Current Scholar Applications
Open Call: WSRC Scholar Application for September 2023 – August 2025
The Women’s Studies Research Center of Brandeis University invites applications for Scholars and Arts Practitioners for a two-year appointment from Sept. 1, 2023, through Aug. 31, 2025. We seek to bring together Scholars in different fields, such as literature, history, art and law, who conduct research on themes related to gendered violence, women, gender and/or sexuality. Artists with craft in any medium — painting, sculpture, cloth, film, drawing, etc., — are also encouraged to apply.
Overview
In the academic years 2023-25, the WSRC will host an esteemed Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Imperiled Bodies: Slavery, Colonialism, Citizenship, and the Logics of Gender-Based Violence, led by Professors Anita Hill and Harleen Singh.
The seminar will explore the abiding fiction that gendered violence is a natural and inevitable facet of the family, state and nation. It will investigate the logics and mechanisms by which violence is woven into the ordinary and the institutional structures of heteropatriarchy, colonialism, imperialism, racism and capitalism. In this sense, gender-based violence — whether physical or symbolic — is a constitutive act that defines belonging and exclusion.
We encourage applicants’ focus and work to reflect this focus of investigation, although the WSRC will accept applications in other areas of women’s and gender studies if space allows.
WSRC Scholars will join a vibrant scholarly community, have the benefit of institutional affiliation with Brandeis University and gain membership in an academic cohort community. While Scholars do not receive a stipend, they are eligible to use workspace at the WSRC, access the Brandeis Library, present work-in-progress, join a study group, and apply to be a Scholar Partner to gain funded research support from a Brandeis undergraduate student through the WSRC’s Student-Scholar Partnership Program. The WSRC will offer access to an already existing cohort of active Scholars, as well as a network of Scholar alumni, and opportunities to attend workshops to enhance research skills. Mentorship from established Brandeis academics will aid in enhancing the overall experience.
*Please note, WSRC Scholars within the past five years are ineligible to apply to this opportunity.
Scholar Expectations
Incoming Scholars will be expected to have an in-person presence at the Center. While conducting research with clear objectives and direction, Scholars may be asked to participate in the Center in various ways such as giving a presentation or conducting an online conversation. Artists will have the opportunity to participate in a group show in the WSRC’s Kniznick Gallery. All Scholars are eligible to be invited to take part in facets of the Mellon Sawyer Seminar at the director’s discretion.
Application Materials (all submitted online)
- Application form (link below)
- Two letters of recommendation. All references must be from professionals from the field in which you are applying and only one may be from a WSRC Scholar.
- Curriculum Vitae
- Representative sample of the candidate's work
- Statement of proposed goals and objectives for your time, including work on a project that focuses on gendered violence, women's lives or gender issues.
- $75 application fee. Please mail the check to: Attn: MULLIN, Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center MS 079, 515 South St., Waltham, MA, 02453
- Application deadline is March 15, 2023. Decisions will be communicated on or around May 1, 2023.
Evaluation
All applications are reviewed and evaluated by the applications committee, which includes current Scholars and Brandeis faculty members, who then present their recommendations to the WSRC Director for discussion and final approval.
Candidates from diverse backgrounds are encouraged to apply. The Brandeis WSRC is committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal opportunities to become scholars are available to applicants from all races, ethnicities, religions, national origins, age groups, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression as well as the differently abled. Preference given to proposals on minoritized communities and to those that view women and gender in conjunction with race and comparable categories.