Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 21:41:52 +0000 From: Derek Attridge <attridge-AT-oldyork.u-net.com> Subject: Postcolonial job UNIVERSITY OF YORK Department of English and Related Literature Lectureship in Postcolonial Literature I: Fundamental terms of reference Applications are invited for a permanent Lectureship in Postcolonial Literature in English, from 1 October 1999 or as soon as possible thereafter. The appointment will be made within the Lecturer A scale. Candidates must have expertise in literature written in English in formerly colonised societies. We would especially welcome applications from candidates with expertise in African, Asian, Australasian, Canadian or Caribbean literatures in English, and, more broadly, from people with interests in writing and reading as affected by the imperial process from the time of colonization to the present day. The successful applicant must be prepared to teach contemporary Postcolonial Literature in English. As a Department which teaches literature in languages other than English we are always interested in receiving applications from candidates who can offer courses on texts in French, Spanish, German, etc. However, candidates with other relevant skills should not be discouraged from applying. The appointee will have an excellent research record and be equipped to play a full part in the normal pattern of Departmental teaching of Literature in English (see IV below) and administration. This post is part of the restructuring and growth of the Department, which was rated as =91excellent' in the Teaching Quality Assessment for English and as =915' in the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise. The closing date for applications is 29 January 1999. Interviews will be held on 26 February 1999. II: General information about the Department The Department of English and Related Literature was founded in 1964. Its programmes cover the whole range of literature from Britain, Ireland and the United States, as well as some of the new literatures in English. It also attends to the European context of English literature, all undergraduates being required to take at least one of their nine papers in a foreign literature read in the original. European literatures currently on offer include French, German, medieval and modern Italian, and Swedish, as well as Old English, Medieval Icelandic, and Latin. (Although over a third of the English staff also have a modern language specialism, the Department does not constitute a school of comparative literature.) In 1999/2000 it will have thirty-nine members of staff, including six Art Historians (being co-appointments with the History Department). The current Head of Department is Professor Alastair Minnis (Professor of Medieval Literature). There are ten other professors, two readers, and twenty-six Senior Lecturers and Lecturers; thirteen of the staff are women. III: Research in the Department The Department's research is organised around four Research Schools: Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment/Romantics and Modern. The first and third function in association with Interdepartmental/Interdisciplinary Centres, respectively the Centre for Medieval Studies and the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Several colleagues also contribute to the Centre for Women's Studies. A Centre for Twentieth-Century Studies (involving colleagues from the Departments of English, History, Art History and Politics) is in the process of formation. Since 1992 each of the Department's schools has been managed by its own directors, who have had budgets devolved to them and been given responsibility for organising conferences, inviting guest scholars and writers, editing serials, and integrating the research of staff and graduate students. Interaction between schools is frequent, with several colleagues contributing to more than one. Graduate students (both MA and MPhil/DPhil. candidates) have full school membership and are highly involved in school activities. Between 1/1/90 and 31/3/96 (the period covered by the 1996 RAE) the staff published 67 books, 124 parts of books, and 113 journal articles. The successful candidate will be expected to play a major role in or more of the Department's Research Schools, as it increases its research student numbers, reviews and develops its MA programmes, and moves towards a fuller interdisciplinary profile. IV: Teaching in the Department (A) UNDERGRADUATE. At the undergraduate level the Department offers courses in single honours English, and in combined honours with History, Politics, Philosophy, Language, and the History of Art. Single honours students take nine papers: one introductory paper (= Approaches to Literature), five period papers (Middle English plus 4 others chosen from twelve alternatives), and three special papers (currently from around forty alternatives, excluding the History of Art special papers). The Middle English paper, taken in the second term of the first year, and one foreign language paper, are compulsory. The Department offers around 135 undergraduate places annually, and accepts about thirty-five visiting students, mostly from the United States. Teaching is conducted through seminars and tutorials, with a back-up of lectures drawn from the