Opportunities

Oak Lake Writers’ Society Call for Submissions

The Oak Lake Writers (2011)

The Oak lake Writers’ Society (OLWS) is looking for creative Dakota, Lakota and Nakota writers to submit original work for our upcoming anthology. Our central theme for the anthology is the Pipestone quarry in present-day southwestern Minnesota. We are looking especially for works that relate in some way to the place or the stone—its histories and meanings. However, work that centers Dakota and other Oceti Sakowin histories, cultures, and places is also welcome, especially as we can use it to build towards our central theme.

Guidelines. All submissions must be original work in the form of short story, poetry, essay, memoir or narrative. Both fiction and non-fiction are acceptable. Please send submissions in Word. Our anticipated date of publication is sometime in 2013, press to be announced.

Deadline & Contact. Submissions should be sent to OLWSPipestone@gmail.com no later than midnight on Friday, June 15, 2012. Questions are welcome and can be sent to our gmail account above. See our Web site, www.oaklakewriters.org, for more information on our previous publications.

Pilamaya!
Kim TallBear and Mabel Picotte,
Co-editors

More animal studies...Environment and Society: Advances in Research

CALL FOR PAPERS

Issue 4: Human/Animal Relations

In the early 1960s anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss suggested that scholars should pay closer attention to animals and that by “thinking with” them we might understand human societies in new ways. Scholars in the contemporary social sciences and humanities pay close attention to animals. Animals have cosmological significance, kinship meanings, subsistence values, economic values, social exchange meanings, and socio-ecological importance. Globally, people have social relations that encompass animals and social relations with animals. While the attention to animals is clearly not new in the social sciences and humanities, the consideration of animals and their place within and outside of human society has increased in the last decade.

We seek papers for Environment and Society: Advances in Research that focus on animal-human relations of all kinds, that survey the changes that have occurred in the field, and that work to re-think the importance of animals in contemporary social science. Some possible topics / approaches we will consider are: biopolitics, post-human theory, ethics, animals in ethnography, animal-human relations, animals and conservation, animals as subsistence, the utilitarian use of animals, human/animal conflict, multi-species relations, animal histories / histories of animals, animals as commodities, animals and justice, animal logics, animals and science, animals and law (e.g. patented animals, cloning, trade), urban animals, social identity and animals, animal abuse, animals as pets, the archaeological study of animals, and the history of animals in the social sciences and humanities.

Environment and Society: Advances in Research publishes critical reviews of the latest research literature including subjects of theoretical, methodological, substantive and applied significance. Articles also survey the literature regionally and will reflect the work of anthropologists, geographers, environmental scientists and human ecologists from all parts of the world. Given the emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration, the articles will be written in a style that encourages communication and exchange within and beyond social sciences. The publication is meant to appeal to academic, research, policy-making and other applied audiences.

Please submit a 250 word abstract to ares.journal@gmail.com by March 30, 2012 to be considered for this special issue of Environment and Society: Advances in Research.

Levi-Strauss, C. (1963). Totemism. (R. Needham, Trans.). Boston: Beacon

New journal! Environmental Humanities

Special issue on speciesism, racism, sexism: American Quarterly call for papers

Claire Jean Kim and Carla Freccero, Guest Editors

American Studies is a field that is centrally concerned with power in its most salient manifestations: race, sex, class, sexuality, empire, and more. It is therefore a field well situated to take up the challenge of engaging meaningfully with one of the most ubiquitous, enduring, and momentous social hierarchies: that between human and nonhuman animals. Although human/animal dualism ranks among the major dualisms undergirding western culture and discourse, relatively little critical work has been done in American studies to critique, deconstruct, and politically challenge it, even as discussions of “intersectionality” and “interlocking hierarchies” intensify within the field. A quick glance at the program of the 2010 American Studies Association Annual Meeting confirms that despite attention to “nature” and “the human,” there was scant discussion of the human/animal divide—its genealogy, meaning(s), operation, etc. Meanwhile, in other sites in the academy, there has been a noticeable quickening of interest in human/animal issues during the past decade, as reflected in conferences, book series, list serves, and journals on the topic.

