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MIG Upcoming Funding Opportunities

MELLON POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP, 2009 - 2011

The USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) and the USC Department of American Studies and Ethnicity (ASE) announce a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in immigrant integration for the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 academic years. We specifically seek applicants whose work lies in the specialization of immigrant populations in "new" areas of the U.S. - that is places where there is a growing presence that were not traditional entry points in the past. We are especially interested in work on California, including new entry points like the Inland Empire or suburban communities, but would be open to scholars looking at other new destinations, such as the South of the U.S. The preference would be for an interdisciplinary researcher who could utilize and teach mixed methods approaches to ASE graduates and undergraduates in his/her teaching role. The fellow will teach one course each semester at USC and is expected to conduct research with CSII. The fellowship will offer a competitive salary package and fringe benefits. The fellow must have completed all requirements for the Ph.D. by mid-August, 2009. This fellowship is designed to provide a recent Ph.D. the opportunity to teach classes in his or her area of expertise and to get hands on research experience at a thriving new institution at USC.

Review of applications will commence on March 30, 2009, with a decision expected approximately April 17, 2009. To apply, send a c.v., a detailed description of the nature of the research to be undertaken during the fellowship period, and a relevant writing sample of no more than 30 pages. The applicant should arrange to have three letters of recommendation sent separately to the USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. All materials should be sent to the mailing address provided below.

For further information, please contact the USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (e-mail address follows). For the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity please visit http://college.usc.edu/ase/home/index.cfm.

USC is an EOE/AA Employer.

USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration
c/o Department of Geography
3620 S. Vermont Ave., KAP 462
University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089

Phone: 213-821-1325
Fax: 213-740-5680
Email: pere@college.usc.edu

GRANT OPPORTUNITY FOR GRADUATE STUDENT READING GROUPS
Proposals for reading groups will be accepted until March 15, 2009

The Institute for Comparative Modernities: Graduate Student Reading Groups
The ICM (Institute for Comparative Modernities), a new research initiative addressing the transnational history of modernity and its global scope, announces a grant and support program for Cornell graduate student reading groups. We invite applications that include a 500-word statement of intent, a bibliography, and a list of the names and departmental affiliations of the proposed group members, along with the c.v. of each participant. Cross-disciplinarity must be an integral part of both the design of the research proposal and the composition of the group; applications from groups composed of members from a single department will not be approved. We imagine that most groups will comprise six to eight members (a minimum of six members is required to be eligible for the subvention).This program, which will be announced annually, will provide a subvention of $1,000 for books and copying, and a comfortable and even congenial meeting space at the ICM (housed in the Toboggan Lodge). We expect the sustained collaboration to culminate with a public presentation (oral or written) at the end of the award year. The subvention would be for one year, but renewal may be possible under certain circumstances. Proposals for reading groups will be accepted until March 15, 2009. Notifications will be sent out the week of April 15, 2009. It is likely that academic year 2009-10 will see three awards.

Executive Board members: Salah Hassan, Director (Director, Africana Studies and Research Center; History of Art); Iftikhar Dadi (History of Art); Fouad Makki (Development Sociology); Barry Maxwell, Resident Director 2008-09 (Comparative Literature and American Studies); Natalie Melas (Comparative Literature); Viranjini Munasinghe (Director, Asian American Studies Program; Anthropology and Asian American Studies); Sunn Shelley Wong (English and Asian American Studies).

Address proposals (paper only) to Barry Maxwell, Resident Director, ICM: Institute for Comparative Modernities, Toboggan Lodge, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853. Campus mail will deliver.

For further information on the ICM, see the statement below.
The Institute for Comparative Modernities (ICM) addresses a key problem in the study of modern culture and society: the transnational history of modernity and its global scope. A broad range of scholarship over the last few decades has contested and complicated the two primary dimensions of the received narrative of modernity in its broadest sense: 1) that it arose strictly within the confines of Europe; and 2) that its extension outside Europe was a matter of simple diffusion and imitation. What is emerging instead is an account of modernity in which deep and multifarious interconnections have created complementary cultural formations. The study of modern culture and society cannot be limited to a single geographical area or a singular history; it must develop comparative cross-cultural frameworks which can trace the links between particular forms of culture, power, and history and a global network of forces and relations.

This Institute is dedicated to the study of modernity in such a comparative context. Its primary emphasis falls on neglected or under-studied articulations of modernity outside of or marginal to the dominant paradigms of Europe and the United States, but it also gives serious attention to conflicts and complexities within Western modernity and its entanglement with other cultures. The Institute aims to make important contributions to a genuinely global analysis of modernity, a task of particular urgency in our time. Inadequate understanding of the complex history of modernity across the world has lead to simplistic and untenable positions which unknowingly repeat colonialism's ideological divisions between "them" and "us," with inscrutable backwardness all on one side and enlightened modernity all on the other. This results in ghettoized scholarship, deleterious to all. The usual equation of the modern as the West needs to be problematized and opened up to comparative examination.

This Institute hopes to galvanize further work in this direction by encouraging cross-disciplinary collaborative research that is empirically faithful to geographic and historical specificity, yet also situated in relation to comparative methodological frameworks. By bringing attention to less frequently studied aesthetic and social practices from non-Western and immigrant communities, the Institute hopes to correct existing standard accounts of modernity as primarily Western in origin and effects.

http://icm.arts.cornell.edu/