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Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Call for Proposals: University of Minnesota–Social Science Research Council


Call for Proposals:
University of Minnesota–Social Science Research Council
Interdisciplinary Dissertation Proposal Development Program

For Social Science and Humanities Graduate Students

The IAS announces the inaugural year competition for the Interdisciplinary Dissertation Proposal Development program as part of the Capacity Building for 21st-Century Scholarship Dissertation Proposal Development training program made possible by a grant from the Social Science Research Council, with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Twelve University of Minnesota social science and humanities PhD students will be selected to participate in the 2017 program. The program involves two interdisciplinary, faculty-led training workshops as well as exploratory summer research. The SSRC covers all travel and lodging costs associated with the Spring and Fall workshops in addition to stipends of up to $5,000 for summer research and living expenses.

Applications are due Monday, March 13, 2017. Students will be notified of acceptance by April 3. Application form is here. Please note that you cannot partially complete the form and save it for later. Use the questions below to prepare your answers before you start the form.

Eligibility Criteria

  • Applicants must currently be pre-ABD* students matriculated in a PhD program in the social sciences or humanities at the University of Minnesota, most likely in their second year.
    • Progress within the graduate program:
      Applicants must be planning to submit dissertation research grant applications for external funding (e.g. NSF, SSRC, NEH, Wenner-Gren, Spencer Foundation, Fulbright, Woodrow Wilson, Mellon) for fall 2017 or early 2018 deadlines.
    • Applicants must be on track to complete dissertation proposals after the fall workshop but before the end of the 2017-2018 academic year.
  • Awardees are obligated to attend two intensive workshops, one in spring (June 7-11, 2017, Pittsburgh, PA) and one in fall (September 13-17, 2017, Minneapolis, MN), and to spend summer 2017 conducting at least six weeks of summer exploratory research or other intellectual work aimed at developing their dissertation proposal.
  • Students who have already submitted dissertation proposals to their departments for approval or to funding agencies for support of their dissertation research are not eligible to apply.
*In special circumstances, students who are recently ABD and have not yet submitted their dissertation proposals may apply, but only with a letter of explanation and endorsement from their advisor.

Selection Criteria

Applications to the DPD program competition will be evaluated on the following criteria:
  • Potential significance of the dissertation topic.
  • Applicant’s readiness for proposal development.
  • Interest in and potential benefit from engaging with other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.
  • Connection between summer work plans and proposal development.
The advisors of those selected for the DPD program will be expected to participate in a meeting prior to the June workshop and an evaluation after the September workshop, when the student has completed a draft dissertation proposal. We encourage you to discuss this expectation with your advisor in advance.

Application Information

Applications will be submitted online via Google forms. Prepare the following materials.

Information about Proposed Dissertation Project

  • Introduce your dissertation project for an academic reader who is unfamiliar with your particular topic, region of study, and disciplinary approach. What is the central research question, problem, or puzzle that you want to investigate? Why is your project important? (up to 400 words)
  • How do you expect your dissertation project can draw from and contribute to existing literature about the topic in a novel or interesting way? (up to 400 words)
  • List up to 20 scholarly publications or texts that have most significantly informed the formulation of your research topic, questions, theories, and methods.
  • What sources, sites, and/or time periods do you propose to examine as a part of your dissertation research, and what are your justifications for choosing them? (up to 300 words)
  • What techniques of investigation might you employ to carry out your research, and how do you expect they will enable you to collect, identify, interpret, and analyze the sources of information (interviews, texts, images, surveys, etc.), for your dissertation research? (up to 400 words)
  • Summarize as best you can where you feel most confident in the progress you have made thus far in developing your dissertation research project and what issues or questions you must still resolve in order to prepare a dissertation research proposal. Explain how you hope participating in the DPD program might help you to resolve these issues. (up to 250 words)

Summer Research Plans and Budget

  • What exploratory research or intellectual work do you propose to conduct this summer with DPD support, and how do you anticipate these efforts will contribute to the development of your dissertation project? If you have already conducted preliminary research for this project, what further do you hope to learn from additional work this summer? (up to 400 words)
  • Research start and end dates, and anticipated research site and location.
  • You may upload a detailed research budget for up to $5,000 to cover living and research expenses, including research travel. Living expenses over $3,000 will be approved only in exceptional cases supported by detailed justification. (up to 250 words)

