Call for Applications: Health Humanities Lab Undergraduate Student Fellows, 2024–2025
Residency: 2024-2025
Deadline: 5:00 p.m., April 15th, 2024
The Humanities Research Center’s Health Humanities Lab is calling for applications for 2024–25 Health Humanities Undergraduate Student Fellows for the East Marshall Street Well Project’s oral history and memorialization projects.
THE EAST MARSHALL STREET WELL ORAL HISTORY AND MEMORIALIZATION PROJECT:
The East Marshall Street Well (EMSW) Project documents the history of medical racism at VCU School of Medicine and its ongoing impact on health inequities today. The EMSW Project focuses on enacting the recommendations of the Family Representative Council, a group representing the descendent community of mostly Black individuals whose remains were used for medical training during the 19th century and have since been recovered. The recommendations prioritize ethical research, memorialization, and burial with dignity. Undergraduate work would further the goals of research through an ongoing oral history project and memorialization through community engagement and education.
Possible research projects may include:
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Processing and preparing oral history interviews for a digital repository, including reviewing audio quality, editing audio, reviewing transcripts, and entering metadata
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Programming an ongoing traveling pop-up exhibit on the history of the project by installing a series of panels with community partners
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Designing and leading walking tours on the history of race, health, and medicine
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Creating a physical map version of the tour, distributed in partnership with local history and cultural museums.
Health Humanities Lab Undergraduate Student Fellows will gain experience as health humanities researchers working in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team. Students from all majors are encouraged to apply. Students do not need prior experience in audio production but will have the opportunity to gain skills in public engagement, podcast production, and historical methods alongside a deeper understanding of the broader contexts of health and healthcare disparities.
Health Humanities Lab Undergraduate Student Fellows will be expected to devote two hours a week to the project and to attend Health Humanities Lab meetings and events. Upon satisfactory completion of work in the fall semester and mutual agreement with the lab directors, fellows will continue work into the spring. Fellows who successfully complete the fellowship will each receive a $1,000 stipend. As a REAL Level 4 experiential learning and vertically integrated project, the Health Humanities Lab provides sustained, long-term mentorship and support and especially welcomes applications from students from communities historically excluded from academic research, including students from historically minoritized racial and ethnic groups, who identify as LGBTQIA+, and/or who are the first generation in their family to attend college.
If you have any questions, please contact the Health Humanities Lab Director Chris Cynn: cjcynn@vcu.edu.