Professor of Theatre, Speech & Dance and Literary Arts - Brown University
Brown University seeks a Professor of Theatre, Speech & Dance and Literary Arts, beginning 1 July 2009. Candidates should be professional playwrights with a substantial production record and teaching experience in a laboratory and/or academic environment. The successful candidate will be skilled in developing new work and mentoring writers in collaboration with student actors and directors. This candidate will also be qualified to design courses in the Department of Theatre, Speech & Dance that incorporate diverse modes of writing for performance. Other specialties may include screenwriting, music-theatre, performance art, or cross-genre performance work. Duties also include teaching, playwriting workshops and sharing the directorship of the annual New Plays Festival. The tenured hire will play a significant role in the expansive re-envisioning of the exciting performance and arts community at Brown. Applicants should submit a letter of application, a curriculum vita, and the names and contact information of 5 references to Spencer Golub, Chair of Playwriting Search Committee, Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance at Brown University, Box 1897, Providence, RI, 02912. Full consideration will be given to all applications received by 1 February 2009, but the search will remain open until the position is filled. Brown is an EEo/AA employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.
Director, Program in African American Studies - University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine, invites applications for the Director of the Program in African American Studies, to be appointed at the advanced Associate or Full Professor level, beginning 1 July 2009. The successful applicant must have a distinguished record of publication and teaching in the field of African American Studies broadly defined. Scholars with demonstrated expertise in critical studies of gender and sexuality are especially encouraged to apply.
The Director will join a growing interdisciplinary program that has augmented its core faculty with several recent appointments in art history, comparative political thought, drama, and film and media studies. Our core and affiliated faculty have teaching interests in critical theory, feminist theory, history, legal studies, literary criticism, cultural studies, political economy, visual studies, postcoloniality, and transnational and diaspora studies. The Program has emerged as a campus center for inter-disciplinary teaching and research. Its courses are cross-listed on a regular basis. The Program has planned and staged, in recent years, several innovative national conferences: “Black Thought in the Age of Terror,” “Dred Scott: Citizenship, The Human, and the Political A/Effect of Racial Blackness,” “The Paradoxes of Race, Law, and Inequality in the United States,” and “Extended Provocations: New Lectures in Dialogue with the Pioneering Scholarship of Judith Wilson.” Housed within the distinguished School of Humanities, the Program in African American Studies has also contributed to the academic prominence of UC Irvine more generally. It has enjoyed steady increases in undergraduate enrollments and significant gains in the number of majors and minors.
As the principal academic administrator, the duties of the Program Director include coordinating faculty recruitments; overseeing academic personnel reviews; preparing annual budgets; facilitating communication among Program faculty, academic units, and university administration; implementing policy and curriculum; and supervising office personnel. On a campus with a tradition of shared governance, the Director and the faculty collectively advance the mission of the Program through the African American Studies Steering Committee. Appointment of the successful applicant will be made fully in the Program in African American Studies or, where opportunities arise, jointly with other academic units.
Review of applications will begin 1 December 2008, and the position will remain open until filled.
Please submit a statement of teaching and research interests, administrative experience, curriculum vitae, portfolio of recent publications, and names of three references to: Chair, Search Committee, Program in African American Studies, University of California-Irvine, 1300 Biological Sciences III, Irvine, CA 92697-6850.
The University of California, Irvine is an equal opportunity employer committed to excellence through diversity and has an Advance Program for faculty equity and diversity.
Executive Director needed to lead Literary Arts, Inc., a statewide nonprofit that enriches the lives of Oregonians through language and literature. Exciting opportunity requires demonstrated leadership skills, experience managing and developing non-profit arts programs, and a passion for the literary arts. Full position announcement and job description at www.literary-arts.org.