The stakes involved in deconstructing the human/animal divide are significant. The fact that “the animal” has been constructed as a relatively stable site of meaning that has historically served to define “the human” means that an analysis of the human/animal dualism will help us think critically about our self-understandings, how we think of ourselves as a species apart, unique and superior among living beings. It will also stimulate us to ask new questions about the lives of nonhuman animals, whose experiential realities we have often declined to explore because of our assumptions about their inferiority and incapacity. Also, because of the ubiquity of ideologies and practices of human supremacy, analyzing its functions and mechanisms is critical to grasping how power works. In particular, speciesism (defined as the preference for one’s own species against others) has been intertwined in dramatic ways with racism and sexism over the past few centuries in western culture. It is, for example, a familiar move on the part of colonizing/dominating peoples to define the subaltern as (non-human) animals or as akin to animals, thus justifying that domination. This entanglement—the association of animality with the subaltern—once deconstructed, makes possible the liberation of both human and non-human targets of this kind of analogizing oppression.

The papers will address some of the following questions: What is the relationship between speciesism and other forms of supremacy in the contemporary west? In what ways have racialization and gendering depended upon processes of animalization? Does the formulation of “interlocking” dualisms or hierarchies do the work we need it to do in connecting speciesism to racism and sexism? Do anti-racism and feminism commit one to an anti-speciesist position as well? What tensions have emerged among civil rights, feminist, and animal liberation movements? How might we conceive of animal subjects in a way that escapes the pitfalls of neoliberal thinking? How has speciesism (and its relation to other supremacies) assumed different forms and guises in different cultures, spaces, and time periods? How have speciesist ideologies and practices developed in tandem with U.S. imperialism?

Email essays by August 1, 2012, to aquarter@usc.edu. Please visit Author Guidelines for information on how to submit your manuscript."

_Science as Culture call for papers for special issue. scientific families: migration, networks, and reproduction

Guest editors: Staffan Bergwik, Helena Pettersson, Sven Widmalm

The “scientific life” is – sociologically, historically, and philosophically – a more complex and challenging concept than the biographical idea of a “scientist’s life”. As historian Steven Shapin, more than anyone else, has shown, it is analytically useful to view knowledge production in the light of sociocultural categories like virtue, identity, or embodiment. The epistemological authority of science is closely connected with the moral and civic legitimacy of scientific forms of life, as they are practiced and perceived in various cultural and historic settings. Changes in scientific forms of life and in the scientist’s public persona indicate changes also on the epistemological level of science. This special issue will investigate the ramifications of one significant aspect of the scientific life, namely that of family and kinship.

Our point of departure is that family and kinship relations are not “external” to knowledge production but rather a condition for and a consequence of academic research. Changes on the level of family structure and family norms are correlated with changes in scientific practice and epistemology. One image of the scientist is that of the respected patriarch, surrounded by his family. The gentleman scientist Charles Darwin comes to mind, and he is one of few examples where the study of family life and scientific work has been thoroughly integrated. Occasionally, research has had the character of a family business, in most cases with the husband representing the family’s collective work “front stage” and with wives, sisters or children performing exhausting observation work and tedious calculations “backstage”. Private homes have often been nodes for producing shared worldviews and accumulating scientific power. Examples include the Curie, Bragg and Siegbahn families where several members were Nobel laureates. With the eugenic movement’s emphasis, around 1900, on the importance of the procreation of the intellectually gifted (within a thoroughly patriarchal framework), the scientific family was in itself elevated to the position of social ideal.

As women made inroads into professional research, husband and wife teams (“creative couples”) became more common, representing a socially progressive model for family life in general. At the same time there has, in the venerable monastic and ascetic traditions, been a tendency to see the “traditional” family as being incompatible with creative work whereas (homo)social kinship has been the norm. Also in current globalized and nomadic research, social kinship is a pronounced feature of the scientists’ life. Scientists form “fictive” kinships resembling paternal, avuncular, and sibling relationships. These associations have career-long implications and weave together fields, even globally. Throughout the history of modern science, family relations – based on blood relations or intimate social ties – remain fundamental for generating and upholding networks of collegiality, trust and status.

The special issue will elaborate a broad definition of scientific family. It will be viewed as a legal, biological and/or social/cultural entity formed around knowledge making practices. Boundaries between legal and biological family on the one hand and social kinship on the other cannot be understood as a priori. Rather, such demarcations are potentially a fruitful object of study; they are culturally negotiable and a product of historical processes.The questions we wish to engage in the special issue are the following:

How can analyses of family life sharpen our understanding of how scientific cultures are reproduced spatially as well as temporally?
How can the study of scientific families enhance our understanding of how gender, class and sexuality intersect in knowledge-making practices?
How has the family functioned as a metaphor for scientific collaboration?
How is family as an entity connected with the migration of knowledge and knowledge makers/making?
How do private relationships operate as a foundation for social networks in science?
How has the family as a cultural and social regime produced certain emotions and affects in relation to scientific endeavors, while barring others?