Additional Information

  • In addition to your current doctoral training, how might your personal background or non-academic experiences inform the perspectives you will bring to your proposed dissertation project? (up to 250 words)
  • Language Self-Assessment: For each language, list institution of study, levels, proficiency level, and total duration of study.
  • Previous, Current, and Pending Funding: List all scholarships or fellowships you have received in support of graduate training or research while in graduate school, including name of award, duration of award, amount received, and purpose:
  • List all other funding sources to which you have applied, or expect to apply, to support pre-dissertation research in summer 2017. If you are selected for the SSRC DPD program, you will be required to notify the SSRC DPD program of any additional funding you might receive. Include source, date applied/awarded, start/end dates, amount requested/received, and purpose of funds:

Curriculum vitae

You will upload a 2-page CV. You can find models of academic CVs here.
Submit your application here. Please note that you cannot partially complete the form and save it for later.
For questions or additional information, contact ias@umn.edu. Please put ‘SSRC’ in the subject line of your email.

C&I 8645 Indigenous Revitalization: Activist Research Methods FALL 2017


C&I 8645 Indigenous Revitalization: Activist Research Methods will be offered for the Fall 2017 semester. This interdisciplinary course draws on the sociolinguistics, applied linguists (documentation) and ideas of unsettling colonialism through building community. Dr. Mary Hermes will teach this course on Wednesdays from 4:45PM- 7:20PM. 

See Flyer Below for more details
 

GWSS Colloquium Series present: Boys in the Bubble

The GWSS 2016-2017 Colloquium Series and the Critical Disability Studies Collaborative proudly present: 
Boys in the Bubble:Sexual Liberation, Disability, and Prime Time Television
Invited Lecture by Julie Passanante Elman
Friday, February 24th, 2017. 1:30pm-3:00pm. Ford 400.

This talk analyzes the cultural significance of the “bubble boy” by surveying representations of “real” bubble boys (David Vetter III and Ted DeVita) alongside an early example of a “disease-of-the-week” made-for-TV movie, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976), starring a young John Travolta as Tod, a teenager with a compromised immune system who falls in love with the girl next door. By considering how a medical interest story became reimagined as a teen romantic drama, Passanante Elman discusses how rehabilitative edutainment offered an ethical critique of technology through its representation of sexual liberation. Analyzing the cultural requirements of achieving manhood reveals how heavily narratives of liberated sexuality in the 1970s relied upon ableist ideas of overcoming disability, and by pairing The Boy in the Plastic Bubble with a more contemporary example, Glee (2009-2015),we see just how entangled narratives of overcoming disability, heterosexual love, and coming of age continue to be.

Julie Passanante Elman received her Ph.D. in American Studies from the George Washington University in 2009. She is currently Assistant Professor of Women's & Gender Studies at the University of Missouri. Her monograph, Chronic Youth: Disability, Sexuality, and US Media Cultures of Rehabilitation (2014) shows how the representational figure of the teenager became a cultural touchstone for shifting notions of able-bodiedness, heteronormativity, and neoliberalism in the post-sexual liberation era.



Founded in the fall of 2015, the Critical Disability Studies Collaborative (CDSC) is an interdisciplinary group of university students, faculty, and staff dedicated to advancing the rigorous study of disability as a socio-cultural and political site of meaning making. For more information check us out on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/umncdsc/

ISA Event "Access, Excess: Medicines, Markets, and the Liberation of the Copy"


THE INSTITUTE for ADVANCED STUDY is announce their upcoming IAS collaborative event, “Access, Excess: Medicines, Markets, and the Liberation of the Copy.” This event explores the implications of imagining access to medicines as a project of “democratizing” access to the market. This event will take place on March 2, 2017 at 3:30 PM in Ellie and Tom Crosby Seminar Room, 240 Northrop. Click here for more information.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

PROF SCOTT LADERMAN (PhD ’05) EVENT

PROF SCOTT LADERMAN (PhD ’05) will be discussing his second book “Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing” in Professor Elaine Tyler May’s class on Tuesday, February 21, at 3:30 PM in Folwell 116.  This event is open to the public.

MAKING ROOM EXHIBITIONS

MAKING ROOM


What
The Regis Center for Art presents Making Room, a group exhibition of sculptural works curated by fourth year undergraduate student Elise Armani. Artists featured in the show include Anna Campbell, Paige Carlson, Michael David Franklin, Marc LaPointe, Daniel Luedtke, Rosemary McBride, Emmett Ramstad, Alaura Seidl and Dustin Yager.

