N E W S L E T T E R

N E W S L E T T E R The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities April/May 2002 Learning by Doing As announced in the February Newsletter, the Townsend Center will provide again in 2002, under the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP), small grants to faculty who will mentor an undergraduate research apprentice over the summer. The Townsend Center asked three faculty members who held the grant last summer to recount their experiences with their apprentice researchers. Their comments appear below. Darcy Grigsby (History of Art), who has served as a Faculty Mentor regularly since 1996, describes how her undergraduate researchers work both individually and as a team, contributing substantively to her research project: Between 1996 and 1998, I sponsored four different undergraduate students who researched topics of their choice relevant to my first book, Extremities: PaintingEmpire in Post-Revolutionary France (Yale University Press, 2002). After discussion with me, each student selected, according to her or his interests, a particular research area, which was pivotal to my book. For example, some students researched slavery in Saint-Domingue; others, the reputation of Abbé Raynal; still another, the harem as a space of fantasy in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century France. After familiarizing themselves with my research, the students compiled a bibliography of primary and secondary texts and an archive of visual images. Each student had a key to my office, a proxy library card, access to my xerox card, a filing cabinet drawer and a shelf in my office. I consider these young people to have been my collaborators in the preliminary stages of research for my book. We met periodically during the semester to discuss progress; we also communicated by notes left on their shelves. Since I have had undergraduate and graduate students working with me on a variety of problems, my office has been a busy and communal space. I have also attempted to expose undergraduate students to scholarship and art beyond the confines of the campus. I took one Undergraduate Research Apprentice (who was in my Art and Colonialism class) to a Middle East Studies Association Conference in San Francisco where I gave a presentation. Twice my apprentices have received URAP summer stipends enabling them to continue research during the summer. One recipient of the summer stipend traveled with me to Paris and conducted further research there after I introduced her to libraries and museums. Another helped me during the concluding stages of my book production by communicating with French museum administrators and private collectors with the aim of locating artworks and acquiring photographs. This student also 1 helped me compile a bibliography and list Renate Holub, who directs the program in of sources for the seminar “Monuments Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Studies and Ruins,” which I taught in Fall 2001. (where she also teaches), explains how apprentice researchers played an important role Since 1999, four other research apprentices in her research on Multicultural Europe: have conducted research on problems pertinent to my second book, Colossal Last summer, Wendy Vogt, a History Monument, Colossal Engineering, Colossal major, was my apprentice, but Defne Ezgi, Empire (a project that includes the Suez and Marina McNee, and Jeff Jordan also Panama Canals, the Statue of Liberty, and worked with me (all four were readers for the Eiffel Tower). Last semester, for my class on Multicultural Europe, which example, a comparative literature major enrolled 160 students and was cross-listed researched the role of the machine and with Geography, History, International industrial references in late nineteenth- and Area Studies, and Interdisciplinary century French poetry; an art history Studies). My research also pertains to student researched the representation of Multicultural Europe, examining the sculpture studios and manufacture in late transformations taking place in Europe nineteenth-century France; another student due to the formation of the European compiled a bibliography on the Union on the one hand, and migration photography of labor during the same flows into Europe on the other. Since period. (The latter student is now enrolled migrants into Europe originate both in the Contents in an independent study course with me East and the South, migration from the and is writing a paper on a related topic.) Learning by Doing South in fact means migration from 1 Muslim-majority countries. Constants and Wholes 4 Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Last summer, when I was studying Fellow, 2002-2004 6 primarily cultural aspects of the fact of Working Group Application migration in Europe, I was interested in Guidelines 7 cultural productions of immigrants, their Working Groups Activities descendents, and immigrant communities. 8 Ms. Vogt collected materials on immigrant Calendar 13 literature in Europe, systematically Events researching novels by immigrants and 20 immigrant descendents in France, Britain, Announcements 35 Germany, Italy, Spain, and other European countries. Thanks to her outstanding 2 performance as a research apprentice, I exercise her abilities in archival research. Wilhelm’s correpsondence with Savigny, was able to read most of the novels during he never mentioned how he and his the summer and then to select some of The project on which I am currently brother worked together, then that was a them for use in my course on Multicultural working involves collaborative authorship great help for me. When she found in the Europe. Currently, as I seek to complete a of literary works during the formative correspondence actual mention of project on the multicultural debates in both period of modern German culture, the collaborative method, her notes allowed Europe and North America, I am early nineteenth century. Prominent my own research to be more focused. incorporating in the European section an among the collaborative pairs I am Similarly, in regard to the critical material, analysis of the literature by immigrants in researching are the Grimm brothers. Since there are thousands of books and articles Europe, and Ms. Vogt’s good work proves the apprentice had taken a course (not from on the Grimm brothers, but very few of valuable once again. me) on the German fairy tale, and since I them approach the tales as collaborative had ample evidence in my classes of her products; the research assistant was able This summer, I will continue with the ability to read and interpret literary texts, to shorten the list considerably for me and cultural aspect of migration into Europe I was confident that she could do the to direct me to the critics who were most and hope to collect movies and research I needed. appropriate for my own specific interests. information on immigrant art. I would be very interested in working again with a Essentially, my research apprentice did two The Grimms are only one of a half-dozen URAP apprentice. things: she read through the Grimms’ collaborative pairs I am using in voluminous correspondence (both this study of the German national literary between themselves and with other canon, but they are unusual because of the In this statement, Kenneth Weisinger, a faculty correspondents), looking for explicit enormous amount of material written member in Comparative Literature and in statements about their collaborative about them. Tieck and Wackenroder, German, describes how his research apprentice method of work; and she read through the Brentano and von Arnim, even Goethe and explored archival resources in search of material many literary interpretations of the Schiller (as collaborators) have nothing like related to the fairy tales of the Grimm brothers. Grimms’ work, again paying particular the mountain of criticism and attention to those instances where interpretation written on them that the The URAP program allowed me to employ collaborative production was singled out Grimms have elicited. Having a helper for the summer of 2001 an undergraduate for discussion. who was familiar with my project and who had taken two courses from me and whose skills (linguistic and literary) were whose interests were closely related to my The apprentice’s work was very valuable a match for the task, was a great help. And own. The award was especially to me, both for what she found and for I think the experience played a role in appreciated in this case because the what her research allowed me to eliminate directing the apprentice’s interest in the student had been accepted for graduate from my own archival research. What I discipline as a professional vocation. study in my department for the following am looking for is in short supply, but when year, and the experience as research it appears, it is significant. If the apprentice assistant gave her the opportunity to could tell me, for example, that in 3 Constants beginning of the process that, in a sense, and Wholes ends with communication and “It is now commonplace to observe just dissemination. But if fellowship selection how fractured the world of scholarship has committees may be thought of as the become.” Thus begins “Op. Cit,” a recent midwives of research, the “birth,” article in the newsletter, Policy Perspectives development, and ultimate movement of (produced by the Knight Higher Education that research into the world are, after all, Collaborative at the University of seamless processes, all part of a whole. The Pennsylvania and available on line at question of how the work gets done is at www.irhe.upenn.edu/pubs). But if the some level inseparable from that of how it center does not always hold—the authors will be disseminated and to whom. And of “Op. Cit.” are particularly concerned neither is separate from the researcher’s with the debates over the formats, whether own question: “Why am I doing this print or digital, through which humanities project?” We are always dealing with a scholars communicate their findings— writer (or writers) and an audience (or some things remain relatively constant.

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