Undergraduate Research Opportunities

Undergraduate Research Opportunities 

Through our Undergraduate Research Assistant program, the Program in Jewish Studies provides University of Colorado Boulder undergraduate students with opportunities to collaborate with faculty on cutting-edge research projects by asking new questions, producing new knowledge, and sharing their findings with diverse audiences.

Spring 2025 Research Assistant Projects

Applications are now open for the Spring 2025 semester. Students will have the opportunity to work one-on-one with a faculty member on one of the following projects, receiving a salary of up to $600 and presenting their work at a research showcase in April 2025.

Please send a one-page letter describing your interest in one of the three projects below, as well as any relevant background, to cujewishstudies@colorado.edu by December 6, 2024, at 5pm MT. All undergraduate students from the University of Colorado Boulder, from all backgrounds and majors, are eligible to participate in the program.
 

  • Are you interested in Middle Eastern history? Or the politics behind standardized testing? Do you want to work with histories and archival documents from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and/or the United Kingdom? Do you want to know more about how education works in a different time and place? Or why standardized testing became important globally? As an undergraduate research assistant, you will work with Dr. Hilary Falb Kalisman, Assistant Professor of History and Endowed Professor of Israel/Palestine Studies, on research related to education, teachers and standardized testing in the Middle East. We will read through documents, writing summaries and reports. Knowledge of English is sufficient, but basic reading knowledge of Arabic or Hebrew would be great.
     
  • Are you interested in learning about Jews of color? Over the past 10 to 15 years, the American Jewish community—at least its liberal manifestations—has tried to come to terms with Jews of color. This has meant trying both to be more open and aware of the customs and cultures that Jews of color have, and also trying to decrease racism in predominantly white Jewish communities. One of the places that we can see real attempts to normalize the presence of Jews of color is in the publications of PJ Library. PJ Library is a publishing endeavor to bring Jewish children’s books into Jewish homes, with the hope of creating strong attachments between the children and their Jewish identities—and over the past decade, PJ Library has intentionally made its books more diverse. In this research assistantship, the student research assistant will work with Professor Mehta to read through all of the PJ Library books available, looking both for stories featuring Jews of color and for mentions, or even pictural depictions of Jews of color. Together, we will form an argument about what we find, that the student can present at the Student Research Showcase and that Professor Mehta can use in her book project A Mixed Multitude: Jews of Color in the United States.
 

These projects have been made possible by the generous support of donors to the Program in Jewish Studies.

 

Spring 2025 Research Assistant Projects

Skyler McCabe

Jews of Color In Contemporary Jewish Children's Books

This research is a result of the desire to see what representation of Jews of color is present in Jewish children’s books. Skyler's activities involved reading over 30 books donated by PJ Library and cataloging them along with an analysis of what representation was present in each book. After this process, conclusions were drawn on what themes were most prevalent in the books, along with a categorization of how well the books were representing Jews of color.

Skyler McCabe

Spring 2024 Research Assistant Project

Hannah Zaritsky

Trial Data from the Portuguese Inquisition of Coimbra

This research project comes from a desire to recover the often neglected experiences of marginalized Iberian women who faced persecution in the 16th century. The research assistant organized and analyzed 200 Portuguese Inquisition trial records from Torre do Tombo’s online database. The goal with collecting and organizing this data is to be able to see larger trends or patterns within the trial records, and ultimately collect meaningful data that can be used in a book that Dr. Wartell is writing.

Hannah Zaritsky

Spring 2023 Research Assistant Projects

Cooper Etters

Timing in Klezmer Performance

This presentation goes over timing elements in found in Klezmer music, as well as a brief performance of a traditional Klezmer tune, Gas Nign. This research has been focused on three separate performances of the same tune as a way to compare similar elements in performance style, rhythmic patterns, and timing elements within Klezmer.
Cooper Etters

