Daily Archives: 4 May 2016

University of Kent: Research Assistant – Call For Applications

Research Assistant
University of Kent – School of History

Location: Canterbury
Salary: £26,537 to £30,738 per annum
Hours: Full Time
Contract Type: Contract / Temporary

If you have specialised knowledge in the history of the early modern European corporation and a proven record of archival work, this could be a superb opportunity to develop the research and impact agendas of a flagship project for the University of Kent.

The Centre for the Political Economies of International Commerce is inviting applications for two Research Assistant positions, funded for two years, one of which will involve up to four hours of teaching a week.

You will contribute as a member of a dynamic research team working on the Leverhulme Trust funded project, led by Dr William Pettigrew, about the ‘History of the English Trading Corporation and the Global Determinants of the English Constitution’. As well as conducting archival research around the world, you will participate fully in the activities of the research team, attend the project’s seminars and conferences, and assist Dr Pettigrew’s research and public outreach agendas.

Along with a first degree, or equivalent, in a relevant subject area, you will have experience of giving research papers at conferences and seminars and the ability to communicate effectively and with enthusiasm.

Although the project focuses mainly on seventeenth century English trading corporations, you are also encouraged to apply if you specialise in researching the history of European trading corporations in the seventeenth century.

These are exciting positions combining experience of outreach, research, and teaching and thereby presenting a wonderful opportunity for career development and research entrepreneurship.

The Centre for the Political Economies of International Commerce within the School of History was founded in 2013 to showcase and develop the work of Dr William Pettigrew about the politics of international business. The Centre hosts a £1 million research grant from the Leverhulme Trust.

The School of History at the University of Kent is dedicated to excellence in research, learning and teaching. The School contains twenty nine full-time academic staff, half of whom have been appointed since 2001. The latest Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) placed the School 8th nationally for Research Intensity, and our students work alongside lecturers and tutors who are not just excellent teachers, but world-class researchers actively working at the forefront of their chosen field.

Further Information

Closing date for applications: 30 May, 2016.

Interviews are to be held: 17 June, 2016.

Informal enquiries can be made to director of the project, Dr William Pettigrew (w.pettigrew@kent.ac.uk). If you require further information regarding the application process please contact Teresa Bubb, Resourcing Adviser, at T.C.Bubb@kent.ac.uk.

Please note – applications must be made via the University’s online application system. You will be required to fill in the main details section of the application form as well as upload your CV and a summary document. Your summary should provide clear evidence and examples demonstrating where you meet the essential criteria for the post. We recommend a maximum of 4 x A4 sides for this document.

CVs or details sent directly to the department or via email cannot be considered.

For full details and to apply, please visit: https://www11.i-grasp.com/fe/tpl_kent01.asp?newms=jj&id=40036&aid=14243

Crossroads V: Bodily Modernities. Comparing, Intersecting, Dismembering – Call For Papers

Crossroads V: Bodily Modernities. Comparing, Intersecting, Dismembering
University of Massachusetts Amherst
October 7-9, 2016

Conference Website

Bodies and issues of corporeality are variously entangled with the concept of the modern. Conventional definitions of the modern age place its onset variously at the Christian Reformation, the European Enlightenment, or the Industrial Revolution. Conversely, across many disciplines, there have been various attempts to challenge the temporal and geographic scope of Eurocentric conceptions of modernity. We propose that epistemological, ontological, and aesthetic definitions of modernity foreground the importance of the body (in its many forms), while placing the corporeal in relation to larger social, cultural, and political frameworks which inscribe themselves on it. This intersection leads to a non-linear, global concept of the modern, not limited to the European teleology of progress. As an instance of such intersection, Ernst H. Kantorowicz’s idea of the king’s two bodies (1957), the natural body and the perpetual crown, has helped explain the structures of monarchy and sovereignty during the medieval period in Europe. By contrast, in Slavery and the Culture of Taste (2011), Simon Gikandi has foregrounded the division between body and spirit to explain the establishment of a specific discourse on taste and aesthetics in relation to slavery as constitutive of modernity. Lastly, Alexander Beecroft’s An Ecology of World Literature: From Antiquity to the Present Day (2015) points toward alternative and more inclusive comparative methods for discussing and expanding our understanding of literary canons and periodizations as bodies of works beyond Eurocentric disciplinary thought.

In this year’s edition of the Crossroads Conference at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, we seek to join this conversation and continue exploring the interconnections between concepts of the modern and modernity through an engagement with bodies and related questions of corporeality and embodiment. By investigating the multiple relations between bodies and modernity, we seek to understand and question the meanings of modern and modernity in different geographical and temporal coordinates both outside and within Europe, before and after the fifteenth century. Questions include but are not limited to:

How can bodies (individual, cultural, social, political, religious, textual) shed light on different and perhaps interrelated modernities? How do modernities shape and impact bodies, and how do bodies respond to modernities? How does Michel Foucault’s notion of biopower or Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics enable us to talk about or challenge the category of the modern in its alternative definitions? In what ways can Slavoj Žižek’s and Kojin Karatani’s reflections on the relationship between late capitalism and the body inform our periodization of different modernities?

We invite papers that explore how bodies enable reconfigurations and pluralization of modernity and that employ literature and other media to trace such alternative models. We welcome papers situated in different areas and topics of research, including:

  • Gender, Sexuality, and Queer Studies
  • Race and ethnicity
  • Disability Studies
  • Bodies and consumerism
  • Visual arts, body arts, and performance
  • Carnival and the carnivalesque
  • Body, violence, and war
  • Trauma and memory studies
  • Translation studies and the body
  • Mechanical and technological bodies
  • Posthumanism
  • Politics and bodies
  • Questions of visibility and invisibility in relation to bodies (dominant/non-dominant)
  • Social movements as bodies
  • Movement of bodies through the colonial route (slave trade/ exiles/ intellectual internationalism)
  • Travelling and migrating bodies
  • Religion and theology as bodies
  • Comparative literature/World literature
  • Global Modernisms

Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words to crosscon@umass.edu by June 14, 2016. Abstracts must include full name, contact information, institutional affiliation, and a short bio.

Participants will be notified of their acceptance by the beginning of July.