Typically the Center for Cultural Analysis will sponsor five fellowships for Rutgers faculty, five fellowships for Rutgers graduate students, and two Postdoctoral Associate positions for external scholars. All seminar participants will have access to the CCA’s resources and will be expected to participate in and to present their work during CCA seminars, which meet regularly throughout the academic year.
Theme for 2023-25: Sound Studies
CCA will explore aspects of Sound Studies over two consecutive years of sponsored seminars and related programming. In 2023-24 the theme will be “Voice: Sound, Technology, and Performance,” while in 2024-25 the focus shifts to “Resonance: Sound among the Disciplines.”
Sound Studies is an emerging interdisciplinary field that has drawn from musicology, ethnomusicology, performance studies, media studies, anthropology, gender studies, literary and cultural studies, ethnic and indigenous studies, religion, animal studies, classics, and philosophy. It has been especially hospitable to Black scholars and performers with expertise in orature and other vocal traditions.
For the 2023-24 seminar, we invite scholars, performers, and other practitioners in the arts, humanities, and sciences to think with us about the history, metaphysics, and expressive range of voice as an artistic and phenomenological category in world (and, in some discourses, other-world) experience. What is the relationship of voice to the body in these various senses? What is voice relative to the human as an onto-anthropological unit? Relative to a new era’s new technologies? Relative to audition as a historical or cultural practice? As easily as these queries are posed, recent scholarship and artistic performance suggest they are not so plainly answered.
Reflecting on these questions, the seminar will meet biweekly during the semester to discuss emerging trends in the field as well as each member’s work-in-progress. Leading artists and scholars will join us periodically to enrich and broaden our considerations of the voice, its histories and futures. A final conference and series of performances will cap the year’s work in the seminar and help prepare for the 2024-25 seminar focused on resonance.
The 2024-25 seminar will entail a more expansive exploration of “Resonance: Sound Among the Disciplines.” Whereas the study of voice pursues an imagined materiality in the sonic field (i.e. the voice as sound object), resonance might be understood as an imagined immateriality, an aural effect in the sonic field that, try as it might, cannot escape its materialization in bodily, architectural, and environmental concerns across the modern disciplines. This analytic difference between voice and resonance is not to be too much taken for granted, however. Indeed, the question of these terms’ distinction—of the one as a causal force or drive in sound and the other as an effect of sound to the ear—is sure to be covered, and debated, over the proposed two years of sound’s urgent historical and cultural analysis.
2023-24 Seminar - Voice: Sound, Technology, Performance
Directed by: Andrew Parker and Maurice Wallace
2024-25 Seminar - Resonance: Sound across the Disciplines
Directed by Xiaojue Wang and Carter Mathes
Priority will be given to applicants whose work engages with both years’ themes.
FACULTY FELLOWSHIPS
Faculty members may apply for a fellowship in connection with the annual theme. The CCA will grant up to five faculty fellowships awarded in connection with the seminar, in the form of a course-release in either the Fall or Spring semester (course-releases are supported by funding for instructional replacement arranged through the Fellow’s department and paid by CCA, generally at the amount of $5000). Faculty who will hold other fellowships (NEH, Guggenheim, sabbatical, etc.) are not eligible to receive funded fellowships from the CCA, but faculty who will be on fellowship or sabbatical may apply to be appointed as unfunded fellows. Applications from regular, full-time faculty members should be submitted for approval to their department chairs, who will in turn forward completed applications to the CCA. Department chairs must indicate their willingness to accept the terms of support for a course release. Chairs may support more than one application.
GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS
Five graduate student fellowships will be awarded by the CCA to students who are in the process of writing their dissertations (i.e. coursework has been completed). Graduate Fellowships grant $23,000 and tuition remission for up to 3 research credits per semester for the year. Graduate Fellows will be expected to attend all events related to the main seminar and to participate actively in the public functions of the CCA. Graduate Fellows may not hold any other teaching positions, long-term fellowships, or administrative appointments during their CCA year. However, students who will hold other year-long fellowships may apply to be appointed as unfunded Fellows, provided their application clearly indicates the relevance of the seminar topic to their dissertation work. Graduate Fellowships will ordinarily be awarded only to students who have received 5 or fewer years of funding from Rutgers University at the time of application. Students who have already received 6 or more years of support may apply if the seminar theme is particularly suited to their dissertation projects, but they will require a waiver from SAS to take up the CCA Fellowship.
Fellows will have access to the resources of the CCA and staff support, within the limits allowable by the CCA’s budget.
Completed applications for Faculty and Graduate Fellows must be submitted by December 10, 2022.
POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATES
The Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University-New Brunswick seeks to appoint two external Postdoctoral Associates for a two-year-long residential fellowship during academic years 2023-25. Successful candidates may come from any relevant discipline. All requirements for the PhD or other terminal degree in the relevant field must be completed by August 1, 2023. A record of publication and scholarly engagement relevant to the seminar’s topic is required. Postdoctoral Associates will attend a bi-monthly research seminar, present their own work, and organize a symposium. CCA Postdoctoral Associates receive a salary of $60,000, health benefits, a private office, and administrative support. Fellows normally teach 1 undergraduate course each fellowship year. Since the CCA Postdoctoral Associate position is considered a residential appointment, candidates must agree to establish residency within a forty-mile radius of the New Brunswick campus during the academic year.
Please refer to the job posting https://jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/183057. Submissions should include a cover letter, CV, 250-400 word abstract of your research project, a research statement (no more than 4 single-spaced pages), and a brief description of an undergraduate course you would like to teach. Three confidential letters of recommendation must be uploaded by your referees.
Applications for Postdoctoral Associates must be submitted by January 20, 2023.
Please direct all inquiries about this search to
