Please carefully review each of the project descriptions below. Following your review, please indicate in your CSI application your two (mandatory) or three (optional) top-choice projects, indicating in your essay how you are prepared to contribute to EACH of these projects as an undergraduate researcher and why they are of interest to you academically. Be sure to address each project you select separately. Note: many of the projects below will benefit from multiple CSI research scholars on each project. Please prioritize projects based on your interests and capacities for success as a CSI undergraduate researcher.
Project 1: Postwar Artists' Books [up to 4 research appointments]: Following World War II, European and North American artists took up the book as an artistic medium, experimenting with and expanding the essential components of a medium that had remained unchanged for centuries. The results defied all expectations about traditional understandings of what constitutes a book, including the primacy of text and the use of paper, pages, and binding. Books became visual and material objects to be viewed rather than read, made from modern materials such as plastics, concrete, or newspaper; featuring unusual materials or objects such as a sack of flour, a display shelf, or a comic book with stenciled holes; prompting readers to actions with urban performance instructions or do-it-yourself watercolor kits; in sizes as small as a square inch or as large as an over-life-sized wood construction.
An exhibition in fall 2027 in the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center in the Regenstein Library will present a broad array of examples from our campus collections as well as recent gifts from a collector and loans from the Chicago area. The exhibition will be curated by students under the guidance of Prof. Christine Mehring and library staff. To that end, students will develop curatorial research skills required for work in museums or related contexts, including: building research files for individual artists, choosing objects to be exhibited, consulting with conservators and researching particular materials and media, determining section themes and groupings, and writing artist bios and individual object labels. Students with ability to read one or more European language are particularly encouraged to apply. Research Mentor: Christine Mehring, Mary L. Block Professor of Art History and Visual Arts.
Project 2: The Afterlives of Skulls: How Race Science Became a Data Science [up to 2 research appointments]: This research opportunity supports the final stages of a book manuscript that examines how skull measurement and bodily quantification, often assumed to be obsolete, became foundational to 20th century statistics, biometrics, and data science. Rather than fading with the advent of population genetics, skull measurement evolved into a data-intensive practice that linked the statistical study of racial difference to the development of algorithms and machine learning. The book demonstrates how racialized forms of measurement and classification survived through data, shaping how we define objectivity and trust in technology and science today. The project uses historical methodologies, in particular methods that are common in the history of science, medicine, and technology, such as reconstructing scientific practices and studying their relationship with scientific theories of the body. Students participating in this project will provide editorial assistance in finalizing the manuscript. Tasks include:
- Conduct critical readings of chapter drafts and assist in cross-chapter coherence work
- Research and evaluate outstanding scholarly questions
- Assist with copyediting and manuscript preparation
- Manage copyright permissions for figures
Research Mentor: Iris Clever, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Rank of Instructor, Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science.
Project 3: The Craft Chronicle [up to 4 research appointments]: The Craft Chronicle, an interactive digital humanities project, seeks to research, elucidate, and visualize the interconnectedness of craft practice across the United States throughout the twentieth century and beyond. Tracing the relationships between artists, institutions, and organizations, the Chronicle will allow users, through a publicly accessible website, to apprehend the diverse and dynamic networks of people and ideas that shaped (and continue to shape and transform) art and design. The Chronicle's interface is structured using OCHRE (Online Cultural and Historical Research Environment), a multi-ontology graph database system built and maintained at the Forum for Digital Culture at the University of Chicago. The database currently includes more than 450 constituents (artists, institutions, and organizations) that require further research in order to rigorously document their relationality. The research findings available through the Chronicle include citations, with complete sources accessible through the open-source research management software Zotero. Research Mentor: Erica Warren, Assistant Instructional Professor, M.A. Program in the Humanities & Department of Art History.
Project 4: Voices of Madness: When Philosophers Turn to Literature [up to 2 research appointments]: If Plato famously expelled poetry from the republic of philosophy, modern philosophers spent considerable energy inviting it back in. This research project explores how certain philosophers feel compelled to turn to literature as a resource specifically for thinking about the experience of madness. What is it about madness that 1) is of interest to philosophy but also 2) stifles inquiry without help from literature? While madness has usually been studied by examining the archives of asylums, clinics, and courts (in other words, as tokens of disciplinary power), many thinkers look to literature to bring other regions of experience to light. This is certainly the case for philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell, and Jocelyn Benoist, each of whom sees in literary fiction a continuation of philosophical concerns from a different angle. For them, the literature of madness poses questions about the limits of language, skepticism, and humanism. The research team will catalogue and organize such moments within this tradition, creating an archive of references and allusions, and analyze their specific purchase -- whether they offer new insights into old problems or pose new questions, and what sort of blockages they help move for philosophy itself. We will then look at several examples of modernist writers who wrote through madness, with a particular emphasis on women’s voices (Unica Zürn, Leonora Carrington) to explore what challenges it might pose to conventional stories about this relationship. Research Mentor: Andrew Brandel, Associate Instructional Professor, Social Sciences Collegiate Division.
