Please carefully review each of the project descriptions below. Following your review, please indicate in your CSI application your two (2) top-choice projects, indicating in your essay how you are prepared to contribute to these projects as an undergraduate researcher and why they are of interest to you academically. If you have a third preference, you may indicate that as well. 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.
ALL PROJECTS ARE CURRENTLY CLOSED TO NEW APPLICATIONS.
Project #4: The Afterlives of Skulls: How Race Science Became a Data Science: This research opportunity will help me finalize the research for my book project titled The Afterlives of Skulls: How Race Science Became a Data Science. In the book, I show how measuring skulls for the purpose of studying race, far from being an outdated scientific practice, in fact remained at the forefront of science and technology in the twentieth century. Drawing on archival research and oral histories conducted in the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, and the United States, the book uncovers a turn to quantification in the study of race across three interdependent stages: measurements (1880), statistics (1900), and computerization (1950). By tracing a shift in producing racial classifications from the anthropologist’s hands and eyes to seemingly disembodied technologies, I show how race, both as an object of study and category of analysis laid the foundation for disciplines now regarded as “objective,” including statistics and data-driven technologies like biometrics. For example, I explore how biometricians transformed skull collections and body measurements from the Global South into databases that propelled the development of the Mahalanobis distance formula, now used in machine learning and pattern recognition. The book contributes to a growing body of historical scholarship that shows how the racialization of human bodies lies at the foundation of modern science as a whole. The project uses historical methodologies, in particular methods that are common in the history of science, medicine, and technology, such as such as reconstructing scientific practices and studying their relationship with scientific theories of the body. At this stage, I aim to broaden the research by examining discussions of race, biometry, and skulls in historical newspapers and other primary sources, while also engaging with relevant secondary literature. I am looking to collaborate with an undergraduate researcher who has experience conducting independent historical research using both primary and secondary sources. With my guidance, they will delve into archives to uncover and analyze materials pertinent to the project. Research Mentor: Iris Clever, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Rank of Instructor, Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science.
Project #5: Art and Activism: The Barbara Morgan Archives [up to 6 research appointments]: Poet, artist, historian, and activist Barbara Morgan (1941-2021), received her Masters from the University of Chicago in 1965, and remained in the city for a decade, becoming closely involved with the second wave feminist movement through the Women’s Radical Action Project and the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union. She was a founding member of the Chicago Women’s Graphic Collective, and later of Red Pepper Posters, in San Francisco. Morgan was a prolific letter writer, and documented her life in journals dating from 1963 to 2011, which provide vivid details about her political activism. “I can never decide whether I love words or pictures more”, Morgan wrote. Morgan’s estate has donated to the Regenstein Library 6 boxes of archival material, and c. 4 dozen posters from the two graphics collectives with which she was involved. CSI undergraduate research scholars working on the Art and Activism project will begin the work of cataloguing these new materials with the objectives of making them available for research and teaching, creating a mini-exhibition to be housed in the community room of CSGS from October-December 2025, and beginning a proposal for a full-scale Library exhibition. Curatorial researchers will learn the best practices of developing an exhibition interpretation strategy and will be mentored in safely handling art. Non-curatorial researchers will uncover and share the histories of posters selected for the exhibition from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and will make these stories accessible to the public through written exhibition labels as well as a virtual exhibit. Archival researchers will begin to survey, describe, and organize Morgan’s letters and journals, creating catalog descriptions that will make the Morgan collection accessible and useable for other scholars and teachers. Up to six fellowship positions are available. We seek undergraduates interested in 20th century US feminist and labor history, the graphic arts, and archives. Specialized interest in social practice art, feminist and women’s history, the Southside of Chicago, identity, and community building through the arts are a plus. Project Coordinator: Natalia Niedmann Álvarez, PhD student, Department of History. Research Mentors: Meg Jackson Fox, Director, Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry and Head of Education, Smart Museum of Art; Kathleen Feeney, University Archivist; Daisy Delogu, Howard L. Willett Professor of French Literature and Faculty Director, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. Apply now.
Project #8: The Craft Chronicle [up to 3 research appointments]: The Craft Chronicle, an interactive digital humanities project produced in collaboration with the Forum for Digital Culture, seeks to 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 to apprehend the nature of these relationships and the dynamic networks of people and ideas that shaped (and continue to shape) art and design. The work on this project will require research at the Regenstein Library and in the Special Collections. Research findings will then be gathered in the OCHRE (Online Cultural and Historical Research Environment) relational database at the Forum. All of the research will be cited using Zotero (these notations import into OCHRE) and the artist biographies and institutional profiles will have bylines to credit student contributions. The public launch of the database as a website is tentatively scheduled for 2026. Research Mentor: Erica Warren, Assistant Instructional Professor, M.A. Program in the Humanities & Department of Art History.
