PhD & Postdoctoral Fellowships, Faculty of Humanities, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark (2016-2017)

The University of Southern Denmark announces a number of assistant professorships, postdocs, and PhD fellowships related to Professor Rita Felski’s appointment as a Niels Bohr professor for the period 2016-2021 and the research project Uses of Literature: The Social Dimensions of Literature. The project is financed by Danish National Research Foundation.

The goal of this project is to develop new frameworks and methods for exploring the many social uses of literature. Drawing on both the humanities and social sciences, it seeks to offer richer and more capacious accounts of what literature does and why it matters. How do we capture the distinctiveness and dynamism of art works as they move through the world? How can we do justice to the varied and often unpredictable ways in which people engage with literature and the many facets of aesthetic experience? In what ways do literary works inspire attachments, forge affiliations, or help people make sense of new social realities? Topics to be addressed include the relations between literature and the emotions, new forms of literary history, the field of narrative medicine, how literature speaks to changing structures of social class, and the relations between fictional and non-fictional narratives. The focus of the program is on comparative literature, literature in English, German, and Scandinavian literature.

Successful applicants will become part of a dynamic, international and cross-disciplinary research group under the academic leadership of Professor Rita Felski (University of Virginia & University of Southern Denmark) and Professor Anne-Marie Mai (University of Southern Denmark) in cooperation with Professor Peter Simonsen and Professor Klaus Petersen (University of Southern Denmark). The working language of the project is English and applicants are expected to participate actively in seminars and workshops in the project. Applicants are expected to outline an individual research plan within the framework of the overall program Uses of Literature.

Further details:
http://www.universitypositions.eu