Next Deadline: 11:59pm on Sunday, September 8, 2024
HOP 101 Info Sessions: the morning of Saturday August 24th in the Macksey Seminar Room (Brody Learning Commons, M-level); awaiting session times
The application cycle is now open!
Apply to be a First-Year Fellow
Launched in 2016, First-Year Fellows (originally known as Freshman Fellows) is an academic opportunity designed to introduce students to conducting research with rare books, manuscripts, and archival material during their first year at The Johns Hopkins University. Limited to only four students a year, the successful applicant will:
- Conduct research with rare books, manuscripts, and archival collections;
- Analyze items of cultural significance and improve their research skills;
- Be partnered with a mentor in Special Collections who will provide them with individualized research plans;
- Create an end-product of their choosing that focuses on their research, such as an academic talk, a poster presentation, a work of fiction, or an online exhibition;
- Receive a $2,000 research award ($1,000 at the end of the fall semester, and $1,000 at the end of the spring semester).
Research outcomes may include a display in the Special Collections Reading Room, a webinar, creative writing or artwork inspired by your discoveries, or other project that showcases your research in an accessible and interesting manner. This is a nice opportunity to expand your skill set beyond the standard research paper! Please contact Heidi Herr (hherr1@jhu.edu), the program manager, for questions about the program or for guidance with the application process. You are also encouraged to directly contact the mentor associated with the topics(s) you are interested in researching.
2024/2025 Research Topics
Not Lost in TransLati(o)n
Love studying Latin and making discoveries? Then use your ever-growing Latin language skills to reveal the content of highly important, but rarely studied rare books held at the historic George Peabody Library. You will get to translate short and interesting Latin texts that date from the Renaissance or later and that have never been translated into English before! See if you can figure out why the books were once considered important, why they fell out of favor, and what we can learn from them today. It is recommended that the applicant has had at least two years of Latin and is comfortable with the grammar.
Encountering the Counterculture
Be the first researcher of our new and far out collection of ephemera that documents the American counterculture of the 1960s. The collection includes vintage photographs, comic books, ephemera promoting the use of LSD, and documents advertising the sensational antics of groups like the Yippies. This collection can support groovy subjects including fashion, underground art, drug culture, and food movements. Can you dig it?
Investigating Early Student Records
What did it take to get into Hopkins in 1876 or 1900 or 1930? This project explores the earliest student files from 1876 to 1944 in the records of the Office of the Registrar. The collection contains university applications, letters of recommendation, transcripts or grade cards, and subject exams required for matriculation. These records tell us not only about individuals, but about admissions requirements over time and in various fields, data collection practices in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the particular experiences and achievements that were valued by faculty and administrators. You can focus on the people, sources, time period, and research questions that interest you. And don’t worry! Your student records are restricted for your lifetime or eighty years from the last date of attendance.
