Announcing CHR's 2023-24 theme, call for residential fellowship applications

2023-24 Annual Theme: Democracy, Disposability, and Repair 

CHR Residential Fellowships 2023-24 *PDF HERE

(Open to Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty and advanced Graduate Students at George Mason University)

We are delighted to announce our annual theme for the upcoming academic year, as well as circulate our call for residential fellows (for the fall 2023 and spring 2023 semesters) whose projects should relate to our annual theme.

This year’s annual theme calls for literary, cultural, historical, philosophical, artistic, linguistic, anthropological, religious, and archival engagements with the question of disposability.  

Forms of disposability have been characteristic (or even constitutive) of modes of social and political life, past, present, and in envisioned futures: the dispossession, relocation, and annihilation of local populations; the forced transportation of enslaved and bonded persons; the migration of refugees escaping war, violence, oppression, famine, and environmental and climate crises; the rule of a necropolitics in various spaces beyond the rule of law (whether within, between, or beyond the boundaries of states); the tyranny of oppressive majorities in majoritarian democracies; the violation of the voiceless and of those whose voices have been suppressed or silenced in public and private spheres; the effort to erase cultures or communities, to plunder and destroy ecosystems--these and other forms of rendering people and places "disposable" haunt and hound the world we live in. To what extent are historical and contemporary political systems dependent on forms of disposability, precarity, and extraction? In what ways are democratic modes of governance bound up with the disposability of human and non-human life? Could democracy offer possibilities for resistance, reparation and repair? We are interested in work that interrogates the intersections of disposability, democracy, capitalism, and environmental and social justice, past and present. How might these issues be illuminated by approaches drawn from the critical humanities including feminist, queer, indigenous, transnational, decolonial, post-humanist, dis/ability, and antiracist theories and methodologies? 

Apply to be a CHR Residential Research Fellow in Fall 2023 or Spring 2024! 

The Center for Humanities Research is welcoming applications to be a CHR fellow for fall 2023 and spring 2024. Fellows will be released from teaching obligations (2 courses) for the semester of their fellowship so that they may focus on writing and on participating actively in the intellectual life of the CHR.   

These semester-long fellowships provide two course-releases for tenure-line faculty.  

For PhD students, the fellowship covers one credit of in-state tuition, one semester of health insurance (for those who are previously/continuously enrolled and meet other requirements set by the Graduate Office), and a stipend of $11,500. 

The fellowship requires residency at the center (including participation in regular meetings with the cohort of fellows, public presentation of research, and attendance at all center events). We will accept fellows from as wide a range of disciplines, departments, and programs as possible working on projects related to our theme.   

Applications are due at noon on Monday, November 21, 2022. Please submit the entire application as a single PDF file (clearly labeled with your last name leading- ex. "Smith CHR Fellowship Application") to chr@gmu.edu. Find further details and instructions below. You may indicate a preference for fall or spring in your application, though we may not be able to honor it.  

Faculty: submit a brief, 2-page proposal, outlining the larger project, its relationship to the theme, specific plans for the study leave; a single page-CV; and a statement of acknowledgment or support from your chair or program director. Please also indicate when you last had a study leave. Tenured and tenure-track faculty across the university are eligible to apply.  

Advanced doctoral students: submit a brief, 2-page proposal, outlining the larger project, its relationship to the theme, and specific plans for the study leave; a single page-CV; and a brief letter of support (this can take the form of a brief email, it is NOT a formal recommendation letter) from your dissertation director. Please indicate if you’ve received any other fellowships or grants.