2021 Future of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth College (June 21-27, 2011)

Posted on by Center for Mark Twain Studies

The 2021 Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth College

https://www.dartmouth.edu/futures

MONDAY JUNE 21 – SUNDAY JUNE 27 2021

DIRECTOR: Donald E. Pease (Dartmouth College) 

The twenty-third year of the Institute will be organized around highlighted, special topic plenary sessions and additional opportunities for workshops, tutorials, and other participant-organized activities.  At this time the Institute is planning for an in-person program. If the Institute must shift to virtual Institute, it will work with the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning (DCAL) and Dartmouth’s remarkable digital learning and project management team to build a virtual format for the Institute’s unique combination of plenary sessions and participant seminars that ensure that the virtual conference platforms are at once easy to use, and responsive to a broad array of participant interactions. 

PLENARY SESSIONS: 

  • “Abolition Democracy” 
  • “Audiopolitics”
  • “Alter-Cartographies of the Visual” 
  • “Queer Futurities” 
  • “Critical Digital Studies” 
  • “Carceral Politics at the Borders” 
  • “Indigenous Resurgences: Dismantling the Settler Colonialist Logics of Dispossession”
  • “Primitive Accumulation / Social Reproduction” 
  • “Afro-futurisms” 
  • Roundtable on January 6, 2021
  • Brown Bag Discussions with Journal Editors 

 INSTITUTE DESCRIPTION: The Institute is divided into plenary sessions that feature talks from Institute faculty, research seminars in which all participants present and discuss their own work-in-progress, and participant-organized sessions. Each day of the institute begins with a morning session in which plenary speakers deliver presentations of no longer than thirty-minutes that contribute to our convoking topic. These presentations are followed by questions from the participants. After a lunch break, the Institute’s participants meet in intensive workshop groups (consisting of no more than 15 participants), each of which is led by an Institute co-director. These workshops offer those enrolled in the Institute—over one hundred scholars from a variety of disciplines and institutions—the opportunity for critical conversations about the central intellectual issues in their research. 

The Institute was designed to provide a shared space of critical inquiry that brings the participants’ work-in-progress to the attention of a network of influential scholars. Over the past twenty years, plenary speakers have recommended participants’ work to the leading journals and university presses within the field of American Studies, and have provided participants with recommendations and support in an increasingly competitive job market. 

The Futures of American Studies Institutes strives to create an open environment in which traditional disciplinary, institutional, and departmental boundaries are crossed. That said, the Institute is not an exception to the norms of professional behavior. The Institute sets as its goal the creation of a diverse and heterogeneous space in which seminarians are full participants in an ongoing conversation with Institute faculty. In order to facilitate this sense of collegiality, we expect all of our participants to adhere to the Institute’s core values of mutual respect for each other’s perspectives and identities. No unprofessional behavior, harassment, or abuse will be tolerated from any faculty member or seminarian.  

APPLYING TO THE INSTITUTE: Applications for the 2021 Institute will be accepted until all slots have been filled, but applications received by May 14th, 2021 will be granted priority. We are now using an electronic application (https://dartmouth.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8IFAxZvFtDkwvCB).


Please apply now and be prepared to upload a brief description of your  project(s) (no more than 1 page), a current CV, and a writing sample (10-15 pages).  There is $10 application fee and this will need to be collected separate from your application materials. Please make checks (or money orders) payable to “Dartmouth College” and mail with your name and email address to The Futures of American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College, 116 Wentworth Hall, Hanover, NH 03755.