The Center for Material Culture Studies (CMCS) invites applications from UD faculty and graduate students for the 2022-23 Thing Tank research forum, material futures. Thing Tank supports the research and professional development of graduate students and faculty by creating a space for sustained intellectual exchange on topics related to the study of material culture.
Each year, CMCS appoints 4 Faculty Fellows and 6 Graduate Fellows as part of a year-long cohort. Together, they collaborate to explore a major topic in material culture studies. Fellows workshop writing-in-progress, attend biannual public talks by prominent guest lecturers, and participate in field visits to regional collections or sites. (See below for more details.)
Material futures explores the relationship between material culture and imaginings of the future. Amid intensifying concerns about climate, disease, and inequality, the future holds our attention in unprecedented ways. Scholars, artists, and activists are attending to the future with the hope of positively shaping it. In natural sciences, engineering, and business, material and technological innovations and future-oriented tools for prediction and projection have assumed new importance. In art, design, the humanities, and social sciences, research on the future considers the different ways it is imagined, represented, and contested.
Just as objects and materials connect people with the past, they play a fundamental role in enabling and constituting the future. From the imagined technologies of speculative fiction to the design aesthetics of “futurist” movements, material culture concretizes and brings the future to life. Objects can also embody, disclose, or foreclose what lies ahead. Ritual artifacts used by past societies to make predictions, novel substances synthesized by material scientists, and economic models that project (and performatively enact) market trends exemplify the capacity of things to shape the future. Material futures names an approach to material culture studies that asks us to consider how objects, elements, and technologies can afford or inspire future courses of action.
By bringing together material culture studies and current theoretical work on futurity, material futures initiates an interdisciplinary conversation. In the social sciences and humanities, scholars conceptualize futurity as a temporality that is socially produced, circulated, and experienced. It is understood as a phenomenon that encompasses senses of hope, optimism, and promise, as well as uneasy states of pessimism and disappointment. In addition to these temporal and affective dimensions of futurity, material culture studies encourages us to consider the ways that futurity manifests in concrete forms and practices. For instance, Jens Beckert’s sociological research in Imagined Futures reminds us that the reproduction of capitalist economic systems depends on people investing in specific objects that they believe will retain their monetary value beyond the present. Likewise, our visions of the future shape the processes and products of scientific investigation and technological innovation, as Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim describe in Dreamscapes of Modernity. Questions about materiality and futurity cut across the arts and sciences, design and engineering, and other fields of study.
Through workshops, lectures, and site visits, participants in Thing Tank will explore material futures from various disciplinary angles. How are future-oriented affects encoded in and inspired by objects? How are our hopes and fears revealed through artistic, scientific, and analytical engagements with materials? How are efforts to preserve, describe, and analyze objects and artifacts connected with expectations for the future? How can we bring the methods of material culture studies to bear on questions of futurity? We invite a diversity of perspectives to consider fundamental questions about what lies ahead.
Topic Director
Kedron Thomas (Associate Professor, Anthropology)
CMCS Thing Tank Graduate Fellows
CMCS will select six advanced Graduate Fellows in the humanities and social sciences (MA or PhD) for the 2022-2023 Annual Research Forum. Each student fellow will receive a $500 research stipend ($250 distributed per semester) and become a member of the Thing Tank’s cohort and forum. Students should be conducting thesis or dissertation research related to the Center’s theme for the year in which the award is granted. Fellows are required to attend the Thing Tank Research Forum, held bimonthly on Thursdays from 12-1:30* during the academic year, and present their work at one of the sessions. *Interested applicants are advised to check well ahead with their department/s to avoid conflicts with class schedules and other obligations.
CMCS Thing Tank Faculty Fellows
CMCS will select four Faculty Fellows to participate in the 2022-2023 Annual Research Forum. Applicants must be full-time UD faculty and CMCS affiliated members. Each Faculty Fellow will receive up to $1000 in research support (disbursed through reimbursement for research expenses dated prior to June 30, 2023) and become a member of the Thing Tank’s cohort and forum. Applicants should be conducting research and/or developing and teaching courses related to the Center’s theme for the year in which the award is granted. Faculty Fellows are required to attend the Thing Tank Research Seminar, held bimonthly on Thursdays from 12-1:30* during the academic year, present their work at one of the sessions, and serve as interlocutors and mentors for the Graduate Fellows. *Interested applicants are advised to check well ahead with their department/s to avoid conflicts with class schedules and other obligations.
TO APPLY:
Please submit the following materials as a single PDF via email to materialculture@udel.edu. Application deadline: April 1, 2022. Applicants can expect notification from CMCS in early May.
Graduate Student Applicants:
- Project Abstract and Application Letter (1250 words maximum)
- Please begin with a title and short abstract of your project (250 words maximum).
- The application letter (1000 words maximum) should clearly articulate how your research pertains to the theme of material futures and describe projected outcomes of your participation in the seminar (e.g., advancing an article, dissertation, thesis, collaborative project, or other research initiative).
- Name and contact information for one faculty reference who can support your application
- A short, up-to-date CV (no more than 2 pages)
Faculty Applicants:
- Project Abstract and Application Letter (1250 words maximum)
- Please begin with a title and short abstract of your project (250 words maximum).
- The application letter (1000 words maximum) should clearly articulate how your research and/or teaching pertains to the theme of material futures and describe projected outcomes of your participation in the seminar (e.g., advancing an article, book project, collaborative project, pedagogical undertaking, or other research initiative).
- A short, up-to-date CV (no more than 2 pages)
- Please begin with a title and short abstract of your project (250 words maximum).