Where
Quarter Gallery
Regis Center for Art | University of Minnesota
405 21st Avenue South, Minneapolis

When
March 28 - April 22, 2017
Gallery hours are 11:00 AM - 7:00 PM | Tuesday- Saturday

Public Reception
Saturday, April 8th, 7:00 to 10:00 pm
Free and open to the public

Parking, Accessibility, Cost
Parking is available nearby on the street, at the 21st Avenue South ramp, 5th Street South lot, and 19th Avenue South ramp; hourly or event rates apply. These parking locations and the Regis Center for Art are wheelchair-accessible. Exhibitions and related events are free and open to the public.

Sponsorship
Exhibitions in the Quarter Gallery are sponsored by the Department of Art and the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota. Research for this exhibition was supported by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program at the University of Minnesota.

Description
(Minneapolis) -- The Regis Center for Art presents Making Room March 28 through April 22, 2017. The exhibition features work by 9 contemporary artists living and working in the Midwest who explore the relationships between objects, the body, queerness and the domestic space. The included artists work across a range of contemporary art practices including ceramics, performance, quilting, and sculpture and are united by their common interest in permeating established boundaries that divide the personal and political, the private and public, and the functional and artistic object. Challenging the way we inhabit and move through space both physically and conceptually, the works raise questions of access, mobility, and the way our identities shape our experience of place.

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Anna Campbell, A Pocket, A Cue, A Shot, detail, 2012

Anna Campbell
Anna Campbell’s work deconstructs otherwise clearly legible signifiers of masculinity and heteronormativity in the service of illustrating alternate histories of attachment and desire.  Recent solo exhibits have been held at BOSI Contemporary in New York, Tractionarts in Los Angeles, and the Window Into Houston at the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston. Recent group exhibitions have been held at Seoul National University of Science and Technology in South Korea, Yale University, and A.I.R. Gallery in New York. She earned a BA from the College of Wooster and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Campbell is Associate Professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

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Paige Carlson, Goodbye to my Body, detail, 2016

Paige Carlson
Paige Carlson’s work studies uncanny objects that re-present. She often uses the body, objects that mimic the body, cartoon logic, queer pairings, and the slight bubbling of the hysterical, to create a practice of discernment in uncertain spaces. She has exhibited work at The Soap Factory, Larson Gallery, Yeah Maybe Gallery and Bryant Lake Bowl and is in her final semester of a BFA in Studio Arts at the University of Minnesota.

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Michael David Franklin, Asimile Quilt #2, 2016

Michael David Franklin
Michael David Franklin uses quiltmaking to explore what it means to live in a body. He makes quilt tops by disassembling shirts, pants, and dresses sourced from thrift stores and using the pattern lines of these disassembled pieces to improvise organic design and form. His quilt backs consist of bedsheets, pillowcases, and other found household fabrics. Inspired by the improvisational quilts of Gee’s Bend and the graphic prints of Eduardo Paolozzi, Franklin’s work repurposes everyday textiles to explore how bodies inhabit public and private spaces, and how these styles of inhabitation relate to social and cultural life. He completed a PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota in 2011. He lives in Chicago.

Marc LaPointe, I Know We Both Won’t Say A Word, detail, 2014

Marc LaPointe
Marc LaPointe is a mover, thinker, and hoarder. His interdisciplinary art practice excavates materials from his hometown in northern Idaho to explore uncanny relationships to found materials. Rather than providing answers, his studio practice is empowered by the goal of inciting questions within himself and viewers that cause reflection on how one physically inhabits the world. For additional information and past projects, please visit marclapointe.virb.com.

Daniel Luedtke, Curtain of Negative Shapes and Derivative Bodies, detail, 2013

Daniel Luedtke
Daniel Luedtke lives, labors and loves in Chicago and makes art between several mediums such as drawing, music, painting, sculpture and video. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute in 2013 and has exhibited work nationally and internationally in spaces such the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), the Tom of Finland Foundation (Los Angeles), Museum of Art and Design (New York), and NP3 Gallery (Netherlands). For additional information about past projects, please visit dnml.org.