Project 5: Religious Origins of Educational Inequality: Denominational Investment in Higher Education in the Early 20th Century [up to 3 research appointments]: The Religious Origins of Educational Inequality project uses comparative historical methods to examine how the inequalities embedded in the American religious field shaped the American system of higher education during the early 20th century. Using archival sources in combination with an original dataset linking schools to the religious organizations that founded and formally controlled them in preceding decades, this study is the first systematic examination of the role of religious inequality in shaping our highly diversified--and highly unequal--system of higher education.
Working on this project may appeal to students interested in learning comparative historical research design, qualitative coding and content analysis, archival research, quantitative data analysis, and/or database construction/management. It may also appeal to students with substantive interests in religion, higher education, early 20th century American history, race, gender, social class, and/or philanthropy. Students need not have previous experience with any of these methods or topics, and the research assistantship can be tailored to accommodate a variety of students' methodological and substantive learning goals.
Student research assistants will perform data collection and analysis tasks supporting one or more of the following sub-projects:
- Women’s Colleges: Which religious groups invested in higher education for women, and which ones didn't? Which groups prioritized women-only institutions versus co-education? What were the differences between women-serving colleges founded by different groups?
- HBCUs: Which religious groups invested in higher education for Black students, and which ones didn't? How did HBCUs founded by Black religious groups differ from those founded by White religious groups, or those founded by the State and by nonsectarian groups?
- Junior Colleges: Which religious groups founded junior colleges, and which ones didn’t? How did junior colleges founded by different religious groups differ from one another?
- College Mergers: Which religious groups merged their colleges in the early 20th century, and which ones didn’t? Did mergers contribute positively to institutions’ survival and/or resources?
- Philanthropy: Which religious and formerly religious colleges were able to benefit from Carnegie and Rockefeller philanthropy in the early 20th century, and which were not? When did these philanthropies stated preference for non-sectarianism play a role, and when was it overlooked?
Research Mentor: Tessa Huttenlocher, Assistant Instructional Professor, Sociology
Project 6: Creating New Illness Narratives in Virtual Reality [1 research appointment]: The goal of this project is to create up to three Virtual Reality (VR) environments that explore new forms of immersive, multimodal illness narrative. Unlike literature, film, or even interactive games, VR integrates sensation, perception, and spatial experience, engaging the participant’s whole sensorium as a responsive element of storytelling. This embodied and affective dimension opens new possibilities for non-linear and participatory narratives, creating space for voices and perspectives that are often marginalized in mainstream cultural forms. This makes VR a promising tool to explore new forms of illness narrative. In humanities scholarship, illness narratives have long contested dichotomies of health and illness, normality and abnormality, ability and disability. VR holds particular promise for this genre because it enables the rendering of diverse embodiments and provides new tools for reclaiming agency.
This project seeks to answer two key questions:
- How can VR be used by people living with illness and disability to better understand and communicate their own lived experience? This leads to question number 2:
- How can VR make stories of illness and disability more relatable to participants?
The ideal undergraduate researcher will have:
- Background in Computer Science, VR/AR development, or related field
- Experience with Unity or Unreal Engine
- Interest in interdisciplinary collaboration and storytelling through technology
Research Mentor: Desiree Foerster, Senior Research Associate, Cinema and Media Studies
Project 7: InPLACE at Warren Woods [up to 4 research appointments]: The Innovative Pedagogies for Learning through Art, Culture, and Ecology Lab (InPLACE), housed at UChicago’s Warren Woods Ecological Field Station, incubates high-quality, interdisciplinary, and community-aware research and teaching through place-based practices at the intersections of ecology and the environmental humanities and social sciences. This summer, InPLACE research will be focused on immersing ourselves in and expanding our understanding of the place in which we are based – the Warren Woods Ecological Field Station. CSI scholars will work with InPLACE co-PIs Emily Bretl and Jessica Landau, as well as regional experts in ecology and the environmental humanities, to gather interdisciplinary datasets that will support future interpretation and research on the Field Station and its ecoregion. This includes collecting ecological data, such as through bumblebee and native plant surveys, as well as historical research in local archives and digital databases on the property's and surrounding landscape's history. CSI Scholars will be expected to be on site at the Field Station one day a week, with potential overnight stays, and research may include visits to other area sites, such as the Morton Arboretum. Transportation costs will be covered, and lodging will be provided in the Field Station cabins for overnight stays. Scholars will receive basic training in plant and insect identification as well as data collection. Research Mentors: Jessica Landau, Assistant Instructional Professor, Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU); Emily Bretl, Managing Director, Warren Woods Ecological Field Station.
