| Faculty Advisor |
Max Mueller
|
|---|---|
| Contact Email | max.mueller@unl.edu |
| Website | |
| Advisor College: |
Arts and Sciences
|
| Potential Student Tasks |
Responsibilities may include reading short biographies and primary sources about selected More, America figures; helping identify important events, quotations, images, and archival materials; preparing brief research summaries; fact-checking names, dates, and historical context; and helping translate academic research into accessible public writing. Students may also assist with building timelines, organizing research notes, developing social media or website materials, and thinking creatively about how to present American history to broad audiences. Trainees will meet regularly with the adviser to discuss progress, learn basic historical research methods, and reflect on how public history can connect regional, national, and global issues. Students may also have the opportunity to present their work or contribute to a public-facing piece connected to the project. |
| Student Qualifications |
Students from any major are encouraged to apply. No prior research experience is required. Strong applicants may bring curiosity about American history, politics, religion, race, immigration, Indigenous history, social movements, writing, storytelling, or public life. They should be interested in asking who gets remembered in American history, who gets left out, and why those stories matter today. Useful strengths include careful reading, clear writing, attention to detail, reliability, openness to feedback, and a willingness to learn unfamiliar histories. Students who enjoy finding and organizing information, working with stories, thinking creatively about public communication, or connecting the past to present-day issues would be a strong fit. This project may be especially interesting to students interested in History, Ethnic Studies, Religious Studies, English, Journalism, Political Science, Education, Human Rights, and Global Studies, but students do not need to be in any of those fields to contribute meaningfully. First-generation students and students whose own families or communities have complex and/or contested relationships to American history are especially welcome to apply. |
| Training, Mentoring, and Workplace Community |
Students can expect a mentoring relationship built around curiosity, respect, and growth. I do not expect first-year students to arrive already knowing how to do college-level research. My job as a mentor is to help students learn how to ask strong questions, find reliable sources, read carefully, write clearly, and develop confidence in their own intellectual voice. I have worked with UCARE students before in similar capacities, mentoring undergraduates as they developed research skills, organized historical materials, analyzed sources, and translated academic ideas into clear writing. I understand that students often begin research projects unsure of what the work will look like, and I enjoy helping them move from uncertainty to confidence. I work closely with students and try to make research feel collaborative rather than intimidating. We will meet regularly to talk through assignments, troubleshoot challenges, and connect the project to students' own interests and goals. Students will receive training in historical research, public writing, source evaluation, note-taking, and revision. They will also learn how to take a large, complicated topic and turn it into something meaningful for a broad audience. I am especially committed to mentoring first-generation college students and students who may not yet know all the hidden rules of university life. I was the first scholar of race and religion in America hired at UNL, and much of my teaching and research focuses on communities whose histories have been overlooked, marginalized, or misunderstood. I want students working on More, America to feel that they belong in serious intellectual work—and that their questions, backgrounds, and perspectives can make the project stronger. My mentoring style is flexible, encouraging, and direct. I will give students clear expectations, but also help them improve step by step. I value reliability and communication more than perfection. Because students have classes, jobs, family responsibilities, and changing schedules, I am open to flexible work arrangements. Much of this project can be done remotely, though we will also make time for in-person meetings when useful. Students who work with me can expect to build skills that transfer beyond this project: research, writing, critical thinking, communication, and the confidence to contribute to public conversations about history and democracy. My goal is for students to leave the experience not only with a stronger résumé, but with a clearer sense that they are capable of doing meaningful work at the university. |
| Available Positions |
2
|
Who gets remembered as a founder of the United States? Most of us were taught a familiar list: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin. But what happens when we widen the story?
More, America is a public history project that tells the stories of twenty-five additional founders of the United States: women, Native leaders, Black writers, immigrants, religious minorities, labor organizers, artists, activists, and others who helped build the country we live in. These figures include people such as Phillis Wheatley, one of the first published Black poets in America; Wakara, a Ute leader who helped shape the American West; Zitkala-Å a, a Yankton Dakota writer and activist; and Gordon Hirabayashi, who resisted Japanese American incarceration during World War II.
The project asks a simple but powerful question: What if American history is not smaller than we thought, but bigger?
This work matters because the United States is approaching its 250th anniversary. Across the country, people will be asking what America means, who belongs in its story, and what kind of future we want to build together. More, America offers a more honest, more complicated, and more hopeful answer. It shows that American democracy has always been shaped not only by presidents and generals, but also by people who fought for freedom, land, dignity, education, religious liberty, racial justice, labor rights, and belonging.
Students working on this project would help uncover and tell these stories for a public audience. That might include researching historical figures, finding images and primary sources, helping develop short public essays, creating timelines or social media materials, and thinking about how to make history vivid and meaningful for readers outside the classroom.
This is a great project for students who are curious about history, politics, race, religion, writing, storytelling, or public life. You do not need to arrive as an expert. You just need to bring curiosity, care, and a willingness to ask better questions about the country we have inherited.
At its heart, More, America is about recovering people who were always there, but too often left out. It is about telling a fuller story of the United States—and helping more people see themselves in that story.