Call for Applications 2014-15
 
FISHER CENTER PREDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP
Campus War Machine: Sex and Debt
 
In keeping with the Fisher Center's mission of supporting research and
dialogue about gender through curricular, programmatic, and scholarly
projects, the Fisher Center Steering Committee announces a call for
applications for our 2014-2015 Fisher Center Predoctoral Fellowship. We
seek dissertation scholars and advanced candidates for the MFA whose
work critically engages the terms of our theme, Campus War Machine: Sex
and Debt. We are especially interested in candidates who would
contribute to the diversity of the campus.

Hobart and William Smith Colleges are committed to attracting and
supporting faculty and staff that fully represent the racial, ethnic,
and cultural diversity of the nation and actively seek applications from
under-represented groups. The Colleges do not discriminate on the basis
of race, color, religion, sex, marital status, national origin, age,
disability, veteran's status, sexual orientation, gender identity and
expression or any other protected status. HWS Colleges are a highly
selective residential liberal arts institution located in a small,
diverse city in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. With an
enrollment of approximately 2,200, the Colleges offer 62 majors and
minors from which students choose two areas of concentration, one of
which must be an interdisciplinary program. Creative and extensive
programs of international study and public service are also at the core
of the Colleges' mission.

Theme: In 2014-15, the Fisher Center considers the ways gender figures into the
wars being waged on, by, or in the name of higher education. There is a
growing discourse in the U.S. and globally on the systems of inequality
that underpin the educational system. Debt bondage, the casualization of
academic labor, the proliferation of rape culture, DOD funded research,
the privatization of public education, the subsumption of educational
practices to the dictates of market-driven technological innovations,
the inability for many youth to attend school in war-torn societies, and
the repression of student protests are all features of the low and
high-intensity wars being waged on college campuses. At the same time,
title IX sexual assault suits, organized resistance to corporate and
government surveillance, progressive research in the sciences and
humanities, and academic boycotts suggest that campuses are fighting
back. What are the invisible ways that college campuses produce and
transmit material, financial, environmental, gendered, and psychological
violences? Conversely, how does the campus, as a site for radical
thought, activism, and change, disrupt these violences?
 
Historical research on the role of the slave trade in funding major
universities, as well as the role of universities in reproducing a
specific ruling class, attends to the legacy of education as an
apparatus of power. The collaboration between universities and large
corporate firms, financial institutions, military--research projects,
pharmaceutical, bio-tech, and energy companies fuels the war machines
and profit--making industries of today's global powers. How does this
impact funding and research across disciplines and how does that shape
curriculum? The educational system is also a "home" for students,
educators and community members. The struggles they face are structured
by systems of sexism, ableism, classism, ageism, racism, colonial
settler systems and ideologies, militarization, capitalist scripts,
gendered violence, geopolitics, and the globalization of neoliberalism.
How might we learn from past struggles that took the university as a
primary site, from groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society
or campaigns such as those targeting apartheid and sweatshop labor? What
gains have been made in more recent decades as queer theorists and
politics have challenged suppositions of sex, gender, and embodiment?
And in what ways has new work on prisons, policing, and surveillance
drawn out not just the structural parallels between prisons and
universities but their fundamentally antagonistic positioning as two
sides of the capitalist state's coin?
 
In light of these shifting gendered campus battlegrounds, how are
radical feminists, activists, artists, scientists, and academic scholars
taking on these competing inequalities? What are historical and
contemporary examples of pedagogical techniques that provide a framework
for creating educational spaces that are free of political inequalities?
We seek to create a highly interdisciplinary research group of scholars
and artists who will engage these questions in creative ways as we
explore these gendered campus battlegrounds and global precarities of
educational opportunity.

Fellowship: The fellowship offers an opportunity to gain experience
teaching in private liberal arts institutions while completing thesis
work, and carries a stipend of $35,000.00. Fellows will teach one course
per semester related to their research area, attend Fisher Center
lectures and meetings, present one colloquium, and conduct some
administrative duties associated with the Visiting Scholars program.
Additionally, the Pre-Doctoral Fellow will receive a $4,000 research
stipend through her/his participation as a member of the Fisher Center
Research Fellows Group. This group is comprised of interdisciplinary
scholars who meet regularly to discuss the Fisher Center Research Theme:
Campus War Machine: Sex and Debt. 

Pre-Doctoral candidates nearingcompletion of the dissertation and MFA 
candidates who have completed their coursework and beginning work on
their thesis must submit a one-page description of scholarship, a short 
statement on teaching interests, up-to-date curriculum vitae, three letters
of reference, and a writing sample (e.g., chapter of dissertation), and, for MFA
candidates, a supplemental video or portfolio if relevant. Screening of
applications will begin on March 28, 2014 and will continue until the
position is filled. Completed applications should be sent to: Cadence
Whittier, Director, The Fisher Center for the Study of Women and Men,
Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY 14456. Email inquiries may
be sent to whittier@hws.edu <mailto:whittier@hws.edu>. 

Information about the Fisher Center can be found on our web
site: http://www.hws.edu/academics/fisher_center