Project 8: Virtual Human Rights Library [up to 2 research appointments]: The Pozen Family Center for Human Rights seeks one or two CSI scholars to assist in assembling and curating the first major virtual human rights library in the humanities and the social sciences. Working together with Pozen Center Executive Director Kathleen Cavanaugh, the scholar[s] will be responsible for helping to shape the virtual library on human rights that has been built over the last two years. At the moment, there have been a number of PhD Fellows who have helped to populate the library but what is needed, at this stage, is to continue this research and build out the material, which includes literatures and other media from both HUM and SSD. The creation of a virtual human rights library will bring together the resources of various libraries and information services, both internal and external, to create an online resource dedicated to the study of human rights. While there are a number of online resources in the field of human rights, this curation is unique in its interdisciplinary concerns and its focus on writings/research from social sciences and the humanities as well as law. The underpinning of the project is simple. The study of human rights draws on scholarship from a number of different academic disciplines and for students and indeed the wider public. Knowing how to negotiate such a diverse and populated space can be a challenge. This project seeks to signpost critical (old and new) writings in the field of human rights so that when a student or faculty member asks: "What is a 'must-read' when dealing with human rights and [a subject such as: gender, policing, race, etc.]?" this virtual space will offer some direction. The library will provide a virtual warehouse of articles as well as links to (where available) books, pamphlets, newspapers, and historical documents as well as to other virtual libraries that are discipline-based. Research Mentor: Kathleen Cavanaugh, Senior Instructional Professor and Executive Director, Pozen Family Center for Human Rights.
Project 9: Untidy Objects [up to 2 research appointments]: Untidy Objects is a living sculpture behind the Logan Center for the Arts created in collaboration with Sara Black (Sculpture, School of the Art Institute), Amber Ginsburg (Department of Visual Arts, University of Chicago), Marc Dowie (Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago) and Dr. Samantha Frost (Professor of Political Theory and Gender and Women's Study, UIUC). Untidy Objects, which introduces emergent growth and multispecies co-mingling, is both a sculptural and political proposition. Since the advent of this multi-year installation the population of constituents has radically increased. What is left out is the capacity for humans to perceive the very real connections across species and the stakes of acknowledging a politics beyond a human body as a measure for rights. We are actively adding to the sculpture with an augmented reality co-constitution and training in embodied learning by supporting the sculpture. This project entrails working with artist Amber Ginsburg in the following areas:
Embodied Learning: Land based support of living sculpture behind Logan Center for the Arts by:
- Maintaining paths
- Weeding
- Planting
- Transplanting
- Monitoring plant health and responding as needed
- Maintaining living willow fence
- Learning from Amber and from the plants
Archival Support: Adding to the Augmented Reality within the living sculpture by:
- Geolocating photographs from the past three years
- Editing audio from 4 convenings with artist and scientists to be added to augmented reality
- Taking photogrammetry of Untidy Objects
Research Mentor: Amber Ginsburg, Lecturer, Visual Arts
Project 10: Art and Artifact in the Papers of Charles F. Nims [up to 4 research appointments]: How do tools like photography and field documentation shape archaeological knowledge? This project invites CSI students to work directly with the largely unprocessed archival papers and visual materials of Charles F. Nims (1906–1988), an Egyptologist and archaeological photographer whose methods helped shape modern approaches to documenting ancient sites. Held at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC), the Nims collection includes correspondence, field notes, photographic slides, and historic cameras, offering a unique opportunity to explore the intersections of archaeology, visual practice, and technology. Students will engage with primary archival materials alongside secondary scholarship on archaeological photography and scientific visualization. Working closely with ISAC staff, participants will contribute to three core research outcomes: (1) a detailed archival finding aid documenting Nims, the collection, and relevant literature; (2) a article on findings and arguments for public sharing on ISAC’s website and social medias; and (3) a public presentation at ISAC sharing their principal findings. Student activities include organizing and describing archival materials, compiling annotated bibliographies, analyzing historical photographs and equipment, and contributing to interpretive writing. This project supports ISAC’s broader efforts to make its archives more accessible for research, teaching, and public engagement, helping lay groundwork for future digital resources and exhibitions. An interest in archives and museums is encouraged; no prior experience with archives, Ancient Egypt, or Middle Eastern languages is required; training will be provided. Students will gain career-relevant skills in archival research, historical analysis, professional writing, and public presentation—valuable preparation for paths in museums, libraries, academia, digital humanities, and related fields. Research Mentors: Foy D. Scalf, Lecturer on Middle Eastern Studies and Director of the ISAC Data Research Center and Research Archives Library; Allie Scholten, Archivist, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures
