Call for PhD-applications: Maastricht University, Center for Gender and Diversity

Call for PhD-applications: Maastricht University, Center for Gender and
Diversity

PhD- positions at Maastricht University, Center for Gender and Diversity,
Integration in the international research network:
www.rengoo.net<http://rengoo.net> (chair: Ulrike Brunotte) Four years
position,
1500 Euro month. Both projects will be located within the

Center of Gender and Diversity and are embedded within the focal point of
FASOS "Cultural Memory and Diversity". Students with a Master Degree in
Cultural-Religious Studies, Gender/Queer- and Postcolonial Studies, and
Literature-studies may apply to this project. The candidate will also be
connected to the international research network
rengoo.net<http://rengoo.net>.

Application schedule:

15. 8. 2013: small Proposal (600) words: 1.) titel, research question, 2.)
abstract (scientific importance, innovative, problem, what is your
'material', what discipline (sub-disciplines). Short CV with grades (if yes,
please indicate if you followed a research master), academic prizes,
publications and activities. If you are chose for a full proposal, the first
deadline for the full proposal (2500 words) should be 20. 9. 2013.

Send your application to:

u.brunotte@maastrichtuniversity.nl<mailto:u.brunotte@maastrichtuniversity.nl

Project I

The Role Gender and Sexuality in Orientalism, Antisemitism and Jewish Self-
Orientalisation

Contact person:

Dr. habil. Ulrike Brunotte Associate Professor, Center for Gender and
Diversity, Maastricht University:

u.brunotte@maastrichtuniversity.nl

Constructs of sexuality and gender represent central issues of religious and
political difference in the Orientalist discourse of the 19th century. But
during the 19th century, especially in Germany, the 'Jewish Question' was
also connected to figures of an 'Inner Orient', defining Jews as the 'Asians
of Europe', as the 'Southern Race', or as people with an "inner Blackness".
Projects, which propose to intervene in current debates about historical
constructions of Jewish identity from the perspectives of colonialism and
Orientalism, using literary and cultural narratives and figures as their
corpus of analysis, are welcome to apply. Can we claim, as Kalmar and
Penslar do, that Western Orientalism has always been not only about the
Muslim, but also about the Jews? Are there similarities between the
"Beautiful Jewess" and the "Oriental Woman"? What role did Christianity
play, in concert with biblical scholarship, in the Orientalization of the
Jews? What can be the research surplus from an analysis of Jewish
Self-Orientalisation, in the Arts and in Orientalist scholarship? By
concentrating on literary, scholarly and artistic transformations of
colonial and especially Orientalistic images, the project should focus on
imaginative works rather than only historical or sociological works. It
should concentrate on the intertextual vocabulary of racism, colonial desire
and oriental imagination, because works of literature and art open up an
alternative history of entangled imagination, memory and history. As
Rothberg and Silverman suggest, multidirectional memory can help to discover
hybrid formations and can open our eyes to performative experiences, moments
of resistance, imbalance and disruption. A question could be, how
stereotypes of the external and the internal Other intertwine and which role
gender and processes of sexualisation and 'aesthetic formations' play
therein. The methodological framework should be based on approaches of
gender studies and postcolonial studies in combination with intersections of
new and old Orientalism, pre-Shoah antisemitism, and the ambivalent trope of
an 'inner Orient,' as it emerges, for instance, in the figure of the
"beautiful Jewess."

Candidates with a MA degree in Literature, Jewish-Religious-Studies,
Gender/masculinity or Queer Studies, may apply.

Project II:

The Figure of the Hero and Unheroic Conduct: Re-inventing Masculinities

Contact person:

Dr. habil. Ulrike Brunotte Associate Professor, Center for Gender and
Diversity, Maastricht University:

u.brunotte@maastrichtuniversity.nl

Masculinities, especially those which culturally function as 'hegemonic'
masculinity were often connected to figures and narratives of heroism.
Marginalized or socially excluded masculinities were often marked as
'deviant' because of their "unheroic conduct" (Daniel Boyarin).
Reformulations of femininity however have attracted much more attention
within genderstudies than the ongoing reformulations of masculinity. Yet
boys and men - and what counts as normative or 'ideal' masculinity - are
constantly subject to change as well. Aim of this project is to study the
shifts and narrative constructions of masculinity in the contemporary world
from a cultural perspective. How is masculinity represented, what is the
rolle of the ungoing crisis discourse of masculinity, what are the cultural
narratives and dynamics that feed them? Do the Western countries really
live, as some theorists state, in a "postheroic" era? Essential to the
cultural dynamics of gendered representation seems to be that new
representations of masculinity often draw on older - even seemingly obsolete
- repertoires, which are unearthed again and put to new uses. This is where
cultural memory comes in. How can we, for example, explain the ongoing
fascination for the model of the 'hero'? And how "figures of the third" and
"unheroic conduct" are culturally renewed? Drawing on the complementary work
of Foucault and Mosse on the crucial role of modern sexuality and
masculinity in European national-identity production, applying projects
should referr to the role that antisemitic tropes of Jewishness and
stereotypical representations of the Oriental have played in the production
of modern sexual identities. According to Gilman the "male Jew as female" or
"homosexual" became a central marker of difference in 19th century
Antisemitism. Do we have a revival of such discourses today? Another current
field of research is the role of 'old age' and heroism. How does literature
or film reflect the growing age of men in narratives of heroism? Is the
contemporary Western culture No country for Old Men? Ours is the
intersectional approach, which means that the construction of masculinity
always has to be analysed in it interaction with other crucial differences,
such as ethnicity, sexuality, age and class. Those interested can indicate
in which domains (e.g. sexuality, various forms of consumption, film,
literature, popular culture, religion, other) - and in which geographical
areas - they would want to study the patterns of change that masculinity and
the figure of the 'hero' are subjected to. Candidates with a MA degree in
Literature, Filmstudies, Gender/masculinity or Queer Studies, Media Studies,
or Cultural Studies may apply.