Hadassah-Brandeis Institute's Summer Internship program in 13th year

The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute welcomed the arrival of seven student interns on June 6 for the 13th year of the HBI Summer Internship program. The highly competitive program, funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation and an anonymous donor, provides college students, recent graduates, and graduate students with the paid opportunity to explore the fields of Jewish women's and gender studies with Brandeis and Boston-area faculty and HBI scholars and staff.

This year the interns, who come from American University, University of Chicago, Wheaton College, and William Smith College and include two Brandeis students, will work closely with HBI and Brandeis staff and scholars on research projects. Examples include assisting Professor Gannit Ankori with collecting source material for "A Faith of Their Own: Women Artists Re-Vision Religion," a project that will explore role of religion in women's lives by examining how it appears in their art. Another student will assist Professor Amy Sales and Brandeis' Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies in analyzing data about New York teens' involvement in Jewish life from a gendered perspective.

The interns will also complete an individual project exploring an area of Jewish women's studies of personal interest. Weekly outings to research archives and places of Jewish interest expose interns to various methods and academic frameworks and show them the sights of Jewish Boston. One highlight of this summer's program is the interns' participation at the Association for Israel Studies Conference being held at Brandeis University.

Past HBI Intern Mackenzie McIlmail from the University of Wisconsin at Madison felt the program to be immeasurably rewarding.

"I absolutely loved working in a Jewish educational environment," she said. "The HBI internship experience encouraged me to pursue teaching history in at a Jewish Day School. It also fueled my desire to eventually attend graduate school - there is so much more I would like to learn about Jewish women's history!"

For more information about the program, visit the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute website.