CREATIVE WRITING: POETRY – Skidmore College
Senior-level appointment (Associate or full Professor), tenure-track, for a poet with a distinguished record of publication and teaching experience, to direct a small, prestigious undergraduate creative writing program. Starting date 1 September 2009. The successful candidate will join a very strong creative writing faculty to conduct workshops in poetry writing at both introductory and advanced levels, oversee independent study in poetry writing, and teach occasional courses in literature. Teaching load is 2 courses per semester; maximum enrollment in writing workshops is 15. Salary commensurate with qualifications. Include c.v. with application letter addressed to:
Prof. Linda Simon, Chair Skidmore College Department of English 815 N. Broadway Saratoga Springs, NY 12866Review of applications begins 15 October 2008. All applications will be acknowledged. Preliminary interviews will be held in December at MLA convention in San Francisco. Skidmore College encourages applications from women and men of diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds.
WRITER IN RESIDENCE (FICTION) – Skidmore College
A permanent, one semester (fall) per academic year appointment in a department with a very strong creative writing faculty. Required qualifications include a record of distinguished publication in fiction and relevant teaching experience at the college or university level. The successful candidate will be prepared to teach workshops at the introductory, intermediate and advanced levels, and will also demonstrate an ability and willingness to oversee independent student work and to teach occasional courses in literature. The department expects to hire at a level comparable to that of an Assistant Professor. The teaching load alternates between two and three courses, generally all of them fiction workshops with a maximum of fifteen students each. Salary commensurate with qualifications. Starting date 1 September 2009. Send cover letter, vita with names of at least three references, and writing sample (chapter or story length) to:
Review of applications begins 15 October 2008. All applications will be acknowledged. Interviews will be held at MLA convention. Skidmore encourages applications from women and men of diverse racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
African American Review will, from time to time, feature “Forgotten Manuscripts,” modeled on the new “Little-Known Documents” section of PMLA. Because so much of African American literary, print, and cultural production remains unknown or ignored, and so much scholarly attention is yet devoted to the most canonical texts and topics of the heritage, the journal will publish short occasional essays (1,000-2,000 words) that introduce and contextualize short excerpts (3,000-5,000 words) from manuscripts neglected but noteworthy to African Americanists in diverse academic disciplines as well as to folks generally interested in African American matters. Please see our guidelines for submission protocol.
The James Jones First Novel Fellowship
The James Jones Literary Society announces its annual $10,000 award for a first unpublished novel and two $750 runner-up prizes. Submission deadline is 1 March 2009. For eligibility and guidelines visit www.wilkes.edu/pages/1159.asp, email jamesjonesfirstnovel@wilkes.edu, or send an SASE to:
Cheryl A. Wall, a longtime AAR advisory board member, was named Board of Governors Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English at Rutgers University. Zora Neale Hurston was one of the preeminent African American writers of the twentieth century, and her work has inspired and influenced Wall’s own scholarly work. Wall has garnered an international reputation as an academic whose body of work has had a major impact on our understanding of black women writers from the Harlem Renaissance to the present. She was named a Board of Governor’s Professor in December 2006, but the board gave her the new title in recognition of the rapid development of Wall’s work and reputation.
Darwin T. Turner Award Winner Announced
The Darwin T. Turner Award is presented each December in recognition of the year’s best essay in African American Review. The award was presented at the 2008 Modern Language Association meeting to Aliyyah I. Abdur-Rahman for her essay “ 'Simply a Menaced Boy': Analogizing Color, Undoing Dominance in James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room.”
Joe Weixlmann Winner Announced
The Joe Weixlmann Award is presented each December in recognition of the year’s best essay on 20th-century African American literature in African American Review. The award was presented at the 2008 Modern Language Association meeting to Richard Schur for his essay “Post-Soul Aesthetics in Contemporary African American Art.”
Poets & Writers is thrilled to announce that the three recipients of its 2007 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award are E. Ethelbert Miller, Francine Prose, and Susan Shreve.
Established in 1996, the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, which is presented at P&W's annual dinner, recognizes authors who have given generously to other writers or to the broader literary community. Honorees are nominated by a committee composed of past winners, other prominent writers, and the Board of Directors of Poets & Writers.
