Call for Proposals for 2015 - 16 CONCEPTS, FIGURES, ART FORMS
A New Series of PAL/FHI Faculty Seminars at Duke
DEADLINE: April 15 , 2015
We are delighted to invite proposals for two PAL/FHI interdisciplinary seminars under the rubric CONCEPTS, FIGURES, ART FORMS . These seminars have been developed to honor the humanities’ commitment to historically based knowledge. Thus, all proposals should have a historical dimension . The seminars should convene in the academic year 2015/16 , beginning in the fall semester . The “ Concepts, Figures, Art Forms ” collaboration between PAL and FHI is a central element of a new series of FHI Seminars in Historical, Global, and Emerging Humanities , or “ Humanities Futures , ” a 3-year Mellon grant initiative concerned with the state and direction of the humanities in the light of the interdisciplinary developments of recent decades.
For more information, please see: http://fhi.duke.edu/programs/humanities-futures
Please send applications to fhi@duke.edu. Make sure to put “Concepts, Figures, Art Forms” in the subject line. Each proposal should be 1 - 2 pages long. The two co-conveners should each supply a brief (max 3 pages) CV. Proposals should focus on ONE of the following categories:
Concepts : An investigation of a key concept in the humanities, as they appear to us now and/or as they have been seen in history . Examples might be : judgment, knowledge, imagination, responsibility, the humanities, others, death, love, realism, modernism, freedom, the body, sexuality , oppression, subjection .
Art forms: A n art form, ranging fr om the largest to the smallest. Examples might be: music, painting, photography, opera, film, the novel, the lyric, melodrama, portraiture, ekphrasis, the sonnet . The seminar should include a historical dimension.
Figures: Proposals should focus on a figure with significant interdisciplinary reach. Again , the seminar should have a historical and/or historicizing dimension. One could imagine seminars on intellectual figures (Virgil, Aquinas, Diderot, Rousseau, Goethe, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein, Saussure, Du Bois, Arendt, Beauvoir), political figures (Julius Caesar, Louis XIV, Catherine the Great, Hitler), writers and artists (Sappho, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Manet, Proust, Woolf, Hitchcock, Welles), or scientists (Newton, Einstein, Oppenheimer).
Format : Each seminar should have two co-directors, usually from different departments , and consist of a total of 5-8 faculty members and 2 graduate students. Undergraduates may of course be included when relevant (an example would be an undergraduate working on a senior thesis in the field of the seminar). The seminar should meet bi-weekly or monthly for an academic year, to discuss reading, share work, watch and discuss films or other art works. The co-convenors should include in their proposal a list of faculty members committed to the project. All proposals should explain how graduate students and/or undergraduates will be recruited. Each “ Concepts, Figures, Art Forms ” Seminar will have an annual budget of $25,000. The co-directors will receive a research supplement, but no teaching release. Graduate students will also receive a modest research fund. Seminar funds can be used for speakers, catering, and other
PAL 
Leave a Reply