Visiting Member Awards for 2013-2014

The School of Social Science each year invites as Members up to twenty scholars from a large applicant pool. Visiting Members are expected to pursue their own research, but the School organizes a seminar on the year’s focus and a weekly lunch at which Members as well as invited guests present their on-going work. The School is not wedded to any particular intellectual or disciplinary approach. It welcomes applications in economics, political science, law, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. It encourages social scientific work with an historical and humanistic bent and also entertains applications in history, philosophy, literary criticism, literature, and linguistics.

Memberships are for the full academic year; we regret that we cannot consider applications for a single term. The group is interdisciplinary and international, with memberships awarded at both the junior and senior level. Applicants must possess a Ph.D. or equivalent (for example, in some fields the terminal degree may be an M.F.A., or the applicant may possess a foreign degree, or have achieved a level of professional reputation that would merit consideration) by the deadline of November 1, 2012. Former Members in the School of Social Science should note that one can only be a Member once.

The theme for 2013-14 is The Environmental Turn and the Human Sciences.

The widespread perception that humanity faces a series of related environmental challenges–climate change, growing human population, food security, energy crisis, shortage of fresh water, and so on–has spurred many disciplines to attempt to make the environment a central concern of their foundational paradigms. Economists, sociologists, historians, policy scientists and others have begun to address the issue of sustainability and the question of “the commons” in human affairs. Anthropologists and evolutionary biologists have begun to study communities facing environmental disruption while new and inter-disciplinary areas of investigation have emerged under the rubric of “environmental humanities.” Historians have begun to write long-term histories of energy consumption and to connect environmental histories to histories of capitalism, empires, and globalization. The idea of the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2000)–that human beings now act as a geophysical force changing the climate of planet as a whole, ushering in a new geological period that follows the Holocene–has given rise to a new philosophical anthropology that attempts to re-situate the human in the natural order of things. In short, the human story is changing. During 2013-14, we hope to develop a shared conversation on the strategies that different disciplines are adopting to deal with the challenge of environmental crises. In particular, we would like to think through the following issues and see how the human condition is being re-imagined today in humanistic studies: (a) historical and political implications of the idea of the Anthropocene, (b) the problem of scale in the study of human societies, past, present, and future, (c) capitalism and sustainability, (d) the unsustainable distinction between natural and human histories, (e) rights, agency, justice, and politics in an age of climate change, (f) human responsibility towards life, and (g) the challenge of climate change for postcolonial studies (broadly conceived).

Please note that applications which do not fall within the parameters of the theme for 2013-2014 will also receive full consideration.

Each year our Membership stipends vary, depending on available funds, the needs of individual Members, and the support they can get from outside agencies. Stipend support will not exceed $65,000, and since our funds are always limited, we are rarely able to meet current salary levels. We therefore strongly encourage you to apply for outside support as part of this application process, and to find out in advance about your institution’s policies on matching fellowship awards. The success of your application, however, in no way depends upon securing such support. Memberships are funded by the Institute for Advanced Study, as well as other sources. If you are a recently-tenured faculty member, you may also wish to consider applying to the ACLS for the Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship.

Applications must be submitted through the Institute's online application system (https://applications.ias.edu) by November 1, 2012.

The Institute for Advanced Study was founded in 1930 as a community of postdoctoral scholars where intellectual inquiry could be carried out in the most favorable circumstances. It provides libraries, offices, personal computers, seminar and lecture rooms, subsidized restaurant and housing facilities, and some secretarial services.