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Stipendium: Information Studies of Eurasia, Davis Center, Harvard Univ./USA - 01.08.2025
Informing Eurasia: Informational Approaches to Eurasian Cultures,Politics and Societies
Deadline: January 10, 2010
More information:http://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu
The Davis Center is pleased to announce a new Fellows Program for
2011-2012. The Fellows Program will bring together scholars at early
and later stages in their careers to consider a common theme spanning
the social sciences and humanities. Professors Terry Martin
(History), William Mills Todd III (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
and Rawi Abdelal (Harvard Business School) will coordinate the 2011-
2012 program. We are interested in applications from scholars
currently working on our chosen theme, or equally those working on
unrelated themes, but who are interested in exploring our theme.
The theme for 2011-2012 is "Informing Eurasia: Informational
Approaches to Eurasian Cultures, Politics and Societies." Eurasian
studies currently has no sub-field of "Information Studies," but
historians, literary critics, and social scientists working on
Eurasia have recently produced novel work (described below), that the
Davis Center plans to bring into dialogue. The Davis Center invites
scholars working on, or interested in pursuing, such informational
approaches to Eurasia to apply to our Fellows program. In addition to
pursuing their own research, Fellows will participate in a bi-weekly
interdisciplinary seminar series that will explore informational
approaches to Eurasian studies.
Our imagined field of "Information Studies" includes, but is hardly
limited to, the following:
History - work on surveillance has analyzed not just how the imperial
Russian and Soviet state gathered information and what information
they gathered, but also how they used various technologies of rule
(e.g. the passport, census, map, autobiography) to categorize
individuals by identity, loyalty, geography and utility. Social and
cultural historians have in turn traced how these categories took on
meaning both collectively (nationalism, class conflict, patriotism,
dissent) and individually (in projects of self-transformation and
self-protection). Political historians have studied how information-
gathering and categorical construction has influenced policy
formation, political policing, mass coercive actions and mass
persuasion. Other work analyzed how subjects spoke to the state
through petitions, denunciations, personal narratives, riots and mass
collective actions; how individuals have communicated information in
periods of censorship through gossip, rumor, and Aesopian language;
and how evolving technology has transformed communicative
possibilities.
Literature and culture - scholars have studied the many resources of
language, genre and literary tradition to provoke reflection on
imperial Russian and Soviet information practices and policies. They
have assessed techniques of myth-making, ambivalent representations
and the modeling of alternative realities. Beyond studying individual
works and their reception, they examine actors in the literary
process including authors, publishers, censors, readers,
theoreticians and critics. The Tartu-Moscow semioticians have at
times drawn directly on information theory in developing their
approach to the generation of texts and discourse. Such everyday and
more formal genres as novel, film, memoir and jokes have proven
fertile ground for research, which has often drawn upon the methods
of the social sciences.
Social sciences - scholars have, like historians, evaluated the ways
in which governments collect, disseminate and interpret information.
Some fruitful work explored how processes of reifying economic,
social and political activity lead governments, elites and mass
publics to understand the world around them. For example, economic
data regularly influence public policy-making, and yet the process of
categorizing and accounting for economic activities reveals the
necessity of judgment and the use of prevailing social constructions
for creating meaningful categories. Recent work by scholars who
emphasize the influence of social constructions such as collective
identities and domestic and international norms of appropriate
practices, suggest that information is mediated by particular
understandings of the world. Economic sociologists and political
scientists have examined the cognitive frameworks that are
necessarily employed when making sense of myriad pieces of economic
information. Market participants themselves must attribute meaning to
seemingly straightforward concepts like budget deficits, inflation
and rates of growth in national output in making investment
decisions, which in turn can have self-fulfilling consequences for
the sustainability of economic policy stances.
Types of Fellowships
1) Postdoctoral Fellowships: Junior scholars who will have completed
a Ph.D. or equivalent by September 2011 and no earlier than September
2006. Stipend of up to $37,500.
2) Senior Fellowships: Senior scholars who have made a significant
contribution to the field and have completed a Ph.D. or equivalent by
September 2006 and hold an academic appointment. Stipend of up to
$25,250 to bring salary to full-time level.
3) Regional Fellowships: Senior scholars who have completed a Ph.D.
or equivalent by September 2006 or policymakers, journalists, and
specialists. Citizens of Russia, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and
the Caucasus may apply. Stipend of up to $45,500.
Scholars with outside or sabbatical funding who wish to be in
residence at the Davis Center in 2011-2012 should apply using the
fellowships application and indicate that they do not require Davis
Center funding.
Note that scholars whose work does not address the selected theme are
encouraged to apply for fellowships at the Davis Center, and that
their applications will receive full consideration
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