The Mahindra Humanities Center invites applications for one-year postdoctoral fellowships in connection with the Center’s Andrew W. Mellon Foundation seminar on the topic of migration and the humanities.
Migration plays as critical a role in the moral imagination of the humanities as it does in shaping the activist vision of humanitarianism and human rights. Too often, the humanities are summoned merely as witnesses to the spectacle of the significant currents and crises of contemporary life. Literature and the arts are viewed as iconic presences whose primary aesthetic and moral values lie in their illustrative powers of empathy and evocation. Yet the intellectual formation of the humanities—their very conception of the nature of meaning, knowledge, and morals—is deeply resonant with the displacement of values and the revision of norms that shape the transitional and translational narratives of migrant lives.
Built around pedagogies of representation and interpretation—textual, visual, digital, political, ethical, ecological, etc.—the humanities engage with the history of shifting relations between cultural expression, historical transition, and political transformation. The ethics of citizenship in our time are defined as much by migration and resettlement as by indigenous belonging, as much by global governance as by national sovereignty. And the humanities play a central role in defining the terms and the territories of cultural citizenship as it creates innovative institutions and identities in the making of a civil society.
The migration “crisis” makes it imperative for humanists to reflect on the foundational concepts and values of our disciplines in addressing the representation of others as they are recognized in the norms of cultural citizenship. The issues the seminar will explore include: the ethics of hospitality; modes of cosmopolitanism; negotiation of cultural “differences” under duress; the role played by interpretation and cultural translation in enhancing processes of social integration.
We welcome applications from scholars in all fields whose work innovatively engages with migration and the humanities.
Terms and Conditions
In addition to pursuing their own research projects, fellows will be core participants in the bi-weekly seminar meetings. Other participants will include faculty and graduate students from Harvard and other universities in the region, and occasional visiting speakers.
Fellows will be joined at the Center by postdoctoral fellows from Germany, who will be coming as part of a collaboration between the Mahindra Humanities Center and the Volkswagen Foundation. Fellows are expected to be in residence at Harvard for the term of the fellowship.
Fellows will receive stipends of $65,000, individual medical insurance, moving assistance of $1,500, and additional research support of $2,500.
Eligibility and Deadline Information
Applicants for 2017-18 fellowships must have received a doctorate or terminal degree in or after May 2014. Applicants without a doctorate or terminal degree must demonstrate that they will receive a doctorate or terminal degree in a related discipline in or before August 2017. Applications must be completed by December 8, 2016.
Application Instructions
Please apply using our online application:
https://academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/7050In addition to biographical and professional information, we ask applicants to submit:
1. A curriculum vitae.
2. A detailed statement of the research project (1,000-3,000 words) that provides a detailed description of what the applicant proposes to do during the fellowship year.
3. One chapter- or article-length writing sample (no longer than 40 pages).
4. Names and contact information of three referees, who will be asked by a system- generated email to upload a letter of recommendation once the candidate’s application has been submitted. Three letters of recommendation are required, and the application is considered complete only when three letters have been received. Recommendations may be those included in the applicant’s placement dossier, but they must specifically address the proposed research project. Letters should be uploaded to the electronic application.
Please contact Andrea Volpe (
[email protected]) with questions about applying for a fellowship.
