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The Cluster of Excellence 2020 "Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective" aims to create a new theoretical and methodological take on literature in a global perspective. Introducing the notion of ‘temporal communities’, the Cluster investigates the ways in which literature reaches out through space and time, establishing complex temporalities and extensive transcultural and transtemporal networks as it interacts with other arts and media. The Cluster’s research is conducted within five Research Areas: 1. Competing Communities, 2. Travelling Matters, 3. Future Perfect, 4. Literary Currencies, 5. Building Digital Communities.

The postdoctoral position is situated in Research Area (RA) 3, "Future Perfect". Research Area 3 will explore literature’s ability to construct complex temporalities of its own, shaping temporal communities potentially over long expanses of time. RA3 will focus on literature’s involvement in imagining as well as participating in diverse, often multiple temporalities. It will study how literary texts project their own reception in the future and forge temporal communities for themselves, how they constitute themselves within networks of intertextual relations and with reference to multiple traditions. How do cultural practices such as philology construct temporalities, e.g. by establishing chronologies or freezing textual objects in zones of radical synchronicity? How is literary history constituted through teleological narratives? Expected starting date of the position: 1 January 2022. Further information: www.temporal-communities.de.

Further information in the job advertisements of Freie Universität Berlin from 19. September 2021 under the reference code: EXC 2020 RT C Postdoc RA3 2022  (PDF).

Job description:

• development and implementation of an individual research project of their own within Research Area 3 „Future Perfect“ with the aim of completing a monograph

• taking the lead in organising research cooperation within Research Area 3
• coordinating Research Area 3’s contributions to the Living Handbook of Temporal Communities in close cooperation with the Managing Editor and the Editorial Board
• a substantial contribution to the further development of the cluster’s concepts and methodology and of its international networks

• conceiving and organising international, interdisciplinary workshops and conferences
• mentoring the doctoral students of the Research Area
• liaising with the Research Area’s international fellows
• responsibility for the Research Area’s financial administration in cooperation with the Cluster’s Managing Director

Requirements:
doctoral thesis in literary studies or another humanities discipline; in art history, in philosophy or in a related discipline requiring literary studies expertise

Desirable:

• documented expertise in literary and/or cultural theory
• expertise in the fields of literary studies/literary theory in combination with literary history
• documented research experience in a premodern and/or non-European literature and culture
• familiarity with current debates on issues of materiality, codicology, aesthetic forms of representation and/or philology and its history
• willingness to develop methodological concepts, including those of non-European literatures, in the areas of the literary experience of time and the literary constitution of temporalities in the context of community building
• an excellent doctoral thesis
• a very good knowledge of both German and English (with a minimum competence in one of these languages at the level of C1 GER and the other at the level of B2 GER)

Further Information

In addition to the usual documents (CV, references, list of publications), applications should include a maximum 5-page synopsis of the planned book project in German or English. The synopsis should show how the project contributes to the research agenda of the Cluster and to the Research Area. Applications, indicating the reference code, should be sent electronically by e-mail as ONE pdf-file to Prof. Dr. Anne Eusterschulte, Prof. Dr. Beatrice Gründler and Prof Dr. Andrew James Johnston: ra3@temporal-communities.de.

For administrative reasons, only electronic applications can be accepted.

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Freie Universität Berlin is an equal opportunity employer.