Postdoctoral Fellowships, Sawyer Seminar in Ethical Subjects (EXPIRED)

The Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis and the School of Arts and Sciences of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (New Brunswick), invite applications from all disciplines for post-doctoral resident fellowships to be held during the academic year of 2016-2017.  Fellows will take a leading role in the John E. Sawyer Seminar, sponsored by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, on the subject of Ethical Subjects: Moralities, Laws, Histories. (For details, see http://rcha.rutgers.edu).  The Seminar will be directed by Professors Seth Koven and Judith Surkis, Rutgers Department of History.

This Sawyer Seminar explores who and what counts as an ethical subject. It brings together two sets of inquiries: how certain domains of deliberation come to be topics of ethical scrutiny, and how people claim recognition as moral agents in the world. In different times and places, moral argument and moral feeling have been mobilized in the name of many causes, from “civilizing missions” to civil disobedience. They continue to figure prominently in debates about “development,” humanitarian intervention, bioethics, inequality, civil and human rights. In these debates cynicism and sincere conviction can jostle one another uneasily. In attending to multiple perspectives, “Ethical Subjects” challenges methodological divides between “bottom-up” and “top-down” approaches. We hope to explore an overlapping terrain between the study of lives, subjects and practices, on the one hand; and legal, ethical, political, and religious frameworks, on the other.

The Sawyer Seminar continues and deepens our preliminary year of investigation in 2015-2016. It is guided by several key questions. Under what historical conditions do particular issues (e.g., unfree and exploitative labor, hunger, inequality, discrimination, women’s and children’s rights) first become a focus of ethico-political debate, humanitarian intervention, and legal regulation (state or international)? Why do others remain in the shadows? How are morality and law disarticulated and rearticulated when people and ideas move across borders? Can humanist inquiry help to negotiate the complex interrelations between morality and law when these come into conflict? What new kinds of politics and ethical practices emerge out of such disjunctures?  “Ethical Subjects” will explore such questions through seminars, public conversations, and international conferences over the course of the academic year.

One Sawyer Fellow and two RCHA fellows will each receive a stipend of $50,000 and an annual research allocation of $2,000; they will also receive Rutgers University health benefits. Fellows will teach no more than two courses total during the academic year.

Applicants must have received the Ph.D. between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2016.

Applications consisting of a CV, a project abstract (200 words), a three to five page description of your research project and its significance to the theme, and 3 letters of recommendation should be submitted electronically via Interfolio to http://apply.interfolio.com/32674 by January 16, 2016.