Faculty Spotlights
Faculty Spotlight: David Eick, Honors Faculty-in-Residence & Modern Languages and Literatures
What are your undergraduate research mentor experiences?
Student Summer Scholars, McNair Scholar, Senior Honors Project
Would you briefly explain the focus of some of the most recent research you have mentored students in?
One of my mentees is currently working on a cutting-edge digital humanities project involving Diderot’s Encyclopédie, the literary monument of the Enlightenment, banned by the Monarchy, placed on the Vatican’s Index of forbidden books. All 74,000+ articles are now digitized, so it is searchable, opening up new possibilities for research.
Another student I mentored worked on a project on the representation of women in Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro (a radical play which many people at the time thought was one of the causes of the French Revolution). This student’s work continues to influence the way in which I teach the text today.
Why is mentoring undergraduate research an important component of your work?
Student research mentoring is one of the most stimulating and rewarding parts of my job. Always on the look-out for students with intellectual curiosity, I help them channel it via programs like s3 and McNair, so that they can begin to produce professional scholarship.
If a student is interested in your field of research, what are some suggestions or tips you might share with them to help them get more involved and/or better prepared to engage in this type of research?
Just talk to your professor, and ask for their guidance. Professors love students who express interest in their field!
Who are some of your previous mentees, and what are they doing now?
Rebekah Nicholson has completed two master’s degrees and is an archivist in Washington, D.C. Heidi Collins is finishing a Ph.D. in French literature at the University of Iowa. Rebecca Bolen finished an M.A. in history at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and is deciding where to pursue the Ph.D.
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