Emory: Visiting Fellows Program 2024-2025

The Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Emory University

DEMOCRACY: Past, Present, Future

Call for Applications

Visiting Fellows Program 2024-2025

The Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry (FCHI) at Emory University seeks applications for its Visiting Fellows Program. The program will host up to two fellows from local colleges and universities whose work advances our Center’s annual theme “Democracy: Past, Present, Future.” Fellows will participate in a weekly interdisciplinary seminar and help to plan a Spring conference.  Fellows participating in the yearlong seminar and sharing their work will receive an honorarium of $1,500. If space allows, fellows on sabbatical from their institution may be eligible for full time residency (office space) in the Fox Center.

Democracy: Past, Present, Future

How do the Humanities help us examine and understand Democracy? In a time of intensified political unrest across the globe our theme invites research projects that interrogate the shifting contours of democracy and struggles surrounding democratic values and rights in societies past, present, and future. In the U.S. 2024 marks the one-hundred-year anniversary of 1924 Indian Citizenship Act and Immigration Act, the sixty-year anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, and a presidential election. Around the world debates around the future of democracy and the rise of fascism abound. How can humanistic inquiry help us critically examine these pressing questions?

Democracy is measured, on one hand, by the state of political institutions and governance practices: policies, elections, legal apparatus, and judicial mechanisms. At the same time, art, education, and public cultures provide spaces where democratic belonging and freedom are actively and creatively shaped by people through debate, dissent, representation, and dialogue. Humanities research and creative works also play a critical role in analyzing and advancing democratic ideals and institutions.

We invite scholars whose research interests are resonant with such a panoramic view of democracy as shaped and transformed by a variety of forces. We especially welcome projects investigating the theme across international contexts and/or through interdisciplinary approaches spanning the humanities and humanistic social sciences and employing a range of methodologies and approaches including public and digital humanities.

We envision that fellows may pursue research on a range of historical, contemporary, social, cultural, literary, and philosophical questions about democracy, including but not limited to:

·        What issues and crises have recent populist movements and authoritarian leadership sparked for rethinking liberal democracy?

·        How do we think about the fundamental inclusions and exclusions of liberal democratic regimes?

·        How are the interests of and issues faced by minority communities addressed within contemporary democratic discourses?

·        What are the racialized, gendered and sexual imaginaries that govern both dominant and counter-hegemonic cultural productions that subtend democratic politics?

·        What forms does political resistance take under eroding conditions of democracy?

·        How do literary works reconfigure our sense of life and agency under conditions of political violence?

·        How do we analyze the psycho-social imperatives of totalitarian regimes, and how is collective memory, trauma, affect and identity deployed within such political formations?

·        In the age of transnational capital flows, how do the global migration crises call into question the state-centered understandings of democratic citizenship?

·        In what ways have new networks of information and technologies such as AI and social media transformed democratic processes?

The Fox Center invites applications from candidates who are eager to be part of a community of scholars engaged in a broad range of conversations on Democracy in an inter-disciplinary setting. All fellows are required to participate in the Fox Center’s weekly Research Seminar (Wednesdays 12-1:30pm), presenting their research at one of these meetings. Visiting fellows may also collaborate in the planning of Fox Center programming and participate in professional development sessions.

This program is designed for faculty from local colleges and universities.

To complete the online application, you will need a Letter of Endorsement from your Chair. Please have your Chair email the letter directly to [email protected] with APPLICANT: (Your Name) in the subject line.

The following attachments (see Specific Instructions below) must be ready to be uploaded:

•     Project Abstract / Project Description
•     Curriculum Vitae

Deadline for application: The deadline for submissions and all required documents is Wednesday, January 31, 2024.  It is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure that all materials have been uploaded to Interfolio and submitted.  Incomplete applications cannot be considered after the deadline.           

SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS

•  Project Abstract / Project Description:  Please place together in one document file for uploading.

               – Project Abstract:  100 words maximum, 12-point type, double-spaced
          – Project Description:  1000 words maximum, 12-point type, double-spaced  Applicants should describe the specific research planned for the period of the FCHI Fellowship, explaining the basic humanistic ideas, problems, or questions to be explored.  Included should be explanations of the objectives and significance of the project, and the methodology to be employed.  The project description should make clear any preliminary work already completed, the present state of the proposed research, and any stages to be completed after the FCHI Fellowship ends.  Applicants should detail the expected results of research conducted during the Fellowship period, including the ultimate forms of public presentation of their results (books, journal articles, lectures, papers, public humanities projects, etc.). In your project description, please include your vision for interdisciplinary contribution and engagement.

•   Curriculum Vitae:  no more than 3 pages

Please remember that the Letter of Endorsement from your Chair should be sent directly to [email protected] with APPLICANT: (Your Name) in the subject line

ACCEPTANCE PROCEDURES
Upon notification of an FCHI Visiting Fellows Program Award, the Fellow must agree to:

(a)   attend all Fellows’ lunches, lectures, and programs sponsored by the FCHI during their fellowship;
(b)   submit a final report of progress at the end of the Fellowship;
(c)   acknowledge the FCHI in all work resulting from research and writing done during the Fellowship;                        
(d)   immediately notify the FCHI of any other support or of any conflicts with the restrictions and conditions of this Fellowship Program;
(e)   for three years following the Fellowship, provide written reports to the Director of the FCHI detailing how their teaching and research has been influenced by the time spent during the Fellowship.

For more information: https://apply.interfolio.com/136675