s. French and/or Spanish language ability desirable but not necesary.

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. UROP project would be to assist in researching a late nineteenth-century environmental conflict (the furor caused when a remote scenic lake was dammed to provide a reservoir for a large industrial city).

Email: hnritvo@mit.edu



Russian and Soviet History
 
Professor Elizabeth Wood, author of The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia, and Performing Justice: Agitation Trials in Revolutionary Russia. She is looking for a UROP student to begin work on her next project, a study of relations between newly independent India and the Soviet Union in the years 1947-1964.

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 early twentieth century. Ongoing projects include research in newspapers and correspondence of the World War I era, with a focus on military or diplomatic records. Students with reading knowledge of German or Spanish are particularly welcome. Another UROP project specifically focused on American legal history includes research into legal cases on topics such as naturalization and citizenship law and legal regulation of military service during and after World War I. No specialized legal knowledge is needed; almost all research can be done at MIT libraries.

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

 

Energy Crisis of the 1970s

 

 

Professor Meg Jacobs, E51-188, x 3-7895, is working on her new
book project, Panic At the Pump: How the Energy Crisis Changed American Politics. This book examines how the energy shortages and soaring oil prices remade American politics in the 1970s. The UROP student would conduct primary research for this project in newspapers, magazines, archive collections, polling data, and congressional hearings. This UROP requires no background in the subject and is a perfect opportunity for a student intersted in history, political science or economics.

Email: mjacobs@mit.edu

   
     


 
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