IPRH is pleased to announce that its theme for the 2020–21 Fellowship year will be “The Global and Its Worlds.”
The global is practically a ubiquitous referent now. It’s used as a descriptive term, as a perspectival mode, as a scalar standard, as a valorization technique and, of course, as an indicator of the condition of the present. But what is the plurality of worlds which constitute the global? What kinds of world-making do events, communities, legal regimes, performative modes, memory work, languages, regions, mediascapes, imaginative practices, and ordinary people produce? Who is for the global, who is against the global, with what consequences and under what conditions? How do the meanings of the global change when we approach it from perspectives outside of the United States?
To pose the global in the context of multiple worlds is to acknowledge its power but also to suggest that it is not totalizing or universal -- or that if and when it is, it operates in tense and tender relationship with forces both from and beyond its ambit. We seek faculty and graduate fellows in and allied with humanities disciplines whose research critically engages both the global as on object of inquiry and worlds and world-making as dynamic processes across time, space and place.
IPRH is pleased to partner with the International Area Studies Centers and Thematic Programs (IASCTP) in shaping the call for IPRH Fellows. The IPRH seminar will be open to affiliates of these centers and programs who want to attend on a first come, first served basis. We will share information on the sign-up process once the Fellows have been chosen. In addition, IPRH will be partnering with IASCTP and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory on programming around “The Global and its Worlds” theme over the course of AY 2020–21.
Fellowship proposals will be evaluated on the following criteria: the scholarly excellence and promise of the project, the applicant’s preparation/readiness to undertake the proposed research, the quality of the narrative proposal, the relationship to the annual theme, the case made for how the IPRH experience/seminar would be beneficial to the project, and the letters of support.
IPRH welcomes applications from all disciplines and departments with an interest in humanities and humanities-inflected research. IPRH is especially interested in fostering interdisciplinary work, both within the humanistic disciplines, and between the humanities and the arts.
All Fellows are expected to maintain residence on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus during the award year, and to participate in IPRH activities, including the yearlong Fellows Seminar.
Complete fellowship application guidelines for 2020–21 can be found on the IPRH website (Faculty / Graduate Students). Applications must be submitted through an online application portal. No paper or emailed applications or letters of recommendation will be accepted.
Deadline: 5:00 p.m., December 6, 2019. The submission portal will open on September 1st.
Questions about these fellowships may be addressed to IPRH Deputy Director Nancy Castro (ncastro@illinois.edu).