Institute for Humanities Research call for fellows
When Dorothy Gale utters the last line of "The Wizard of Oz," “There’s no place like home,” there seems little doubt that she speaks out of her joy at being safely ensconced on her family’s farm in America’s Heartland. However, Dorothy’s simple phrase is open to a wide variety of interpretations because of one word – home – that can connote security, belonging, memory, and comfort, or arouse feelings of dread, alienation, and pain.
The purpose of the 2013-2014 Institute for Humanities Research Fellowship at Arizona State University is to encourage serious critical explorations of home as a term that resonates on cultural, emotional, intellectual, religious, philosophical, political and spiritual levels – as a place, a space, a myth, a source of identity, a promised land, a state of being, a war zone, an impossibility, and/or an inalienable right.
We invite humanities scholars from various disciplines to apply for the IHR fellowship to conduct research projects from multiple disciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives that illuminate and enrich our understanding of how the concept of home informs and is informed by geography and history, identities and ideologies, imagined and lived experiences. Projects may explore what it means to create a home or to be without home. For example, are diasporic communities without a home, or is home more real and vital because it resides in culture, history, and memory? And while the “homeless,” are obviously without a physical home, what about those who reside in literal and figurative borderlands, for whom feeling at home is always contingent, always at risk?
The IHR Fellows program provides funding for a research team to engage in a year of research related to the annual theme, share their research with the academic community, and produce a strong application for an external grant. Applications due Monday, March 4.
The Visiting Fellows program is for scholars from other institutions of higher education, in the U.S. and abroad, to spend the spring semester in residence at the Institute for Humanities Research (IHR), participating in the intellectual life of the IHR and the university community. The Visiting Fellowship provides the opportunity to conduct research, collaborate with ASU faculty, and write. The Visiting Fellowship also promotes an exchange of ideas among visitors and ASU Fellows also working on the annual theme. Visitors will participate in weekly fellows meetings and give public lectures and seminars on their research topics while in residence at the IHR. Applications due Monday, Feb. 18.
On Thursday, Jan. 17 there will be a Fellows Program Workshop. Please join to learn more about the program, the application process, and to hear from past fellows: Ben Hurlbut, assistant professor, School of Life Sciences; Sujey Vega, assistant professor, School of Social Transformation; and Rachel Bowditch, assistant professor, School of Theatre and Film.
Click here for more information about the 2013-14 IHR Fellows program and for application details.