Call for Submissions – 2023-2024 Hemispheric Encounters Postdoctoral Fellowship

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Application Deadline: July 15, 2023

Hemispheric Encounters: Developing Transborder Research-Creation Practices is a partnership project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) linking 32 academic and community partners across Canada, US, and Latin America to study “hemispheric performance” as a research-creation methodology, a pedagogical strategy, and tool for social change. A project developed by the Canadian Consortium on Performance and Politics in the Americas, a transnational network of scholars, artists, and activists studying political performance, Hemispheric Encounters advances understandings of performance as a unique method for addressing humanitarian and ecological challenges shared by multiple communities in the western hemisphere—from the dramatic rise in nativism and anti-immigrant sentiment, to the migration north of Central American refugees, to the displacement of Indigenous groups by extractive industries.

Hemispheric Encounters seeks to generate understandings of embodied practice as a unique method of conducting research on, and politically addressing, humanitarian and/or ecological concerns experienced by communities across the Americas. Specifically, it seeks to define, explore, and experiment with “hemispheric performance practice” as a distinctive practice-based, anti-colonial, transborder, and collaborative mode of knowledge production. In doing so, we mobilize a set of innovative live and digital research-creation formats that are designed to increase public engagement, shape public discourse, and reach diverse audiences across the Americas and beyond the academy. For us, “transborder” implies movement across national, regional, ethnic, cultural, class, and professional boundaries, as well as an unsettling of national/colonial demarcations of territory as sites of violence and exclusion. We define performance as an embodied act, from artistic activities such as performance art, dance, and theatre to cultural practices like ritual, protest, and enactments of self in everyday life. It is also conceived as a political process—acts of doing that can both reiterate and alter existing geopolitical realities.

The Partnership invites applications for a 1-year Postdoctoral Fellowship from candidates conducting research on the use of performance as a creative methodology for addressing transnational social and environmental justice issues. We are particularly interested in postdoctoral projects that engage with projects currently underway in the Hemispheric Encounters Partnership to explore how politically inflected research-creation practices (i.e. artistic or practice-based research) shift how we ask research questions, engage with research subjects, and value research outcomes.

Candidates are expected to engage in performance-based research that contributes to one or more of the partnership’s four central research areas: Oralities, Mobilities, Ecologies, Archives. These areas serve as the basis for research-creation case studies, field schools, performance events, and other gatherings, archival and publication activities, and intersectoral collaboration across the hemisphere. Mobilities references border politics and conditions of the migrant trail; Ecologies points to legacies of resource extraction, the politics of land, and spatial politics of occupying public spaces; Oralities signals to performative aspects of testimony and storytelling, and diverse forms of communication and translation linked to histories of minority struggle and violence (including expressive forms that challenge ableist assumptions about orality as a vehicle for collaborating across cultures and abilities). Archives points to repositories of cultural memory that can be activated through performance and that offer rich resources for analyzing performance tactics and repertoires. Candidates are also expected to assist in co-leading events that facilitate methodological exchanges across these research areas, and participate in the production of digital and/or print publishing projects arising from our activities

Postdoctoral fellows will be based at one or more of the project’s partner institutions, which include: Concordia University, ITESO-Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara, New York University, OCAD University, University of Alberta, University of Manitoba, L’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, University of Toronto, University of Windsor, University of Winnipeg, Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina), York University. The Postdoctoral fellowship will require at least 6 weeks in residence in the city where the host university is located.

The one-year Fellowship would be for the period September 2023 to August 2024 and will be valued at $45,000 (CAD). Applicants must be within four years of completing their PhDs, and may not hold a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship simultaneously within this funding. In 2023-2024, preference will be given to applicants from Latin America and/or who are developing research in dialogue with Latin American contexts, as well as proposals that engage with the intertwined realms of art, activism, and scholarship. Candidates may submit applications in English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French.

Submissions should include:

— The name of one or more proposed supervisors who are currently Hemispheric Encounters Co-investigators.

— A research proposal that is no more than 750 words in length, not including bibliography (which can be up to five pages). The proposal should include:

The date of your PhD defense and a discussion of how your postdoctoral work would build upon and depart from your doctoral research;
How the work will advance the project’s goal of building understandings of hemispheric performance as a practice-based, transborder, and collaborative mode of knowledge production;
How the proposed postdoctoral project fits within the priorities and activities of the Hemispheric Encounters partnership (including, if relevant, how you might contribute to future print or digital publication projects);
A rationale for the proposed supervisor(s) and explanation of how your work plan will engage or collaborate with the proposed host institution and/or community organization;
A brief timeline for carrying out and publicly presenting proposed research-creation activities.

— A full CV, including the names and contact information of three individuals who may be contacted for reference letters.

The deadline for submissions is July 15, 2023. Applications and questions can be sent to Professor Laura Levin, York University, Toronto, Canada at levin@yorku.ca. Make sure to specify “Hemispheric Encounters Postdoctoral Fellowship Application” in the subject line.