File spoon-archives/postcolonial-info.archive/postcolonial-info_1999/postcolonial-info.9901, message 1


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 ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005