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Undergraduate
Information
UROP
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
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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
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Modern
Chinese History, Media, and Literature
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Professor
Peter C. Perdue, E51-291, x 3-3064,
specializes in Chinese history from the seventeenth
century to the present. UROP assistants have helped
Prof. Perdue with the preparation of materials for the
web, and they have also aided with translations of Chinese
literature from the past four hundred years. Prof. Perdue's
other research interests relate to China's frontiers,
its national minorities, and its environmental history.
Email:
pcperdue@mit.edu |
French
Politics and Theater of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
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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
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Nineteenth-Century
British Environmental History
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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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