The Society for the Humanities at Cornell University invites applications for its 2024-25 fellowship program.
Up to six fellowship grants of $62,000 will be awarded for research projects focused on any aspect of the theme of scale.
Applications are invited from scholars and artists who are interested in participating in a productive, critical dialogue concerning the topic of scale from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Scale (or scales) as a form of measurement that can generate relationships between objects or ideas, forms of embodiment, ideas of justice. From the object (noun) by which we measure to the process of scaling (verb), scale is a question we are constantly confronted with. Thinking about scale through humanistic inquiry raises questions about the cultural, social, moral, aesthetic, political implications of quantification. How big of a story, of a theory, of a history does one need to tell to properly encompass an object or idea? What is too much, too many (maybe excessive)? What is too little, too few (maybe insufficient)? What does it mean to say something is out of scale? What does it mean to propose “scaling up” or “scaling down”? How do scales facilitate or interfere with comparison?
Scale provokes us to consider how concepts of proportionality shape our lives. For example, encouragement to eat a “balanced” diet is related to weight and the shaming, anxieties, gendering, stereotyping accompanying it; weighing the scales of justice shapes how we balance punishments that are proportional against those that are disproportional. Beauty (in art and in life) is often defined by “good” proportions, where one element does not overpower another; “bad” proportions unsettle and destabilize, with imbalance a threat to the putative stability of our vision of ideal forms. As we analyze and critique the small and big picture, the detail and the context, the part and the whole, the global and the local, the model and the so-called “real,” scale is central to how we evaluate and assess whether an idea, argument, narrative, or artwork is effective.
Fellows include scholars and practitioners from other universities and members of the Cornell faculty released from regular duties. Fellows spend their time in research and writing during the residential fellowship and are required to participate in a weekly Fellows Seminar workshopping each other’s projects and discussing readings based on the yearly theme.
The nature of this fellowship year is social and communal—fellows forge connections outside the classroom and the lecture hall by sharing meals following the weekly seminar and attending post-lecture receptions and other casual events throughout the year. Fellows live and work in Ithaca, New York, and are expected to be in their offices on campus frequently. Fellows teach one small seminar during their fellowship year appropriate for graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Though courses are designed to fit the focal theme, there are no additional restrictions on what or how the course should be taught. Fellows are encouraged to experiment with both the content and the method of their seminar particularly as it relates to their current research.
Applicants must have received their PhD before January 1, 2024, and must also have at least one year of teaching experience, which may include teaching as a graduate student. International scholars are welcome to apply, contingent on visa eligibility.