Competitions for MLA Publication Awards
Please visit http://www.mla.org/resources/awards/awards_submissions/awards_competitions for more information.
National Humanities Center Fellowships 2010-2011
The National Humanities Center offers 40 residential fellowships for advanced study. Applicants must hold doctorate or have equivalent scholarly credentials, and a record of publication is expected. Both senior and younger scholars are eligible for fellowships, but the latter should be engaged in research other than the revision of a doctoral dissertation. Fellowships are for the academic year (Sept. 2009 - May 2010). Scholars from any nation and humanistically inclined individuals from the natural and social sciences, the arts, the professions, and public life, as well as from all fields of the humanities, are eligible.
Most the of the Center’s fellowships are unrestricted. The following designated awards, however, are available for the academic year 2008-2009: three fellowships for scholars in any humanistic field whose research concerns religion or theology; a fellowship in art history or visual culture; a fellowship for French history or culture; a fellowship in Asian Studies.
Fellowships up to $50,000 are individually determined, the amount depending upon the needs of the Fellow and the Center’s ability to meet them. The Center provides travel expenses for Fellows and their dependents to and from North Carolina.
Applicants submit the Center’s form supported by a curriculum vitae, a 1,000-word project proposal, and three letters of recommendation. You may request application material from Fellowship Program, National Humanities Center, Post Office Box 12256, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709-2256, or obtain the form and instructions from the Center’s website: www.nhc.rtp.nc.us. Applications and letters of recommendation must be postmarked by 15 October 2009.
The Schomburg Center residency program is designed to (1) encourage research and writing on the history, literature, and cultures of the peoples of Africa and the African diaspora, (2) to promote and facilitate interaction among the participants including fellows funded by other sources, and (3) to facilitate the dissemination of the researchers’ findings through lectures, publications, and the ongoing Schomburg Center Colloquium and Seminar Series. Fellowships are awarded for continuous periods of six or twelve months at the Schomburg Center with maximum stipends of $25,000 for six months and up to $50,000 for twelve months. Applicants must indicate in their proposal how they propose to use the resources of the Schomburg Center as well as those of the research units of The New York Public Library to further their research. Completed applications and proposals must be postmarked no later than 1 December 2009. For access to the Schomburg Center and The New York Public Library catalogs, visit www.nypl.org/research/sc/sc.html. For more information, call (212) 491-2218.
The Alston/Bannerman Fellowship Program gives 10 long-time activists of color financial support in the amount of $15,000 to take sabbaticals of three months or more. Previous Alston/Bannerman fellows have worked on a broad range of issues, from environmental justice to immigrant rights, from political empowerment to economic revitalization. Alston/Bannerman Fellows have the freedom to use their sabbaticals in whatever way they think will best re-energize them for the work ahead, and no product (other than a brief report) is required upon completion of the sabbatical. In order to be eligible, applicants must be an individual of color, have at least 10 years of experience as a community activist, be committed to continuing work for social change, and be a resident of the United States or its territories. Visit www.alstonbannerman.org for more information on the program and to download an application. Contact: Alston/Bannerman Fellowship Program, 1627 Lancaster St., Baltimore, MD 21231, Telephone: (410) 327-6220, Fax: (501) 421-5862, Email: info@AlstonBannerman.org.
20010-2011 African American Studies Fellowship
The Massachusetts Historical Society, offers approximately twenty research fellowships each year to independent scholars, advanced graduate students, and college and university faculty in all disciplines. Of particular interest to scholars of African American history is the African American Studies Fellowship. This grant provides a stipend of $1500 to one scholar for four weeks of research at the Society between 1 July 2010 and 30 June 2011. For more information, please visit www.masshist.org/fellowships; contact Jane Becker, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215; email fellowships@masshist.org; or call (617) 646-0518. Application deadline date: 1 March 2010. For more information about the Massachusetts Historical Society’s other awards, including the MHS-NEH Long-Term Fellowships and support through the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, please check the Society’s web site, www.masshist.org/fellowships.
