Faculty and Student Applications Open for 2024-25 Interdisciplinary Studies Institute Fellowships on “Entangled Environments: Navigating the Socio-Logics, Eco-Logics, and Techno-Logics of Our Planet”
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The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute invites faculty and students to submit applications for its 2024-25 fellowship program on “Entangled Environments: Navigating the Socio-Logics, Eco-Logics, and Techno-Logics of Our Planet.” Applications open Friday, Nov. 1 and close Friday, Dec. 20.
Entangled Environments: Navigating the Socio-Logics, Eco-Logics, and Techno-Logics of Our Planet
Increasingly, our understanding of the planet we inhabit comes to us in pieces and fragments, through words and images, but also through the invisible spread of data and networks, systems and matrices. As we navigate the multiple entanglements of these natural, built, and artificial environments, conjuring up ways to understand them as interconnected fragments is critical for better inhabiting our planet. In a compilation of essays, letters and interviews titled Frantumaglia, Elena Ferrante explains that this word, a Neapolitan expression borrowed from her mother, evokes “a malaise that could not be defined otherwise and that hinted at a crowded, heterogeneous mix of things in her head.” It is a term she uses to explore her own methods and process of writing. Such fragmentation and heterogeneity have been the backdrop for our work as humanists, artists, and scientists, along with hope, despair, desire and fear for the future of planetary inhabitation.
This call invites individuals whose work engages with natural, built, or artificial environments, in many forms and through different means, from scientific endeavors to imaginative projects, from abstract formulations to formal renditions and material translations. We are interested to engage in conversations that build upon words, figures, numbers, and formulas, and invite scholars, artists and activists across the university to consider how their scholarship and creative work is entangled with other spheres, processes, and disciplinary methods. Interested in the possibility of new methods that is implicit in the root of the word logic, (the Greek logos), this proposal is an invitation to investigate the environments that surround us, and to both describe and reimagine how they intersect with cultural, social, ecological, and technological narratives. Understanding logic both as narratives and stories and as methods of inquiry and activism, fellows are invited to question and re-imagine the established norms and existing systems within the spheres of Socio-logics, Eco-logics, and Techno-logics.
With this call we invite faculty and students from across the University, with different perspectives, expertise, and from diverse fields to participate in a semester-long fellowship program, constituted of 3 Public Lectures/ presentations by outside speakers presenting scholarship or creative work in each of these areas, combined with a total of 6 half-days seminar sessions and workshops over the course of the Spring semester co-led by the Director and Faculty Fellows in each area, and two forums (one introductory and one conclusive). We will reflect the work conducted through a web platform, and the Faculty Fellows are required to contribute work (creative work, scholarship, or participatory) into a collective compilation that will be both digital and printed. Participation in the Seminar Sessions and contributing work at the end are both required for Faculty Fellows. Graduate and Undergraduate students are only required to participate in the events. The proposals will be evaluated by an ad-hoc Committee composed of members from each of the participating colleges.
Format
After launching a call, we will proceed to compose a seminar series by selecting:
8 Faculty Fellows
4 Graduate Student Fellows
4 Undergraduate Students Fellows
(It is recommended, but not necessary that faculty who apply for the fellowship encourage either their graduate or undergraduate student, or those in their field to apply to build more synergy and efficiency)
Faculty Fellows will receive the fund of $2,500 in their RTF after the completion of the Fellowship period. (participation in all sessions is required).
Graduate Student Fellows will receive a $1000 stipend.
Undergraduate Student Fellows will receive a $500 stipend.
We will work towards gathering and consolidating the work of this group into an edited volume after the fellowship is completed.
Schedule
Fall 2024
Call is launched on Friday November 1st, 2024
Application Deadline: Friday December 20th, 2024
Winter 2025
Fellows are announced on Friday January 17th, 2025.
Spring 2025
A total of eight scheduled events will take place during the spring semester. Fellows’ participation in all events is required.
Kickoff meeting: Introduction, a forum on February 7, 9-12
2 workshops/ seminars (during these sessions faculty-fellows will take turns and help co-run the seminar with Riahi, dedicated to the First Themes, Socio-Logics. We will also invite our first outside speaker to start the first workshop in that area. On February 14, 9-12 and February 21, 9-12
2 workshops/ seminars, and the second Invited Lecture, dedicated to Eco-Logics, on March 7, 9-12 and March 14, 9-12
2 workshops/ seminars, and the third Invited Lecture, dedicated to Techno-logics on April 4, 9-12 and April 11, 9-12
End of the year celebration: presentation of work conducted in form of Lightning talks, Roundtable on April 25, 1-5
Application Process for Faculty Fellows
Faculty will be asked to submit their application through an INFOREADY form.
They will provide:
- A 350 words Research background and extended bio
- A 500 words Project description
- A sentence on their intended outcome within the structure of the fellowship
- (Optional) Identification of either a graduate student or undergraduate who may be possible candidate for either a graduate or undergraduate student fellow.
- (Optional) A 250 words on possible collaboration and synergies with the student identified
Application Process for Student Fellows
Students will be asked to submit their application through an INFOREADY form.
They will provide:
- A 150 words background and bio statement
- A sentence on their vision of how this fellowship will influence their studies and experience
- (Optional) Identification of a professor they have already spoken to and who is concurrently applying for the fellowship.
For questions or further information, please contact Pari Riahi, priahi [at] umass [dot] edu