This seminar explores the archipelagic, as both a specific and a generalizable geo-historical and cultural formation across various planetary spaces, including the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas, the Caribbean basin, the Malay archipelago, Oceania, and the creole islands of the Indian Ocean.
As an alternative geo-formal unit, archipelagoes can interrogate epistemologies, ways of reading and thinking and methodologies, informed implicitly or explicitly by more continental paradigms and perspectives. Keeping in mind the structuring tension between land and water, and between island and mainland relations, the archipelagic focuses also on the types of relations that emerge, island to island, when island groups are seen not so much as sites of exploration, identity, socio-political formation, and economic and cultural circulation, but rather, as models.
The CCA invites applications from all disciplines, including the literary humanities, art history, visual studies, cultural studies, geography, philosophy, history, anthropology, sociology, enviromental studies, human ecology, American, Pacific and Caribbean studies. Proposals might cover topics such as: 1) Beyond the Repeating Islands: Geographies, Disciplinary Topographies, and Conceptual Archipelagoes. How can archipelagoes become the conceptual foundation of cultural notions of space and time, geography and topography? 2) Comparative Archipelagic Studies: the Caribbean and the Pacific islands, and beyond. How can the comparative study of Atlantic and Pacific archipelagoes enrich area studies such as Caribbean, American and Pacific Studies? 3) Archipelagic American Studies: Interrogating Continental Epistemologies. How can island, ocean and archipelago studies transform the ways in which we conceive American and Caribbean studies? 4) Relational Archipelagics: Redefining Imperial and Postcolonial Studies. Were groups of islands colonized or conceived as colonial territories in a similar way? What happens when archipelagic thinking is decolonized? How can archipelagoes redefine debates in imperial and postcolonial studies? 5) Towards New Disciplinary Formations. What are the political, philosophical and historical implications of assuming an archipelagic framework? Can the archipelagic function as a heuristic, a methodology, a discipline or a field? How have island and archipelagoes configured a particular poetic?
Seminar Leaders: Michelle Stephens, Department of English and Yolanda Martinez San-Miguel, Department of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies
In 2015-16, CCA will sponsor faculty fellowships for Rutgers faculty, graduate fellowships for Rutgers graduate students, and two external post-doctoral fellowships with awards of $45,000. CCA also awards non-funded associate fellowships. All fellows will have access to the Center's resources during the tenure of the fellowship and will be expected to participate in and to present their work to the Center seminars, which meet regularly throughout the academic year. Applications can be found at the links below.
•Internal Fellowship Applications - are due to Department Chairs and Graduate Directors November 21, 2014. For ease of submission, each complete, endorsed application packet may be submitted as a single PDF document [log in to unmask] Applications are due to the CCA by December 5, 2014.
•External Fellowship Applications - are now handled through our online search system. This is an online application, which must be completed at one session. The application portal will only be available 8/1/14 through 1/5/15, and may be found at: http://apply.interfolio.com/25496
Please direct all inquiries about CCA fellowships to [log in to unmask]
QUALIFICATIONS
All requirements for the PhD must be completed by June 30, 2015 in order to take up the fellowship.
APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS
Please submit a cover letter, CV, three confidential letters of recommendation, a detailed research statement (no more than 4 single-spaced pages), a 250-400 word abstract of your research project, and a detailed proposal for an advanced undergraduate course in your field that you would like to teach.
The University of Aberdeen is a charity registered in Scotland, No SC013683.
Tha Oilthigh Obar Dheathain na charthannas clàraichte ann an Alba, Àir. SC013683.
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