Short-term Summer Research Position Available for a Mason PhD student in the Humanities

Short-term Summer Research Position Available for a Mason PhD student in the Humanities (PDF with instructions)

 

Mason’s Center for Humanities Research has one available research position for a Mason doctoral student in the humanities for summer 2022. The wage is $1,500-$2,000 (total TBD, dependent on final schedule). The position requires 15-20 hours/week for 8-10 weeks between the period of June 13 and August 15, 2020. Work will be done on site at Mason’s Fairfax campus and/or in the surrounding counties (Fairfax and Arlington). Some may be done virtually. 

 

This researcher will join a small team working on a public humanities project entitled “Alienation and Belonging: Shifting Cultural Landscapes in Northern Virginia.” Primary duties will include research into local immigration patterns and experiences, oral history collection (including recording, editing, and transcription), and other humanities-related analysis TBD (ex. creating an interpretive plan and/or exhibition development). 

 

The external partners for this team are Tenants and Workers United, Alexandria and the Office of Historic Alexandria. 

 

Application Instructions: 

Please send (as a single PDF document) a CV and brief cover letter detailing relevant experience(previous training in oral history, community engagement, research in the areas of local identity or immigrant experience, interest in working with the listed partners)to chr@gmu.edu by 5 pm on Wednesday, June 8, 2022. 

 

Finalists will be contacted within a week of application and all applicants will be notified of the outcome of this search. 

 

More about the Project: 

Northern Virgina can feel like a place without history, an anyplace of generic suburban homes, corporate high-rises, and strip malls. Indeed, many who live here are unaware of the histories of violence, dispossession, and transplantation that shape the present. The very designation “Northern Virginia” works to distinguish the region from the rest of the state, erasing its connection to the US South and to America’s troubled racial past. At the same time, the region has long been the destination of migrants and migrant communities. And yet the stories of these communities—communities that play a critical role in every aspect of life in the region—have not found their way into the image of, or narrative about, contemporary Northern Virginia. How might we work to build a more complex and inclusive picture of the region? 

 

First and foremost, this project aims to use community voices, many of which have been excluded from the story Northern Virginia tells about itself, to re-narrate the story of this complex region. Through oral histories and community-based archival research, carried out collaboratively with community partners, this project will weave together a new narrative about Northern Virgina, one that includes the many voices of those who live here, and who have faced—in different ways, and at different moments—experiences of both alienation and belonging.