Archives for September 2016

LLILAS is recruiting UT undergraduate students to work with UT faculty during the fall 2016 semester. Our Latin Americanist faculty produce cutting-edge research on a broad range of topics and disciplines and help to maintain the academic leadership of the institute. This research internship is an excellent opportunity for students considering graduate school. Duties may include literature research and review; data manipulation, analysis, and interpretation; organization of research materials (data, texts, articles); other related duties assigned by faculty. Students will be selected based on previous research experience or demonstrated interest in Latin American academic issues. Successful candidates will be paired with faculty according to their specific areas of interest. Previous research experience is a plus, as is intermediate to advanced proficiency in Spanish and/or Portuguese.

 We have 3 specific request from LLILAS Faculty.  Please let me know if you would be interested in working in any of them.

 The Mesoamerica Center.

Publication illustrations for book on the Maya.

·          a brief description of the goals of the research project (3-5 lines)

The Mesoamerica Center is looking for a student to help finish the manuscript stage of a new book under contract on the ancient Maya. The research intern will assist with compiling the illustrations that accompany the text. At the end of the project the completed manuscript will be submitted for publication.

·          a description of the tasks that you would assign to the students (bullet list is ok)

Research, digitize, and assemble the illustrations for a manuscript on the ancient Maya. The text is mostly complete, and images are in production. The research intern will match captions to images; digitize to production standards and scale; research and locate illustrations for missing images; and assist with obtaining permissions for reproduction of copyrighted material.

·          a brief summary of preferred qualifications (e.g., research experience, language or computer skills)

The project is suited for a student with and interest in Latin American history and archaeology; attention to detail and good organization skills; initiative and ability to work independently once the process is underway; scanning and Photoshop experience preferred but not required. The project will take place at the Mesoamerica Center in the Department of Art and Art History, with occasional visits to the Benson Library.

School of Music

I have a manuscript that needs to go to press by December 2016 consisting primarily of translated, annotated essays by Fernando Ortiz. The press has just sent me some documents describing the ways that the MS must be prepared for submission. This includes saving the images in a certain format, saving text documents in a current format, making certain that all citations are in the same style throughout, etc. Additionally, a few of the images to be included need work done on them in Photoshop in order to crop them, add in shading to the background, that sort of thing. I’d love a student’s help with those tasks so I can focus on completing the final translation. Certain aspects of the project are clerical but others are more creative, and the student would also gain insights into the requirements of academic publishing. 

 Specifically, the student’s duties would include:

—Reading all instructions on document submission

—Helping reformat all chapters as appropriate, following those guidelines

—Helping crop and touch up images using Photoshop

—Generating a captions document containing captions for all artwork

—Ensuring that indications are placed throughout the document to indicate where images are to be placed

—Final spell-checking, searches for typos or other errors that need addressing 

Dept of History

·          Goals of the research project — My research project investigates the history of Southeast Asian refugee migrations to South America, specifically in Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil during the late 1970s and early 1980s. This is a transnational project which examines the migration and resettlement of refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos after the Vietnam War. This project pulls together untapped historical evidence from archival collections in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as well as archives in the United States and Argentina to trace the international humanitarian projects on behalf of refugees. My research is driven by the following questions: why did South American countries accept Southeast Asian refugees during the 1970s? What were the immigration policies of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil with respect to refugees? The deliverables for this project is a journal article and two chapters for my current book project.

·          Tasks for the students — I am in search of a student interested in researching the history of immigration policies in Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil in the 20th century, and the connections of these policies with the United States. Some of the tasks will include: creating bibliographies; identifying journals and articles on immigration policies and building an annotated bibliography; searching newspapers for articles about refugees; and transcribing interviews from Spanish into English. I will meet with the student on a weekly basis to guide the student throughout the research process.

·           Preferred qualifications — The intern needs to have a strong command of spoken and written Spanish.

If interested, contact Paloma Díaz-Lobos, M.A. , Scholarly Programs Director & Faculty Liaison, at p.diaz@austin.utexas.edu. 

Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies