WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Sept. 17, 2009 -- Thirty undergraduates spent their summer engaged with professors at Williams College on individual research projects.

The participating Williams students worked on a wide range of humanities and social science projects, from the spiritual significance of sports, to Shakespeare and early modern political aesthetics, to the economics of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The faculty research projects, they agree, provided authentic involvement in academic research. Students invested ten 40-hour weeks, learned research methodologies, and were provided a stipend as well as housing.

Iliyana Hadjistoyanova '11 of Sofia, Bulgaria, worked with Alexandra Garbarini, assistant professor of history, in collecting, organizing, and processing information for the second volume in a five-volume series dedicated to Jewish source materials on Nazi persecution, which Garbarini is co-writing with University of Hartford historian Avinoam Patt. This volume deals with the time period from the end of 1938, when "Kristallnacht" occurred, to the sealing of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940.

The Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and AltaMira Press are publishing the series, which is unique in that it focuses on strictly Jewish responses to anti-Semitic persecution during the 1930s and the years of World War II.

"This is the first series that focuses on Jewish-produced source material from these years," Garbarini explained. "Very little contemporaneous material is available that is published and translated -- there is a real gap in the literature."

The primary sources that Garbarini and Hadjistoyanova worked with included diaries, letters between families and friends, daily news bulletins issued by the Jewish Telegraph Agency, official correspondence within and between major organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and letters that Jews wrote to Nazi officials making appeals for exemptions from certain decrees.

In the economics department, Associate Professor Jon Bakija worked with Jon Morgenstern '11 of Santa Monica, Calif., on updating his state income tax model and explaining recent changes in U.S. income inequality. Morgenstern's contributions included recalibrating the model to account for changes in state income tax laws that occurred in 2008 by interpreting the meaning of these tax laws.

"Jon updated my data through 2008 and was very helpful in helping to clean up the data and correct mistakes from prior years," Bakija said, “resolving some last complications before the 2008 data is ready to go."

Steven Hailey ’12 of Fayetteville, Ark., assisted Christopher Pye, Class of 1924 Professor of English, on his book on Shakespeare and early modern aesthetic ideology.

"Working for him opened up a fascinating intellectual terrain," Hailey said. "It makes me realize how lucky I am to be at Williams College. Where else would a sophomore-to-be have such an opportunity?"

The students in this summer’s research program in the arts, languages, and social sciences were: Erin Altenburger '11 from Mendham, N.J.; Ran Bi '11 from Suzhou, Jiangsu, China; Ariel Binder '11 from Amherst, N.Y.; Cristina Diaz-Dickson '10 from Santa Cruz, Bolivia; Sophie Glickstein '10 from Edina, Minn.; Iliyana Hadjistoyanova '11 from Sofia, Bulgaria; Steven Hailey '12 from Fayetteville, Ark.; Joanna Hoffman '10 from Upper Arlington, Ohio; Madeleine Jacobs '11 from Wilmette, Ill.; Majida Kargbo '10 from Westchester, Calif.; Marissa Kimsey '11 from Chicago, Ill.; Hilary Ledwell '12 from Little Rock, Ark.; Mohammed Lotif '11 from Detroit, Mich.; Matthew Madden '12 from Troy, N.Y.; James Muita Mathenge '12 from Nairobi, Kenya; Jose Martinez '10 from San Juan, Puerto Rico; Pierre-Alexandre Meloty-Kapella '10 from Redwood City, Calif.; Jonathan Morgenstern '11 from Santa Monica, Calif.; Sayantan Mukhopadhyay '12 from Jabriya, Kuwait; Lorenzo Patrick '11 from Maywood, Ill.; Taisha Rodriguez '12 from New York, N.Y.; Evalynn Rosado '12 from Stroud, Okla.; Melinda Salaman '11 from Port Washington, N.Y.; Meghan Shea '11 from Nesconset, N.Y; Natalie Smith '10 from Essex Fells, N.J.; Ellen Stuart '11 from Gainesville, Fla.; Bolor Turmunkh '10 from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; Zhaoning Nancy Wang '11 from Beijing, China; Wentao Xiong '11 from Yueyang, China.

The program was funded in large part by a generous gift from the Class of 1957.

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Founded in 1793, Williams College is the second oldest institution of higher learning in Massachusetts. The college’s 2,000 students are taught by a faculty noted for the quality of their teaching and research, and the achievement of academic goals includes active participation of students with faculty in their research. Students' educational experience is enriched by the residential campus environment in Williamstown, Mass., which provides a host of opportunities for interaction with one another and with faculty beyond the classroom. Admission decisions are made regardless of a student’s financial ability, and the college provides grants and other assistance to meet the demonstrated needs of all who are admitted.

To visit the college on the Internet: www.williams.edu

News/Amanda Korman