staff's particular interests. Each member of staff is expected to teach a period paper every term, and a special paper in one term out of three. For a period paper, each tutor is allocated twelve or more students and is responsible for drawing up a syllabus for his or her group, within the generally-agreed aims of the paper. Special papers are normally taught in seminar groups of not more than 13 students; they are wholly the responsibility of the member(s) of staff teaching them. All courses are of a term's duration or the equivalent. Since this structure has been essentially modular since the Department's foundation, the introduction of modularization in 1995-6 hardly affected its substance. The successful candidate will be required to teach one undergraduate =91period paper' per term (from the following lists). Autumn Term. One from: Approaches to Literature (introductory course), Eighteenth-Century Literature, Writing in English 1950 to the Present/alternating with English Literature 1900-1950 Spring Term. One from: Middle English, Shakespeare and his Contemporaries, Romantics, American Literature to 1914/alternating with American Literature 1914 to the Present. (Anglo-Saxon teaching is split between the Spring & Summer Terms.) Summer Term. One from: Victorian Literature, American Literature 1890-1950, 19th/20th century French Literature, Seventeenth-Century English Literature. (Twentieth-Century German Literature is taught on a different basis) In addition he or she will be expected to devise and offer a special undergraduate paper (to run in whichever of the three terms is deemed most appropriate), which will promote interest in Postcolonial Theory and Criticism. Courses taught in the past in this area have included: (1.) Politics and the Novel: Images of Land and identity in South African Politics and Literature. Taught by Prof. Hermione Lee (English) and Dr A. Drew (Politics), this course focused on the fictional treatment of struggles over land and identity in a society where state policies aimed at social, economic and political segregation and at preventing the development of a unified South African national identity. The texts studied included novels by Gordimer, Schreiner, Bessie Head, Christopher Hope, Mphahlele, and Plaatje. (2.) Postcolonial Writing. Taught by Prof. Hermione Lee, this course involved close reading of a variety of writers from India, Africa, the West Indies and Canada, and made reference to the history of colonial writing in English (including Kipling, Orwell, Conrad, Foster and Schreiner), and involved some theoretical approaches to the subject of empire and postcolonialism. The texts for close study comprised selections from works by such authors as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ben Okri; Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro; Bessie Head, Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee; Anita Desai and Salman Rushdie; Derek Walcott, Jean Rhys and Jamica Kincaid. (B) POSTGRADUATE. The successful candidate will also be expected to contribute substantially to the Department's postgraduate teaching and supervision, contributing to the existing Taught MA courses or helping devise new ones, and supervising students in independent research leading to the Research MA, MPhil. and DPhil. degrees. Our existing Taught MAs are in: 1. Medieval Studies (taught within the Centre for Medieval Studies) 2. English Renaissance Literature 3. Romantic and Sentimental Literature, 1770-1830 4. Representations and Contexts 1750-1850 (taught within the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies) 5. Modern Literature and Culture: 1850 to the Present* 6. The Culture of Modernism. Paris-Berlin: 1920-1940* (to be taught within the Centre for Twentieth-Century Studies) (*approvals pending) Representations and Contexts 1750-1850 is an interdisciplinary MA course, taught within the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Founded in 1996, this Centre is based within the historic King's Manor, in the middle of the city of York, and is staffed by members of the departments of Archaeology, Art History, Economics, English, History, and Philosophy. The principal focus of the MA programme is set by the core course, =91Changes of meaning, Narratives of Change'. Options may include Femininity and Literary Culture, The Picturesque, Portraiture and Identity, Romantic Journalism, and Political Censorship and the Law in the 1790s. In addition a range of options is available from the MA in Romantic and Sentimental Literature, 1770-1830. By setting Romantic and Sentimental writings alongside each other this programme offers students an opportunity to find their own paths through the literary and cultural history of the period. Works by writers such as Henry Mackenzie, Helen Maria Williams, Robert Bage, Mary Hays, Mrs Barbauld, Charlotte Smith, George Crabbe, Hannah More or Jane Austen, can (for instance) be persuasively treated as Sentimental or Anti-Sentimental rather than as Romantic. At the same time, the MA offers participants the chance to develop a broad view of the major changes in sensibility and ideology of the period, and to investigate such contemporary issues as the representation of landscape or revolution, the place of women as writers, the role of periodicals