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Beyond the Classroom: Opportunities & Resources

American Studies VPUE Summer Research Internships

The 2025 American Studies Summer Research internships give you the opportunity to develop your own research interests and skills, as well as a broader understanding of the various kinds of research scholars in American Studies do—and the various ways they do such research—as you apprentice with an American Studies-affiliated faculty member on tasks related to the faculty member’s current research interests or projects.  The internship also includes time for you to develop your own research projects with the faculty member’s mentorship.

Expectations

Over the 10-week summer quarter, the student intern will spend approximately 25-30 hours per week apprenticing on research tasks related to the faculty member’s research topic or area, and another 10 hours per week pursuing the student’s own related academic interests or projects with the faculty member’s guidance. Faculty mentors are expected to meet frequently with their research interns over the summer and guide them in the research and tasks they will undertake.

Funding

Full-time Research Interns will receive a stipend of $8,000 for the Summer.  An additional $1,500 need-based supplement is available for qualified students

Application

To apply for one of these American Studies Summer Research Internships for Summer 2025, please fill out the form here by 11:59pm on Thursday, February 20, 2025.

The form will ask you to:

  1. Identify which faculty you would be most interested in interning with (you may indicate up to 3).
  2. Write a short statement about your interest in the faculty member’s research project and how it would align with your own interests, experience, and learning goals.
  3. List the name, position, and email of a reference (typically a faculty member) who could speak to your aptitude for a research internship. 
  4. Upload a c.v. or resume

We will share materials with matching faculty, who may follow up with interviews.  We hope to complete the matching process before the end of Winter quarter.

If you have any questions, please contact American Studies Assistant Director of Student Services, Winni Ni (winnini [at] stanford.edu (winnini[at]stanford[dot]edu)).

Jennifer Brody, TAPS (Topic/project: Afro-Indigenous sculptor Edmonia Lewis, 1844-1907)

Faculty Lead/Mentor: Jennifer Brody, TAPS

Project Description and Tasks:  I would like help putting together the final edits on my book and exhibit both of which are about the art of Afro-Indigenous sculptor, Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907). Lewis was an abolitionist among the most renowned American artists of her era. She ran a studio in Rome where President Grant, Frederick Douglass, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and many more visited her. She came to the Bay area--to San Francisco and San Jose in the 1870s. She never married and died in London. Her neoclassical sculptures are exquisite and won awards throughout the world. This is a terrific project for anyone who wants to learn more about this period in African, Indigenous and American Studies, sculpture, curation, book editing, expatriatism, feminism, and queer studies.

Student Learning Outcomes:

Students have the opportunity to learn about how to curate an exhibition, research historical figures in the Afro-Indigenous-Atlantic and how to prepare illustrations for book publication.

Location conditions: The majority of the work can be remote; however, on campus or local research could be helpful as well.

Richard Meyer, Art History (Topic/project: Andy Warhol)

Faculty Lead/Mentor: Richard Meyer, Art History

Project Description and Tasks:  The Research Intern will engage in visual and textual research for my new book project, Andy Warhol’s Guide to Everyday Life. The book demonstrates how Warhol’s unique sensibility and off-kilter perspective (on art, sex, wealth, celebrity, and shopping, among other things) provide an alternative way to think about everyday life. The everyday life at issue is both Warhol’s and our own. The Intern will do intensive work with Warhol’s published diaries and with the archive of 3600 photographic contact sheets now held by Stanford. The Intern will work closely with me as the manuscript develops and will do additional research on Warhol’s books, magazines, and interviews. Light e-mail correspondence will also be involved.

Student Learning Outcomes: This position will help the student develop deep research skills with both published and unpublished materials as well as with visual images that have never been reproduced or seen by the public. The student will participate in a project that experiments with language and visual lay-out and departs from traditional academic styles and constraints.  I look forward to mentoring the research intern in terms of their own current research and intellectual interests.

Location conditions: This research can be conducted remotely from any location.

Allyson Hobbs, History (Topic/project: Black women, trauma, and resilience)

Faculty Lead/Mentor: Allyson Hobbs, History

Project Description and Tasks:  I am working on a book on Black women, trauma, and resilience. I am seeking out historical sources and I plan to use creative and rigorous historical methods to recover Black women’s experiences with traumatic events, which often have been overlooked or placed on the periphery of American life. I am interested in how Black women have experienced, remembered, and recovered from trauma. I would like the student intern to help me to find historical texts, works in psychology, legal records, medical literature, diaries, novels, poetry, plays, songs, and films that address how Black women recorded, passed down, and inherited stories about traumatic events.

Student Learning Outcomes: This research internship will expose the student to a variety of research methodologies and give them expertise in Black women's history, Black feminism, and Black women's literature. I am very interested in exploring how Black women relied on the performing, visual, and literary arts to speak the unspeakable and to heal, recover, and resist.

Location conditions: This research can be conducted remotely from any location.