Bryn Norrie

Catholic Attitudes Toward Birth Control in the mid-20th Century

This project with Dr. Samira Mehta seeks to understand the religious conversations and debates happening during the mid-20th century over birth control. Throughout the semester, I read hundreds of news clippings from the Religious News Service that mentioned birth control and coded them according to which religious community (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or Other) was discussing birth control and then again for how the article was talking about birth control. This focus on religious conversations of birth control while the birth control pill was becoming widely available to American women has given us a better understanding of how religious communities were debating the issue and the implications those debates had for religious women. In particular, this research project focused on Catholics' attitudes toward birth control. It raised interesting questions about the place of Catholics in modern America, the relationship between Catholics and the government, and the authority of the Catholic Church. The conversations in the news that Catholics were having about birth control shed light on a strong internal debate in the Church as well reveal how Catholics came to adopt their current position on birth control.
Bryne Norrie

Hannah Zaritsky

Trial Data from the Portuguese Inquisition of Coimbra

This research project comes from a desire to recover the often neglected experiences of marginalized Iberian women who faced persecution in the 16th century. The research assistant organized and analyzed 200 Portuguese Inquisition trial records from Torre do Tombo’s online database. The goal with collecting and organizing this data is to be able to see larger trends or patterns within the trial records, and ultimately collect meaningful data that can be used in a book that Dr. Wartell is writing.
Hannah Z

Spring 2022 Research Assistant Projects

Julia Hoa Leone

Undergraduate Research Assistant 2022 under Professor Mehta: Assisted Professor Mehta (Women and Gender Studies and Jewish Studies) with their research relating to the intersections of religion and birth control in the modern United States, specifically the IUD.

Julia Leone

Andrew Nadas

Undergraduate Research Assistant 2022 under Professor Kalisman: Assisted Professor Kalisman (History and Jewish Studies) with her research on education, teachers, and standardized testing in the Middle East, including the translation of original sources from Arabic to English.

Andrew Nadas

Daisy Fellows

 

Daisy Fellows

Spring 2021 Research Assistant Projects

Izzy Fincher

Klezmer Archives

This project with Professor Yonatan Malin (Music and Jewish Studies) seeks to deepen our understanding of Klezmer, the musical language of Eastern European Jewry. During the semester, I proofread and prepared over 250 digitized scores from ethnomusicologist Moisei Beregovsky’s “Jewish Musical Folklore" collections, recently released from an archive in Kyiv, Ukraine. These scores will be used for computational analysis by Professor Daniel Shanahan from Ohio State University. Additionally, I analyzed select nigunim, wordless songs sung by Hasidic Jews, from Beregovsky’s 4th Volume and will be transcribing #11, titled “Tiš-nign,” for classical guitar.
Izzy Fincher

Julia Leone

Education in the Middle East 

My name is Julia Leone, I'm a current sophomore at CU double majoring in International Affairs and Jewish Studies with a personal interest in the intersections between religion and violence. I've been working alongside Professor Hilary Kalisman (History and Jewish Studies) this semester; her research surrounds the history of standardized testing in the British Middle Eastern mandate. I've been focusing on the mandate for Palestine by researching and categorizing newspaper clippings from an English-language Zionist newspaper, focusing on instances of the term 'matriculation,' which is a substantial exam taken after high school. Through this research, I'm understanding the place and history of such an exam in mandate Palestine, as well as learning how to conduct historical research through a digital primary source spanning multiple decades.
Julia Leone

Sarah Schleifer

Jews and Race in the U.S. 

I'm working for Professor Samira Mehta (Women and Gender Studies and Jewish Studies) to trace the genealogy of the term "Jews of Color" in periodical literature in the US through the 20th & 21st centuries. I am using n-grams to research the usage, context, and frequency of the term over time. I am working to create a record of this information so Professor Mehta can use it in her future research and projects.
Sarah Schleifer

Sophia Stout

Conspiracy Theories and Sabbateanism

I do internet detective work for Professor Nan Goodman (English and Jewish Studies). What I look for specifically are any conspiracy theories relating to Sabbateanism, which is a neo-religious movement of Judaism. These may come in the form of websites, social media posts, forums, videos, or books. I find this kind of research oddly intriguing and entertaining.
Sophia Stout