as a cultural medium, and the importance of ideas of Empire and the Orient, as well as studying Romantic aesthetic theory and poetic practice. The MA course in Modern Literature and Culture: 1850 to the Present offers a wide range of options, in addition to a core course which engages in close, intensive reading of James Joyce's Ulysses and Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway (the seminars being led by Derek Attridge, Rachel Bowlby, Hugh Haughton, Lawrence Rainey and Richard Walsh). The options comprise: Reading, Writing & Sexual Difference (Nicole Ward-Jouve), Masculinity & Homoeroticism from Melville to Lawrence (Hugh Stevens), Modernist Poetry: The American Line (David Moody), Virginia Woolf (Rachel Bowlby), Sexuality, Transgression and Dissident Cultures (Jonathan Dollimore), Contemporary Narrative (Richard Walsh), Poetry & Poetics since 1930 (Hugh Haughton), Modernism: Theories, Texts, and Contexts (Lawrence Rainey), and Sites of Conflict in Modern Theatre (Mary Luckhurst and Jane Moody). The Culture of Modernism. Paris-Berlin: 1920-1940 is an interdisciplinary MA course, which will be taught within the new Centre for Twentieth-Century Studies. Its convenors are: Richard Bessel (History), David Howell (Politics), David Peters Corbett (Art History), and Lawrence Rainey (English). The core course focuses on Paris-Berlin 1920-1940; options will include =91Nostalgia, Conservatism and Modernity: Modernism in France and England, 1914-1940' (David Peters Corbett) and a selection of those also offered within the English Department's MA in Modern Literature and Culture: 1850 to the Present (as described above). In addition the Department hopes, resources permitting, to develop an MA course in =91Writing for Performance' (Drama/Film/Television), alongside an undergraduate subsidiary course in this area. Graduate students from the Department require supervision during vacations, and therefore colleagues must make themselves available in York on appropriate occasions and in accordance with current policies on graduate student care and on workloads. Certain other duties (including administrative tasks) may also require vacation presence in York, as and when required by the Head of Department. V: Salary and conditions The starting salary will be within the Lecturer A scale (currently =A316,655 to =A321,815). The successful candidate may, immediately upon starting employment, join USS - the Universities' Superannuation Scheme - which involves a personal contribution of 6.35% of salary and a University contribution equal to 14% of salary. The University will meet the full cost, within reason, of removal of furniture and household effects within the United Kingdom. The extent of payment of removal expenses of staff coming from overseas is at the discretion of the Vice-Chancellor. Three estimates of removal cost (one of which should be from a York firm) must be obtained and the University will meet the full cost of the lowest estimate. VI: Application procedure EIGHT copies of a letter of application with full curriculum vitae, and the names and addresses of three referees, should be sent by 29 January 1999 to: The Personnel Office, University of York, Heslington, York YO1 5DD. Applicants should, if possible, supply fax numbers and e-mail numbers for themselves and their referees. Please quote the advertisement reference number. There are no printed application forms. In addition to the formal interview candidates will be expected to make a presentation to an audience of members of staff (details will be sent to short-listed candidates). Further queries about the nature of the post should be addressed to the Head of Department, Professor A.J. Minnis, Department of English and Related Literature, University of York, Heslington, York YO1 5DD. The fax number of the English Department is 01904-433372; Prof. Minnis's work telephone number is 01904-433352 and his e-mail number is AJM22-AT-York.ac.uk. (E-mail inquiries are preferred.) The University will assume that it is free to approach referees at any stage unless the candidate states otherwise in his/her application (i.e. candidates who wish a referee or referees to be approached only with their specific permission and/or if they were called to interview, are asked to state such requirements explicitly alongside the details of the relevant referee(s)). It is anticipated that interviews for the post will be held on 26 February 1999 and applicants are asked to plan to be available on that day. If you have not been invited for interview within that time scale I should like to thank you for the interest you have shown in working for the University, but you should assume that on this occasion your application has been unsuccessful. Applicants who are short listed for interview will be sent details of time and venue as soon as possible. ********** With the compliments of the Personnel Office, University of York Reference numbers: THES 4/3076 Education Guardian 2/3076 www web/3076 jobs.ac.uk jobs/3076 Derek Attridge Department of English University of York York Y01 5DD, U.K. Tel. 44 (0)1904 433361 Fax 44 (0)1904 433372 e-mail: da6-AT-york.ac.uk --- from list postcolonial-info-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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