RESIDENTIAL RESEARCH GROUP FELLOWSHIPS - Fall 2012
"Imperial Legacies, Postsocialist Contexts: History, Ethics and Difference in a Neoliberal Age"
The University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) invites proposals to participate in a residential research group in the Fall 2012 quarter.
Who Can Apply: UC Faculty, Post-Docs, Graduate Students and non-UC faculty.
Level of Award: Replacement for faculty and stipend for non-faculty.
Funding Source: UCHRI
Deadline: 5pm PST on January 13, 2012. Apply on FastApps (opens on October 17, 2011)
Group residency quarter: Fall 2012
Topic: Imperial Legacies, Postsocialist Contexts: History, Ethics and Difference in a Neoliberal Age
Conveners:
Kalindi Vora, Department of Ethnic Studies, UC San Diego
Neda Atanasoski, Departments of Feminist Studies, UC Santa Cruz
Abstract: Imperial Legacies, Postsocialist Contexts addresses the theoretical, temporal, and spatial intersections of postcoloniality and postsocialism with the goal of arriving at a novel approach to race, gender, and sexuality in present-day geopolitics. As a signifier of economic and social transformation and transition, the "post" of postcolonialism and postsocialism has signaled the global reordering of governmental infrastructures and life-worlds. Theorizations of postcoloniality and postsocialism have thus sought to grapple not just with the decline of existing power relations, but with the emergence of new political and cultural formations and circuits of bodies and capital. Through our focus on multiple, contradictory, and layered historical memories and unforeseen correspondences encompassed by the theoretical intersections of postcolonialism and postsocialism, this group will build upon and move beyond the theoretical languages offered by critics of neoliberalism as the umbrella term to describe the contemporary moment.
Nations of the global south usually described as postcolonial are not generally analyzed through the rubrics initiated by postsocialist theory, and Central and Eastern European nations and China are not for the most part regarded as decolonizing. However, we invite the seminar to center on the junctures, as well as dissonances, between the postcolonial and the postsocialist as theoretical ground in order to grapple with emergent modes of racialization, new forms of gendered and racialized value and labor, and recent debates about biopolitical ethics and morality that have coalesced around sexual, gendered, and religious identities in the absence of socialism as the marker of an ethical "limit" to capitalist exploitation. We thus seek to convene a group that will not simply be engaged in comparative work juxtaposing particular postcolonial or postsocialist sites, but rather one that will work on decentering theories of neoliberalism by reevaluating historical complexities and unlikely global routings of desire and dominance, processes of displacement and belonging, and languages of freedom and rights. As such, we hope to derive a distinct transnational and intersectional analytic based on the collaboration of scholars from a variety of disciplinary, geographical, and historical specializations.
Residential Research Groups
Residential research groups (RRGs) are at the heart of UCHRI's activities, convening key scholars to work in collaboration on interdisciplinary topics of special significance. UCHRI promotes new scholarship in the humanities by fostering collaborative inquiry outside institutional and disciplinary structures. RRGs are in essence teams of researchers, often unknown to each other before residency, and assembled to work on a commonly defined research agenda. They are composed of a range of UC faculty, visiting scholars (including UC postdoctoral scholars), UC doctoral students, and non-UC faculty as resources allow.
RRGs are developed through a two-stage process. First, research topics for RRGs are determined by open competition or by UCHRI in consultation with its Advisory Board and UC leaders in the humanities. Through a competitive review process, RRG fellows are then selected based on their ability to contribute to the research agenda of the group. Collaboration may take many forms. In communicating across disciplines, there are challenges of language, terminology, and methodology for all RRGs. The organizing premise of the residential research program is that when those challenges are surmounted, breakthroughs in knowledge are possible.
Expected outcomes of an RRG include edited or co-edited volumes, key word texts, multimedia websites, significant extramural proposals, substantial curriculum plans, or other such significant projects arising from research pursued at UCHRI.
UCHRI's facilities for participating scholars include private offices with e-mail/Internet access, seminar and conference rooms, a multi-media room, and a reference library. Furnished apartments are provided free of charge to fellows by the Institute for use on an as-needed basis during their residencies, resources permitting.
Awards will be announced no later than March 2012.
How to Apply:
Applications are accepted exclusively online via UCHRI's FastApps system.
Required documents include:
• Fellowship Project abstract (150 words max.)
• Biographical abstract (100 words max.)
• Proposal narrative (2000 words max.)
• Curriculum vitae (2 pages max.)
For program-related questions, please contact Suedine Nakano, Program Administrator, at snakano@hri.uci.edu.