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July, 2010:

Job Opportunity at Montpelier for History Graduate

Jul 22nd, 2010
by jmcclurken.
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From the Montpelier website

Research Assistant—Documents

The Research Assistant will work as a member of the Curatorial Department, with emphasis on conducting research and analyzing the correspondence of James and Dolley Madison and their contemporaries, with an emphasis on identifying furnishings and decorative arts elements. The position is grant funded for 12-18 months and is contingent upon receipt of grant funding. Benefits package is available.

We are seeking a highly motivated individual who brings a background in American history with a general knowledge of 18th- and 19th-century decorative arts to the position. The successful candidate will have research skills and experience doing research in archives, courthouses and other repositories. Applicant must have strong communication and writing skills. Experience with computer databases is preferred.

BA required in history, art history, anthropology, classics, museum studies, American Studies, or related research field. Must be able to maintain accurate records; excellent visual recall, and the ability to make connections between disparate data, have good organizational skills and attention to detail.

Send resume and cover letter to: Megan Brett, Research Database & Records Manager, mbrett@montpelier.org. The deadline for the receipt of applications is August 6, 2010 at 5 p.m.

Margaret Greene (’06) Wins Fulbright-Hays Fellowship

Jul 16th, 2010
by Susan F..
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Margaret Greene, UMW History alum (’06), has won a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship. Currently a third-year doctoral student in Modern Chinese History at the University of California, San Diego, she is pursuing a dissertation entitled “The Sound of Ghosts: Chuanqi, Kun Opera, and the Staging of a New China.”

Her project focuses on the elite form of kun opera, particularly its celebrated genre of supernatural tales, after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.  In contrast to the traditional narrative, which states that kun opera was on a steady decline from the later years of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) until the 1990s, her preliminary research has shown a flowering of kun opera in the 1950s and early 1960s – thanks in no small part to state efforts to preserve China’s illustrious artistic past (including ghosts!).  Margaret’s work explores the interaction between state policy and artistic production, and how politicians, dramatists, and performers attempted to create artistic forms for a “new China” that were at once appropriately socialist and thoroughly Chinese in character.

Margaret will leave this fall for a year’s research in Shanghai, China, where she will be affiliated with East China Normal University (ECNU).