Project #10: Learning Language from Everyday Talk [up to 3 research appointments]: In the first few years of life, children go from knowing almost nothing about the language of their community to being able to speak in full sentences about abstract concepts. How is this achieved? Such young children do *not* glean this information from schools, textbooks, or formal tutoring. Rather, they infer it via everyday interactions with others. This CSI project seeks to shed new light on how children pick up language in the context of, and for application in, everyday interaction. We seek up to three CSI Scholars who would like to participate in a team research project on children's exposure to peer- and adult-conversations in the home. The broader project includes multiple sub-studies on children acquiring English, Mandarin, Korean, Tseltal, and other languages. Depending on the match between student interests/training and available tasks, a research assistant's role will include some combination of transcription, data annotation, and in-lab experiments with infants. All mentees in the lab receive excellent daily supervision from the lab manager and senior project members, in addition to regular contact with the lab's primary investigator (Dr. Marisa Casillas). Research assistants are also expected to participate in weekly lab meetings and to conduct a small literature review on each sub-study to which they contribute. Research Mentor: Marisa Casillas, Assistant Professor, Comparative Human Development. Apply now.
Project #11: Oak Woods Cemetery: A South Side Historical Archive [multiple research appointments]: Oak Woods Cemetery, located in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago about one mile directly to the south of the University of Chicago campus, was founded in 1854 and remains active to this day. A fascinating document or archive of the history of the South Side of Chicago, this cemetery is the final place of rest of local and nationally known African American figures (such as Ida B. Wells, Jesse Owens, Roebuck “Pop” Staples, and Harold Washington), as well as important figures in the history of the University of Chicago (such as William Rainey Harper, Enrico Fermi, and Mircea Eliade). The cemetery has several different Jewish sections, that reflect the evolution of Jewish communities on the South Side, one of which houses a small Holocaust memorial. The cemetery is home to a mass grave and a monument to the thousands of Confederate soldiers who died at Camp Douglas and were reburied in the cemetery after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Concurrently, hundreds – if not thousands – of Black Civil War veterans are buried in Oak Woods. Students participating in this project will contribute to an ongoing collaborative project that aims to study the cemetery and make knowledge about it available to the broader public. Participants may contribute to the ongoing documentation of the cemetery on the Hyde Park Historical Society website, engage with the cemetery through creative projects (involving creative writing, photography, podcasts etc.), or contribute to CPS-targeted programing about the cemetery. Research Mentor: Na'ama Rokem, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature & Middle Eastern Studies; Chair, Department of Comparative Literature. Apply now.
PROJECTS NOT ACCEPTING FURTHER APPLICATIONS:
Project #1: Collecting Disappearing Wildlife: Carl Akeley, Rinderpest, and the Field Museum Hyena Diorama [up to 2 research appointments]: In 2015, the Field Museum installed a new habitat diorama featuring four hyenas taxidermied by Carl Akeley in 1899. Akeley, a pioneer of 19th century taxidermy technique, collected the hyenas while on an expedition for the Field which sought to collect specimens of Somali Wild Asses, a species on the brink of extinction due to the Rinderpest virus, recently introduced by the movement of European cattle to the African continent. The 21st century diorama does little to interpret this complex history and adds a new element through the memorialization of one of the Field's research scientists painted into the background who died in the field while the diorama was being constructed. Interestingly, a memorial to Akeley, a painting of his gravesite, is depicted in the background the gorilla diorama at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Research into these dioramas will investigate the linkages between 19th and 21st century diorama techniques and between settler colonialism and viral transmission among ungulates, as well as interpret the diorama’s politics of display. Research will primarily be conducted using primary sources in the Field Museum archives, using secondary sources from the University library, as well as digital archives from AMNH. Tasks will include researching the historical spread of Rinderpest, reading Akeley’s expedition journals, and possibly conducting interviews with current Field Museum staff. Previous experience with archival research or historical projects is beneficial but not required. Research Mentor: Jessica Landau, Assistant Instructional Professor, Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization.
