The Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto seeks 3 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows for a two-year appointment 2014–2016 with research relevant to the 2014–15 theme: Humour, Play, and Games
Humour, Play, and Games: A distinctive human quality is our sense of humour, and our attraction to play and to games. Play is central to such fields as literature, music, poetry, art, and film. Humour can, of course, be very serious: a powerful critique, a source of strength to survive, a tool for building solidarity, and a means of drawing and redrawing limits. But humour also poses a challenge to the serious. Today, when scholarship needs to justify itself and time is money, what room is left for play and humour? Can they be justified along functional and economic lines (e.g. play is the seedbed of the genuinely new) or must we resist justification in the name of play itself? What is an old joke worth? Games can be both competitive and collaborative, and play is structured by the virtual spaces games create. Playing games and studying games fosters new modes of knowledge. This theme will allow all disciplines, those that have long-recognized the aesthetic importance of humour and play and those that traditionally have not, to intersect with new thinking about games, and so explore a full range of serious (and sometimes funny) play.
Humour, Play, and Games: A distinctive human quality is our sense of humour, and our attraction to play and to games. Play is central to such fields as literature, music, poetry, art, and film. Humour can, of course, be very serious: a powerful critique, a source of strength to survive, a tool for building solidarity, and a means of drawing and redrawing limits. But humour also poses a challenge to the serious. Today, when scholarship needs to justify itself and time is money, what room is left for play and humour? Can they be justified along functional and economic lines (e.g. play is the seedbed of the genuinely new) or must we resist justification in the name of play itself? What is an old joke worth? Games can be both competitive and collaborative, and play is structured by the virtual spaces games create. Playing games and studying games fosters new modes of knowledge. This theme will allow all disciplines, those that have long-recognized the aesthetic importance of humour and play and those that traditionally have not, to intersect with new thinking about games, and so explore a full range of serious (and sometimes funny) play.
Fellowships begin 1 July 2014. Eligibility: PhD awarded between 1 July 2011 and 30 May 2014.
Apply at www.humanities.utoronto.ca by 15 November 2013.