By Jentery Sayers, Center for Experiential Learning
The Summer Institute in the Arts & Humanities is an annual event sponsored by Undergraduate Academic Affairs, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Office of Research, Summer Quarter, the Undergraduate Research Program, and the Mary Gates Endowment for Students. Incoming transfer students are welcome to apply.
This year's Institute runs June 22nd – August 21st, and examines the concept of empire through diverse (inter)disciplinary perspectives. Under the guidance of four faculty, students will probe the multiple struggles and negotiations that continue to shape the organization of the U.S. empire within the Americas and beyond. Focusing on the Philippines and Caribbean islands as key sites where the Empire's material and ideological boundaries were drawn, contested, and reconfigured, it reexamines relations among three regions (Asia, the Caribbean, and the U.S.) that scholars have perceived as radically distinct. Institute students will explore the interrelations among these three regions through multidisciplinary research methodologies (e.g., textual, ethnographic, performance-based) and archives (e.g. state policies, legal challenges, literary works, media texts, oral interviews). Students will interrogate existing definitions of "empire," uncover the circulation of commodities, peoples, practices, and ideas across imperial fields and diasporic communities, and open new areas of inquiry that they will pursue in individual and collaborative research projects of their own design. In the process they will gain skill in self-reflectively conceptualizing and producing crossdisciplinary research, with race, gender, and sexuality as important touchstones for this process.
The Summer Institute in the Arts & Humanities selects and supports twenty undergraduates to engage in intensive research projects under the guidance of four interdisciplinary instructors. Selected students receive a Mary Gates Scholarship of $3000 and earn 12 academic credits for this full-time research experience.
Students with curiosity about race, place, community and political formations, and cultural practices are encouraged to apply. No prior studies in this field are required.
Application Due: Friday, March 13th
Application: www.washington.edu/research/urp/sinst