Gavin Wright, Economics (Topic/project: Economic History and historians since the 1960s)

Faculty Lead/Mentor: Gavin Wright (Economics)

Project Description and Tasks:  The journal Capitalism has asked me to write a memoir about the relationship between Economic History and historians since the 1960s. The project would involve help with tracking historiographical trends over this period.

Student Learning Outcomes: The student would gain familiarity with literature searches, and with surveying articles for content, in more than one discipline.

Location conditions: The main work can be done remotely, but some time on campus would be desirable, if possible. (Not everything is readily available online.)

 

Estelle Freedman, History (Topic/project: Singing for Justice: documentary film about folk musician Faith Petric, 1915-2013)

Faculty Lead/Mentor: Estelle Freedman (History)

Project Description and Tasks:  SINGING FOR JUSTICE is a documentary film about folk musician Faith Petric (1915-2013), who was active in social justice movements in the Bay Area and nationally. The film weaves her musical history within the contexts of labor, civil rights, peace, and women’s movements since the 1930s and features her unique approaches to gender and aging. The project is a collaboration between Professor of History (Emerit) Estelle Freedman and documentary filmmaker Christie Herring. It premiered in Fall 2024 and will be broadcast in 2025. (To view a trailer see https://SingingForJustice.com.) We seek a post-production intern to assist with the design and implementation of the educational webpage and with posting to social media.

We are looking for a highly responsible student who is interested in women’s history, social movements, and/or documentary film with strong communication and writing skills, experience with webpage design and management and social media writing and posting, proficiency in Google Suite, and attention to detail, accuracy, and organization.

Student Learning Outcomes: The intern will learn a great deal about women in music, social movements in modern America, folk music and social change, and documentary film making.

Location conditions: This research can be conducted remotely from any location.

Laura Jones, University Archeologist (Topic/project: Stanford/Bay Area Asian American flower growers)

Faculty Lead/Mentor: Laura Jones, Director of Heritage Services and University Archeologist

Project Description and Tasks:  We are conducting research and developing interpretive materials regarding Asian American flower growing on Stanford property and in the San Francisco Bay Area, in partnership with local community organizations.  This aspect of agricultural history has not been well-documented and is an important element of the Asian immigrant experience in our region.  Our project uses a variety of methodologies to reveal the patterns and extent of flower farming -- archival records, family and community histories, and interviews.  We are collaborating on an Arc Story Map and map making and GIS are also important tools for the project.  Students can choose to do a focused project exploring a geographic area (e.g., the Flower Market in San Francisco, flower growing in San Carlos...), document one of the farms in more detail (through archival materials and interviews), or design and develop a community workshop to collect and map data from archival sources.  Students may also develop their own focus, as long as it relates to the larger topic of flower growing and the Asian American experience in the SF Bay Area.

Student Learning Outcomes: The project engages a variety of skills in historiography -- locating, reviewing and summarizing primary archival sources (census records, maps, aerial photos, newspapers, directories), conducting interviews with experts, story-telling, GIS, and community engagement.  It connects to important themes in American history -- immigration, agriculture, and the cultural practices associated with the display of flowers.  And it provides a rich understanding of the history and geography of our region.

Location conditions: Ideally the research intern would be available to conduct research at Stanford, though some of the work can be completed remotely.

 

Other Internships

Summer, Arts, Global and Government Internships

AMSTUD Research Internships at Stanford

The Program in American Studies, with generous sponsorship from VPUE, offers paid internships, typically during summer quarters, in which students work with various American Studies faculty on their research.   A full-time internship runs for 10 weeks, during which the student works 25-30 hours per week on research projects being pursued by the faculty member and an additional 5-10 hours per week pursuing personal research and education goals and opportunities, such as taking classes or engaging in research for an honors project.  Faculty mentors are expected to meet frequently with their research assistants and guide them in the research they will undertake.  An email soliciting applications will go out early in winter quarter.

Please contact the Assistant Director of Student Services for the most up-to-date information.

Interested in the Arts?  Check out the resources below!

Stanford in Government Fellowships

SIG offers dozens of fully-funded public service internships every summer in a range of organizations around the world. Undergraduates from all majors and years are encouraged to apply, as the fellowship placements include public service opportunities through a variety of disciplines.  For more information, see the SIG website.

Stanford Global Studies Summer Internships

Stanford Global Studies internships are open to students from all majors.  Please see the SGS website for more information.

Public Service Internships and Fellowships

A number of public service internships and fellowships are available through the Haas Center.

 


Grants & Funding

Funding Opportunities from American Studies and others

Funding from American Studies 

As a small program, American Studies has limited funds to offer students.  These are primarily earmarked for AMSTUD majors completing an honor thesis with the program. To apply for funding to support an honors project, please send an email to the Assistant Director of Student Services detailing your needs, the costs, and the purpose.

Other Sources of Funding on Campus


BEAM, Stanford Career Education

 

BEAM site