Call For Applicants: The Midwestern Borderland: A Reading Group
Final Workshop at Northwestern University, May 16, 2015
Historians have long recognized the agricultural and industrial might of the Midwest, but few focus on its proximity to and reliance on an international border with Canada. On the other hand, scholars of the West and Southwest have explored the role America’s international border with Mexico plays in determining social, political and cultural trends in that region. Flagship universities in Texas, Arizona, California, and New Mexico all devote significant time and resources to questions of race and space along the U.S.-Mexican border. This reading group seeks to promote new modes of inquiry among emerging scholars of the Midwest by applying the insights of borderlands literature to a Midwestern context.
As part of an initiative sponsored by the Humanities Without Walls project sponsored by Northwestern’s Kaplan Center for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation we invite applications from scholars of CIC institutions whose work on the Midwest would benefit from borderlands literature. During the 2014-2015 academic year we will meet digitally six times on October 18, November 15, December 13, February 21, March 21 and April 18th to discuss a different book or set of articles concerning North American borderlands. On May 16, participants will be given a small stipend to travel to Northwestern for a day-long academic workshop in which participants will present and critique each other’s original work.
Proposals should be limited to five hundred words and outline exactly how your work on the Midwest would benefit from engagement with borderlands literature.
Proposal and CV Due: September 15, 2014
Send materials to Ashley Johnson at ashleyjohnson2013@u.northwestern.edu
Middle West Review 