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TO APPLY:
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SOCIETY FOR THE HUMANITIES
FACULTY FELLOWSHIPS 2010-2011
Four full year Faculty Fellowships are awarded to Cornell faculty each year by our Board of External Advisors. Fellows' appointments are subject to the consent of their department chair and the approval of the Dean. Tradition has restricted fellowships to professors in humanities departments of the College of Arts and Sciences, though faculty members holding regular appointments elsewhere in the university are welcome to apply if their work is closely related to the year's theme and if their Dean is willing to provide their salary during their appointment at the Society.
Faculty Fellows receive leaves of absence from their departments, but not from Cornell; the College of Arts and Sciences has been allowing the time spent as a Faculty Fellow to count in computing regular sabbatic leave. A Faculty Fellow is paid the salary he or she would have received from his or her department, plus Cornell's contribution to fringe benefits. (Where necessary, departments negotiate with the Dean for funds to help provide replacement teaching.) Office space and clerical assistance in matters related to the Fellow's research are provided in the Andrew D. White Center for the Humanities.
Faculty Fellows are released from, and are expected to decline, the usual departmental, college, or university obligations. An exception is normally made for supervision of graduate student research in cases where an interruption would be detrimental to the student. Fellows are expected to spend most of their time in research and writing, but they offer a weekly seminar during one semester of their residency on a topic related to their research and in keeping with the Society's focal theme (below). We prefer that these seminars be somewhat experimental and interdisciplinary -- in any case, not what you normally offer to satisfy established curricular requirements of your department.
APPLICATION PROCEDURES
Please send the following material to Mary Ahl, Society for the Humanities, A. D. White House (note especially item 5).
1. The names of three referees willing to supply confidential statements. One of the referees should be a colleague at Cornell; the other two, scholars at other institutions. Please inform your referees of our focal theme, your proposed plans for teaching and research, and ask them to forward their letters by October 31st.
Five copies each of the following
2. Curriculum vitae
3. No more than three of your articles
4. A brief statement concerning the research you expect to undertake during the tenure of your fellowship and how it relates to the theme for 2010/2011.
5. Short description of the seminars you propose to offer, suitable for the University Course Catalogue
We must stress the importance of our being able to supply all these materials to the External Advisory Board; it should be obvious that letters from distinguished referees at other institutions are extremely important. We might add that the Board generally gives special weight to candidates' descriptions of their proposed research and the contribution it might make to our understanding of the year's theme.
We hope you will consider becoming a candidate. If you would like to apply, please send me the above materials by October 31st. We shall announce the results of the election of the Faculty Fellows after the meeting of the External Advisory Board in December.
The Society for the Humanities Focal Theme, 2010-2011 Global Aesthetics
The Society for the Humanities calls for scholarly reflections on global aesthetics. We seek interdisciplinary projects on aesthetics that reflect on the history and practice of artistic form in the context of historical cross-cultural exchange, economic and cultural flows, and contemporary global transformation.
The Society wishes The Society wishes to open the question of what constitutes an “aesthetic” approach to culture, politics, community, and being. The humanities have a long tradition of situating aesthetics in relation to the judgments of sentiment and taste, the pleasure of imitation, the force of the sublime, and the theory of interpretation. Whereas the modernist tradition might be said to have celebrated the autonomy of the work of art, the legacies of semiotics and poststructuralism situate autonomy in the framework of histories of textuality and signifying systems. Similarly, psychoanalysis has positioned the aesthetic in relation to homosocial expressivity as sustained by sublimation, an assumption of critical importance to subsequent theories of sexuality and gender. Of equal influence is the tradition of dialectical materialism for which aesthetics has been understood in relation to cultural superstructures and sociocultural conditions. Rather than seeking the soothing release of catharsis, this approach emphasizes the heuristic value of artistic alienation and social production.
Of particular interest to this discussion will be reflection on global approaches to aesthetics that have been articulated in dialogue with, independent of, or in contention with the Occidental tradition of aesthetics. How does the aesthetic function in Latin American, Asian, and African contexts? Or what about the impact of subaltern and minority discourses? How might the global practices of Marxism, religion, anthropology or communal social systems dialogue with the Occidental philosophical tradition? And how might procedures of criticism and translation enable or enhance cross-cultural expressions of aesthetic difference?
Artistic form and practice themselves also play an authoritative role in setting the terms of aesthetic norms, goals, and customs. How might global artistic production contribute to an ongoing understanding of aesthetics? Do contemporary experiments in new media, performance, film, literature, music, art, and architecture articulate aesthetic ideals that depart from the historical norm? Might new electronic and digital networks, mobilities, and artistic projects alter the terms of global aesthetics? These questions are meant to suggest, not delimit, possible approaches to the focal theme.
Scholars are encouraged to investigate transformations of global aesthetics and interdisciplinary practices across geographies, historical periods, disciplinary boundaries, and social context. The Society for the Humanities welcomes applications from scholars and practitioners who are interested in investigating this topic from the broadest variety of international and disciplinary perspectives.
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