Our point of departure is multidisciplinary but located within the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Our analytical perspective derives from the fields of history, cultural studies, sociology and anthropology. Contributions will address theories of social networks and fictive kinship as well as cultural theory of habitus (Bourdieu) and repetition. However, we also wish to reinterpret some of these dominant concepts through questions about the family as symbolic form for organizing science.

Contact and deadlines:

Abstracts should be sent by 31 January 2012 to: Staffan Bergwik < staffan.bergwik@idehist.uu.se>.
For accepted Abstracts, full drafts of articles will be expected by 15 June 2012. These must follow the SaC standard editorial guidelines, at least their structural and conceptual points. Length for special issue articles will be shorter. Available at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=0950-5431&linktype=44

_Indigenous & feminist science studies folks, take note! New doctoral training program at Brown University: environmental ethics, emerging contaminants, and emerging technologies

Brown University’s Department of Sociology seeks applications from students who want to study ethical issues concerning emerging contaminants and technologies. Applicants will most likely be students with a general interest in one or more of: environmental sociology, medical sociology, and science studies. This new Research Training Program, “New Directions in Environmental Ethics: Emerging Contaminants, Emerging Technologies, and Beyond,” funded by NSF’s STS Program, will also fund a Postdoctoral Fellow. The Training Program synthesizes three areas on the cutting edge of STS research: 1) emerging contaminants and technologies, 2) public participation in science, and 3) reflexive research ethics. These areas are tied together by a commitment to developing and implementing research and methods that make science and technological innovation more accountable and responsive to public needs and wellbeing. Students will participate in the Contested Illnesses Research Group led by Dr. Phil Brown, a long-standing research group with many funded projects, which includes 2 faculty, 3 postdocs, and 6 graduate students.

Students will also be involved with the Program in Science and Technology Studies, including its many seminar and colloquium speakers. Training grant recipients will have dedicated courses and seminar series, opportunities for collaboration on existing research, and opportunities to develop new research. A laboratory and community component will provide for the Trainees to observe scientific practices and public engagement, and to connect with scientists and social movement leaders, by visiting laboratories and community-based organizations.

Brown University has a very strong environmental health presence, including a Superfund Research Program, Children’s Environmental Health Center, and National Children’s Study. The STS Program has grown substantially in recent years, offering exciting learning opportunities. The Contested Illnesses Research Group maintains many relationships with research organizations and community groups.

Trainees will have a unique opportunity to develop STS theoretical approaches and research directions for the study of emerging science, health social movements, public participation in science, and research ethics. Applicants will need to meet the Department of Sociology’s criteria for admission, and will complete all the same requirements as other doctoral students. Applicants should visit the Department of Sociology website for details – http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Sociology/graduate/. All students accepted to the Department of Sociology get 5 years of funding as long as they make expected progress, with the first year typically being a University Fellowship and the next four years being a combination of research assistantships and teaching assistantships. Trainees in the Environmental Ethics, Emerging Contaminants, and Emerging Technologies Program get up to three of their funded years supported by the Training Program and thus will not need to be research assistants or teaching assistants in those years. There will be options for combining support from research assistantships and teaching assistantships for those who wish that experience.Trainees also get additional summer funding, and some research travel funds.

For additional information write: phil_brown@brown.edu. Prior contact before the application is encouraged. Applications should be sent to the Brown University Graduate School. In addition, applicants should send a CV and a cover letter describing their interests in, and qualifications for, the Training Program.

_Graduate Fellowships in Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

The NSF Triple Helix project in the department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer has funding for new Graduate Fellows beginning in AY2012 (starting August 2012). Graduate funding (tuition and stipend) is guaranteed for a minimum of 4 years.

Graduate fellows accepted for the program will explore how cutting-edge science and technology research might be adapted to address the problems encountered by low-income communities (health, environment, poverty, crime, information access, etc.). They will also teach in inner city middle school classrooms to apply these social/technical connections to education in communities affected by these challenges. Additional travel funding will be available for fellows interested in extending this research to low-income communities in Africa or Latin America, or among U.S. Native American populations. The Fellow must be a US citizen or permanent resident.

Current grads in the program come from a variety of backgrounds, including sociology, media arts, and urban development. Their projects include the use of cell phones for low-income health information, working with software developers to create new culture-based educational technologies, and deploying pollution sensors for both rural and urban communities. For further information see the Triple Helix website.

To apply send email describing your interests to:
Dr. Ron Eglash, Professor
Science and Technology Studies
Sage Labs 5502, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,
110 8th St, Troy, NY 12180-3590
eglash@rpi.edu
Work: 518-276-2048 fax: 518-276-2659