Project 11: “Re-Staging a Japanese American Chicago” [up to 3 research appointments]: “Re-Staging a Japanese American Chicago” is a unique interdisciplinary project led by acclaimed novelist and playwright Yū Miri, who has come from Japan as a visiting research associate at UChicago this year, and Professor Michael Bourdaghs. Yū, known for her award-winning literary works and innovative documentary theater, will be conducting oral history interviews with members of Chicago’s Japanese American community. These interviews will be developed into a new verbatim theater script reflecting the community's memories, with a staged reading planned for September 2026. CSI Scholars will directly support this process by assisting with interviews, producing written transcripts, and helping organize and staff the staged reading. Special Note: Undergraduate researchers on this project should ideally be available to be on campus for the last week of September, when the rehearsals and performances of the staged reading will take place. This project offers hands-on experience in oral history, theater, and community-engaged research and may be especially appealing to students interested in local history, ethnic studies, creative writing, Japanese literature, or performance studies. Japanese language skills are helpful but not required. Research Mentor: Michael K. Bourdaghs, Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Service Professor in East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Project 12: Boundaries of Benevolence: Exploring the Limits of Compassion [up to 3 research appointments]: While one might expect that physical proximity and disparity would inspire compassion among neighbors, research suggests the opposite. The term “compassion collapse” describes how witnessing a greater number of people in need decreases compassionate response. Further decrease in compassion can occur if sufferers are perceived to be morally "bad." These effects shape neighbors' understanding of proximity and obligation. A research collaborative of humanities and medical researchers is examining "compassion fatigue" and "compassion collapse" in healthcare, humanitarian and other contexts in two case studies where significant disparities are observable between neighbors: (1) the city of Chicago and (2) Palestine/Israel. We ask: Are there ethical obligations when advantaged populations live in close geographic proximity to disadvantaged groups, sharing borders and land? If so, what are they? How have attempts to foster compassion across perceived and real divides fared in health/humanitarian contexts? Students involved in this project will assist faculty in compiling an interdisciplinary, critical bibliography on related topics; assist with the organization of two research workshops; learn about and bridge with similar projects, e.g. the UChicago Scholasticide Project, and conduct initial data collection via surveys or interviews. Research Mentors: Ania Aizman, Assistant Professor, Slavic Languages and Literatures; Baddr Shakhsheer, MD, Associate Professor of Surgery; Asim Farooq, MD, Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Science; Fan Yang, Research Associate Professor, Psychology; Anton Ford, Associate Professor, Philosophy.
Project 13: The Group Portrait and Sociality in Literature and Art around 1900 [up to 3 research appointments]: This project on group portraiture across media and disciplines explores forms of being social in primarily German-language literature, art, but also in other fields such as sociology and anthropology. It explores alternative modes of sociality that react to the thinning of the social fabric in the nineteenth century, yet are determined neither by the old models of “family” or “community” (Gemeinschaft) nor by the new ones of urban social isolation. Two particular interests are: first, the intersection of aesthetics and sociology (as exemplified in Aloïs Riegl’s The Group Portraiture of Holland [1902] or in Georg Simmel’s writings on aesthetics), and second, what one could describe as group portraiture by other means: for example, still life or landscape painting as group portraiture; literary depictions of tenement housing. Research tasks include: reconstruct the history of the group portrait in photography (especially Austria-Hungary in the period); is there such a thing as a literary group portrait? Put together a bibliography on studies of group portraiture in art; summarize key findings of some of these studies; classify the literature of the time on “the group” (in sociology / anthropology); study Egon Schiele’s house series paintings and Gustav Klimt’s Faculty Paintings and landscape paintings; summarize key points of scholarship on them. Reading knowledge in German is a plus. Research Mentor: Margareta Ingrid Christian, Associate Professor, Germanic Studies
Project 14: Narrating Mesoamerican History [up to 2 research appointments]: The Mesoamerican world was always interconnected, but the ways that we now tell the story of Indigenous Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras before the Spanish invasion is too often shaped by modern borders and assumptions about the past. It is easy to imagine ancient polities or regions as if they were modern nation-states, characterized by ethnic and linguistic homogeneity, territorial contiguity, and limitations on movement. But archaeological and artistic evidence from the ancient past, Spanish and Indigenous-language accounts in the period after contact, and the work of contemporary Indigenous scholars throughout the hemisphere call these assumptions into question. In support of a broader book project on the interconnected Mesoamerican world, students will scrutinize texts from the sixteenth through mid-twentieth centuries to see how fundamental building blocks of the way we talk about Mesoamerica came into being: the names for peoples, time periods, and the region itself. Students will build their close reading, textual analysis, data organization, and project management skills as they build a body of evidence that helps imagine alternative ways of narrating Mesoamerican history. Depending on the project’s progress, students may also work with visual materials and/or contemporary theoretical sources. Reading knowledge of Spanish strongly preferred. Research mentor: Claudia Brittenham, Mary R. Morton Professor, Departments of Art History and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity