Subcommittee A: Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for 2023
Department of English, Stellenbosch University
(This grant of R250 000.00 is awarded for one year, with possible extension to a second year depending on availability of funds)
Host: Dr Jeanne Ellis, Department of English, Stellenbosch University
Project Title: Nineteenth-Century Settler Colonialism Re-Storied and Re-Staged
Scope of Research: Given the popular trend in recent historical fiction to return to the Victorian era and the critical attention it has received, particularly under the rubric of neo-Victorian studies, this project endeavours to establish the fictional turn to histories of settler colonialism as an especially productive site for theorising the possibilities and risks of the neo-Victorian. Lorenzo Veracini’s contention that “[t]he stories settlers tell themselves and about themselves are crucial to an exploration of settler colonial subjectivities” (Settler Colonialism, 103) provides the point of departure for its proposition that the restorying of nineteenth-century settler colonialism in literary texts, theatrical production, films, television series, and visual art from the perspective of post-settler subjects whose genealogies are entangled with such histories continue to warrant close, sustained scrutiny. Noting the dearth of published research on the role of theatre in neo-Victorianism’s critical revision of settler colonial histories, this project provides a research opportunity to a young scholar whose graduate research on a relevant aspect of South African theatre studies and / or neo-Victorian studies has established the appropriate foundation for collaborative and independent publication on the restaging – as a counterpart term to restorying – of nineteenth-century settler histories.
Requirements: PhD (must have graduated within the last five years). The applicant’s doctoral research and the application for the fellowship should intersect with the field of study outlined above. The postdoctoral fellow will be expected to write and submit at least two articles to accredited journals by the end of the funded period and to teach one second-year English Studies elective in the second semester of 2023.
Postdoctoral research fellows are not eligible for employee benefits since they are registered as fellows and their bursaries are awarded tax free.
Please send your CV and a 1000-word project proposal to Jeanne Ellis at jellis@sun.ac.za.
The closing date for applications is 23 May 2023.