Dear Colleagues:
I am writing to invite proposals from the Center’s Faculty for a variety of CMRS Center for Early Global Studies Programs for AY 2023-2024 and AY 2024-2025. CMRS-CEGS operates on an open collaborative research platform of five main research axes. Across our research axes, the Center puts forward a set of thematic priorities for the next two-year cycle:
- Ecology
- Knowledge
- Memory/Oblivion
- The Senses
- Sovereignty/Empire
- Travel and Traveling Forms
Designed to encourage, rather than to limit, these themes offer resonant anchors for our work. They can be taken up as stand-alone themes or can be combined in different ways, e.g.: Knowledge and Empire, Sovereignty vs Empire, Knowledge and Senses. They are intended as large containers to be shaped according to specific interests. By way of example, and not limited to the above list, “Traveling Forms” can be about forms of travel, but also about music or architectural forms (on a different chronology, e.g. European vs Spanish American “Renaissance”), lyric forms that did and did not travel (e.g. Occitan, Persian, Arabic), story, dance, and music forms that traveled across Central Asia and south-east Asia, different writing forms. Translation, technologies, religion, and economy can also be viewed from that perspective.
The proposals should fall within the Center’s chronological span, that is, from the 3rd to the mid-17th century. We particularly wish to encourage synergies between teaching and research in the programming formats and welcome:
- Proposals for research workshops or research groups who have a sustained multi-year research program, already meet or plan to begin meeting in various international and national venues, in-person and remotely, and who would benefit from adding an onsite meeting at UCLA to their cycle. Funded in the amount of $10,000, to take place between Fall 2023 and Spring 2025. Possibility of publication through CMRS-CEGS journals or book series.
- Proposals for CMRS-CEGS Research Seminars (up to $5,000) for any quarter of the AY 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. These Seminars are graduate-level, UCLA classes that are transdisciplinary in intent and include one to two faculty from UCLA and two (or more) outside faculty; a library research component is encouraged. These classes will also be included in the list of graduate seminars that fulfill requirements for the new Graduate Certificate in Global Medieval Studies. We continue to encourage using graduate research seminars as public research venues (in the past year, we supported a number of public lectures presented as part of CMRS-CEGS sponsored graduate seminars). The CMRS-CEGS Research Seminars can also be an extension of the research groups and used to bring external visitors to campus.
- Proposals for one-day conferences funded in the amount of $10,000, to take place between Fall 2023 and Spring 2025. Two-day conferences can be proposed with additional co-sponsorship funding.
For any questions about format, theme, timing, please contact me directly at zs@humnet.ucla.edu.
Applications should include a description, no longer than a thousand words, of (a) the topic; (b) the approximate date; (c) a budget estimating expenses; (d) the expected outcome; (e) the amount of funding requested; and (f) if and how graduate students will be involved.
While a list of participants, from UCLA or from elsewhere, is not necessary at the time of proposal submission, it is preferable that no invitations be made or accepted at the time of application.
All UCLA CMRS-CEGS faculty members are eligible to apply. Proposals should be submitted by email to cmrs@humnet.ucla.edu by October 1, 2022. I hope that you will consider applying. Please do not hesitate to contact me, or Karen Burgess (kburgess@ucla.edu), directly with any questions.
With best wishes,
Zrinka Stahuljak
Director, CMRS Center for Early Global Studies