Rosemary McBride
Rosemary McBride is an interdisciplinary artist and domestic worker born and raised in the Twin Cities. Her work is part of a broader desire for gnosis and centers the idea that belief is a tool. In her present work, using mundane material becomes a part of bringing everyday life and practices into spiritual context. Weaving became an important media for her due to its ability to provide dense cross-cultural insight to the inseparable histories of gender and labor. Additionally her interest in weaving stems from its connection to the history of programming linguistics and therefore its ability to encode information and meaning into efficient and beautiful forms. She also works in multiple 2D mediums, video, music, and poetry and a broad sampling of her past work can be found at rsmrymcb.tumblr.com.   

Emmett Ramstad, Under Garment, 2014

Emmett Ramstad
Emmett Ramstad is an artist whose work investigates the intimate ordinary through sculptural representations of bodies and their detritus. Ramstad lives and works in Minneapolis and has exhibited artworks nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Rochester Art Center. He is a recipient of several grants and fellowships including a Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists, an Art and Change grant through The Leeway Foundation, and a Professional Development Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Hiis work is in collections at the Weisman Art Museum, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and Second State Press. Ramstad received an MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and is a lecturer in the Department of Art at University of Minnesota.

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Alaura Seidl, Daily Ramifications, 2017

Alaura Seidl
Alaura Seidl is a transdisciplinary artist and nonbinary trans person interested in the social aspects of art making and the creative dimensions of liberation. Alaura is a teaching artist at heart and serves as the Director of the ArtWrite Collective in Madison, Wisconsin, where they experiment with how art might contribute to matters of equity and social justice.

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Dustin Yager, Untitled (Trash Can), 2015

Dustin Yager
Dustin Yager is a ceramic artist whose installation and functional work deals with popular perceptions of class, pottery, taste and all that goes along with it. His work has been exhibited nationally, and he has given presentations about his work and academic research at Pecha Kucha Chicago, the National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts, the Soap Factory, the American Craft Council, and elsewhere. Yager earned a MA degree in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and holds a BA from Carleton College. Now living and working in Brooklyn, New York, he is originally from Wyoming.

Mellon Sawyer Graduate Fellowships

Mellon Sawyer Graduate Fellowships

University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Department of Political Science

Description:

Professors Robert Nichols and Nancy Luxon of the Department of Political Science invite applications for three (3) graduate fellows for the Mellon Sawyer seminar series The Politics of Land: Colony, Property, Ecology.

We seek applicants for:
1.      One fellowship during the 2017 summer term (equivalent to a 25% advanced status RA position); and
2.      Two fellowships during the 2017/18 academic year (each equivalent to a 50% advanced status RA position).

Graduate fellows will work on this year-long John E. Sawyer Seminar, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. They will be hosted by the Department of Political Science, and directed by Professors Luxon and Nichols.

The seminar seeks to develop an integrated approach to the politics of land, framed by three themes: (1) Colony: How has a history of colonization left its mark on key concepts of legal and political thought, such as sovereignty, territory, jurisdiction, and land? What comparative difference does it make to conceptualize the politics of land through the framework of colonialism? (2) Property: How must prevailing theories of property be rethought to consider the specific economic and political struggles associated with land and displacement? (3) Ecology: How might the politics of land be reconceived in a more pluralistic, cross-cultural manner so as to include ‘alternative ecologies’ beyond the currently prevailing frameworks? Our primary focus will be on the conceptual architecture of these problems: how they are framed and analyzed, what analogies and comparisons are used to discuss them, and what comparative difference it makes to situate them in one context over another.

Qualifications:
Required Qualifications: Full-time, registered advanced status doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota. Excellent writing, analytical, and organizational skills.  To qualify for “advanced status,” the applicant must have:
1.      Completed all course work and thesis credits;
2.      No incompletes in course work; and
3.      Held prospectus meeting. 

Preferred Qualifications: Graduate training in Political Science, Political Theory/Philosophy, American Indian Studies, or related fields.

Applicants should demonstrate a research agenda that connects well with the themes of the seminar.

Duties / Responsibilities:
Graduate fellows will contribute to the organization and administration of the seminar, and will participate in all scholarly activities associated with the Sawyer Seminar, including workshops and lectures.

Application Instructions:
Applicants should email the following materials to rbnichol@umn.edu and cutt0019@umn.edu:
1.      Cover letter, that includes:
a.      A summary of the dissertation;
b.     Addresses how the candidate’s research aligns with the seminar’s theme; and
c.      Confirms the advanced status of the applicant.
2.      Curriculum vitae.

Additional materials may be requested from candidates at a future date.

The application deadline is March 3, 2017.

For questions about the position, please contact Prof. Robert Nichols (rbnichol@umn.edu).