Charles Johnson Award
The Charles Johnson Award, a $1,000 annual, national creative writing contest for US college students, now has a Web site www.siu.edu/~johnson. Entry for the contest is free. This nonprofit competition encourages students exploring issues of marginalized and/or minority culture.
The purpose of The Harriet Wilson Project is to raise awareness of Harriet Wilson and her literary work, to educate the public on her contribution to American history and her contribution to American literature, and to publicly honor her for her accomplishments. It is the intent of The Harriet Wilson Project to promote, preserve, and seek recognition of Harriet Wilson's book Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black for its historical significance, and to provide a fitting memorial in her honor.
Incorporated as a non-profit organization in April 2003, The Harriet Wilson Project, was formed by a group of civic minded citizens of different ethnicities who came together to raise awareness, celebrate, and honor the life and accomplishments of Harriet Wilson, a pre-Civil War black author from Milford, New Hampshire. For more information, please visit www.harrietwilsonproject.org.
nocturnes: (re)view of the literary arts is a theme-based journal committed to publishing quality innovative critical and creative art from throughout the African Diaspora and other contested spaces. The journal serves as a forum for examining and celebrating the natural connections between diverse artistic mediums as expressed through visual and written language. Please visit them on the web at http://www.nocturneseditions.org.
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University is home to the Claude McKay Collection. McKay (1890-1948), one of the major figures of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote several collections of poetry, novels, short stories, non-fiction and autobiographical books. He lived in the United States, primarily in New York, from 1913-1919, and then spent most of the next 15 years in England, Russia, France, Spain and Morocco before returning to New York in 1934.
The collection has been reprocessed and consists of letters, manuscripts, personal papers, subject files, photographs and memorabilia. There is correspondence from many well-known writers and figures in the African American community from the first half of the twentieth century, including Langston Hughes, Countée Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Carl Van Vechten, Harold Jackman, and Arna Bontemps. There are drafts of published and unpublished poetry collections, novels, autobiographical writings, and short story and essay compilations, including The Selected Poems of Claude McKay (1953), Harlem: Negro Metropolis (1940), “Romance in Marseille,” an unpublished novel written in Spain in 1930, and My Green Hills of Jamaica (1979), McKay’s autobiography of his youth. McKay contributed to many liberal and socialist journals, including Sylvia Pankhurst’s Worker’s Dreadnaught and Max Eastman’s The Liberator, and there are various pieces of non-fiction, most in draft form, as well as a few polemical newspaper articles, dating from the early and late 1930s, in which McKay responds to critics of his literary work and views on labor.
The collection now includes previously unprocessed photographs and memorabilia. The two largest groups of photographs are those taken in Russia and North Africa, while McKay lived abroad, and studio portraits of well-known musicians and figures in the African American community. McKay was well received in Soviet Russia in the early 1920s and there are photographs of Lenin, Trotsky and other high ranking party officials, of McKay with members of the Russian Naval Academy and other groups, and of McKay addressing the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in the Throne Room at the Kremlin in Moscow. The memorabilia consists of clippings, photographs, program materials and souvenirs from various events honoring McKay’s life and work between 1979-1990.
The finding aid for the collection may be found at http://webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2html/beinecke.mckay.con.html.
African American Literature Book Club--a cyberspace book club displays a rich diversity of African American writing. The AALBC is linked to many of the authors and provides the ability to purchase books directly from the author or on-line via Barnes & Noble. Visit the AALBC at www.aalbc.com.
HBCUmentor is the ultimate resource for students who are planning to attend a Historically Black College or University (HBCU). This free interactive website helps students choose a career and find the best school for preparing for that career. A free email account lets them communicate with the schools of their choice. They can also apply for admission and financial aid online. A fully customizable MyMentor account allows them to keep track of where they’ve applied, and customize the site to only include those schools. They can also record their courses and corresponding grades in a personal online portfolio. A financial aid estimator helps students and their families estimate the amount of aid they can expect to receive and the world’s largest database of available free money helps students find scholarships for which they may be eligible.
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