World-Making/World-Building Resident Fellowship Program

World-Making/World-Building 

Theme Leader: Dr. Régine Jean-Charles

The Rosewood, Florida Massacre of 1922. The Kingdom of Hayti led by Henri Christophe in 1811. FTX. The Human Genome. Mars. The imagined spaces of Wakanda. The sites, locations, real or imagined, extant or existing digitally and online, and otherwise, or as part of the human body provide us with different ways of considering what world-making can mean across a variety of disciplines. The idea of world-making suggests that there are possibilities beyond the worlds we know right now. World-making presents thinking beyond the present to imagine worlds otherwise, worlds that we may not yet have access to, worlds that push past what might be possible. World-making invites creativity, necessitates building, and is inherently capacious. World-making asks us to be expansive in our thinking, building, imagining and theorizing. However, overly expansive utopian thinking has been used to oppressive ends. Proposals connected to any dimension of this broad field of inquiry, including literary, artistic, historical, socio-political, scientific, economic, ecological, media theoretical, philosophical, linguistic, as well as technology-focused perspectives are welcome. Dr. Régine Jean Charles, Director of Africana Studies and Dean’s Professor of Culture and Social Justice, and Professor of Africana Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies will lead the year-long interdisciplinary conversation among fellows about their work.

Fellowship support includes:

• One course release to enable research and participation (funded by the applicant’s home College);
• Release from most departmental service for pre-tenure faculty during the fellowship period;

Fellowship activities include:

• Bi-weekly meetings of Fellows to workshop pre-circulated papers;
• Research presentations to the Northeastern community in the Faculty Works-in-Progress Series;
• End-of-year summit in April.

Applications must include:

• Abstract of project (approximately 100 words);
• Narrative (two pages) that addresses the way in which the project connects with the Humanities Center’s mission and the Fellowship’s 2022-23 theme;
• Short CV (two pages);
• A sentence approving course release from unit head should application be successful;
• Letter acknowledging support for a course buyout from the Dean of the College, if the faculty member’s home College is not the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH). 

Applications are due by February 3, 2023 by 5pm. Please email completed applications as a combined PDF or Word Doc to: <nuhumanities@northeastern.edu>

We welcome applications from tenured, tenure-track, research, and clinical faculty from all Northeastern colleges. Please note that non-CSSH faculty must have approval from the faculty member’s Dean and Unit Head(s) acknowledging that the College of your tenure home will support a course buy-out.

Please note that fellows meet on Thursdays from 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. and must arrange their teaching schedules to accommodate these bi-monthly meetings.

The Humanities Center Board expects to provide notification of awards by late February 2023. 

We look forward to receiving your application.