Project #2: Postwar Artists' Books [up to 2 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, showcasing recent gifts by artists (such as Arturo Herrera and Jessica Stockholder) and collectors (for example Annie Rorimer), complemented by loans from private collections. The exhibition will be curated by students under the guidance of Prof. Christine Mehring and library staff. To that end, Mehring will teach an undergraduate and graduate seminar on postwar artists’ books in fall 2026 in SCRC, and work with a team of research assistants and interns to research our holdings, develop an exhibition checklist, determine section themes and groupings, write labels, and present gallery talks. 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 #3: The Political Novel Today: Problems and Possibilities [up to 3 research appointments]: Identify recent political novels from Germany and the United States; read and classify these novels according to plot, character, narrator, and political orientation; summarize statistical data on book sales and the reading habits of Germans and Americans; identify discussions of political novels in newspapers and popular journals. Research Mentor: Sophie Salvo, Assistant Professor of Germanic Studies.
Project #6: Historic Preservation Mapping [up to 2 research appointments]: This project involves supporting the research and pedagogical needs of historic preservation in the Chicago region. We are in the midst of creating an online, map-based repository or clearinghouse of survey work that preservationists can tap to support preservation efforts. We seek undergraduate researchers with interest in historic preservation, mapping, and website organization. The students will also help prepare a set of how-to materials that explain how a website can be used as an analytical and collaborative tool for the production and sharing of new scholarship on historic preservation. The students will be involved in preparing instructional support materials, and facilitating the upload of student projects as markdown files to the site. The position requires general facility with computers and file organization. Experience with github is a plus. Research Mentor: Emily Talen, Professor in the Division of Social Sciences.
Project #7: Media Revolutions Then & Now [up to 4 research appointments]: “Media Revolutions Then and Now” is the title of an exhibition at Regenstein’s Special Collection Research Center, running in winter quarter 2025. It explores how the Protestant Reformation and innovations in printing technology coincided to catalyze a sweeping revolution that paved the way for media culture as we know it today. Central to the exhibition is the notion of the Reformation as the first modern media event, showcasing how this interplay of theology and technology laid the foundation for our modern media landscape. Organized thematically around topics such as news and fake news, memes and propaganda, censorship, hate speech, apocalypticism and conspiracy theories, the printed page and modern reading, among others, the exhibition holds up a mirror to our contemporary media landscape, illuminating what the early modern reformation of media can teach us about today’s media culture and hint at what it might look like in the future. The cohort of 2–4 CSI Research Scholars will work as a team with the exhibition’s faculty co-curators in designing, developing, and organizing the exhibition. They will be thought partners in articulating key themes; identifying items in Special Collections, the Newberry Library, and other local collections; conducting research on exhibition items, relevant historical events and figures, authors, and artists; writing exhibition labels; and developing interpretive and promotional materials. Research scholars will also have the opportunity to develop their own public-facing research project to be featured on the exhibition’s website. Research Mentors: Tamara Golan, Assistant Professor of Art History; Christopher J. Wild, Peter B. Ritzma Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies and the College.
Project #9: Environmental Futures Through Critical Game Design [up to 3 research appointments]: The DeGDP (Degrowth as a Game Design Problem) working group is a multi-campus, interdisciplinary research-creation project. Given that it might be impossible to address the problem of climate change without putting an end to the goal of limitless economic growth, DeGDP is working to re-imagine the future using the language of game design. Games are a form of popular media that have a special relationship to growth and accumulation (points going up, scoring the most, finishing first), so reimagining the media form of the video game is a good way to address the philosophical, social and environmental questions of degrowth. This summer, students will assist with the creation of a critical mod, or modification, of the popular agricultural life-sim videogame Stardew Valley. Our rewrite of the game—"Stardew Valley: Big Ag”—overhauls the storyline and mechanics of the original game to critically examine the logics and aesthetics of growth that are present within its original form, and to imagine playable alternatives that might allow players to experiment with degrowth practices. As part of the DeGDP team, students would assist with narrative design and game development, including rewriting dialogue and creating new scenes for our revised game narrative. They may also contribute to the redesign of game mechanics and systems using C#, or creating and altering game art and maps. Through the research practice of critical making, students will learn to understand the environmental and social problematics of degrowth in a new way, not just as an abstract paradigm but as a set of practical design problems. Applicants with experience in narrative design, digital art, game development and programming are particularly encouraged to apply, although these skills are not required. Familiarity with Stardew Valley is also a plus :). Research Mentor: Katherine Buse, Assistant Professor, Cinema and Media Studies & CEGU.