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With the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Prof. Susan Pedersen will be offering a summer seminar, to be held at Columbia University from May 19-June 30, 2010, for graduate students in the process of completing dissertations in the field of Modern British, or British imperial, history. As graduate programs downsize, many graduate students find that they rarely have the opportunity for sustained intellectual interaction with other students at the same stage and in the same field. At the same time, successive waves of theoretical innovation and field redefinition have combined with shifting student interests to place heavy demands on beginning faculty. This seminar aims to bring together graduate students who are in the last year or two of their doctoral programs to discuss both their own research and the problems they face defining, mastering and teaching British history today.
The seminar will meet twice weekly for seven weeks. There will be a set of introductory sessions discussing recent work in British political, imperial, cultural and social history. Much of the seminar will then be devoted to presentations by the seminar members, although there will also be several sessions on teaching and publishing. Visiting faculty, participants from the 2007 seminar, and book and journal editors, will come in to discuss their own strategies for teaching, hiring, and publishing. All students will circulate and present one piece of research (usually a dissertation chapter, but possibly an article or a job talk) and will develop one course syllabus.
Students participating in the seminar will receive stipends of $4300 for this 7-week period. Students coming from outside the New York area are expected to find their own accommodation, but supplementary stipends will be given to meet those housing costs, or to pay for extensions on university or other leases for students already in the New York area.
Graduate students interested in taking part in the seminar should send a description of their dissertation (not more than five pages) and a c.v., and arrange for their advisor to send a short nomination letter explaining the student’s suitability for the seminar, by January 15, 2010 to Prof. Susan Pedersen (sp2216@columbia.edu). Email is preferred, but you may send hard copy to the contact address above.
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