Presentation

The project, "Other Modernities: Patrimony and Practices of Visual Expression Outside the West," is pleased to announce an open call for doctoral candidates interested in pursuing their work under the auspices of the Swiss National Fund Sinergia Program. The platform offers candidates three years of support towards a doctoral degree.

Directed by Prof. Silvia Naef (Arabic Studies Section, University of Geneva), Prof. Wendy M. K. Shaw (Department of Art History and Center for Cultural Studies, University of Bern), and Prof. Irene Maffi (Department of Anthropology, University of Lausanne), the project will use a format of block seminars, workshops, colloquia, and conferences to serve as a platform for sharing methodological approaches, research strategies and results, and professional networking between project participants and related professionals in Switzerland, Europe, and the Middle East.

The project focuses on the historiography of arts in the non-West as an intercultural phenomenon through the lens of worldwide processes of modernization. Rather than conceiving of the non-Western present against the backdrop of supposedly authentic, homogenous, undiluted, and nationally bounded traditions, this project focuses on the historiographic construction of art and visual culture as intertwined agents and expressions of sociopolitical modernization. It proposes art and performance as parallel arenas through  which cultural identity comes to be perceived neither as a search for roots nor a striving for Westernization, but as a process of coming-into-being within a framework of shifting cultural and political hegemonies.

Applications

Applicants must have a MA degree or equivalent at the time of application.

Preliminary applications should consist of a one-page summary project proposal and a short CV.

Preliminary applications are due by Nov. 15, 2012.

Further materials will be requested for a second round of application.

 Please direct queries to silvia.naef@unige.ch or wendy.shaw@ikg.unibe.ch .