In the frame of the newly funded DFG-project "Transforming Memories: Cultural Production and Personal/Public Memory in Lebanon and Morocco", Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin advertises one PhD position (Subproject III, TVöD 13, 50%) starting 1 September 2011 for the duration of two years. The project is carried out in cooperation with UMAM Documentation & Research in Beirut. The team consists of two other researchers, one based at ZMO and one at UMAM. Travel funds are available. After 18 months an application to DFG for an extension of another year is envisaged.
The project is designed to compare state and popular claims on memory and history, starting from the individual social practice. Public cultures in Morocco and Lebanon constitute energetic and experimental forms of cultural production that creatively engage a violent past as an open terrain of dialogue on how to co-exist in the present and future. The working title of subproject III is ‘Wounded Memories: Present Pasts in Contemporary Moroccan Film and (Auto-)biography’. This subproject approaches selected Moroccan autobiography and film as transformational sites of memory shaping the exchange of personal experience and historical event. While this exchange may be otherwise framed by formal procedures and rituals of memorialisation, emphasis here is placed on cultural production as transformative practices influencing the way in which Moroccan public culture addresses the past.
Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin is the only German research institute devoted to the interdisciplinary study of the Middle East, Africa, South, Southeast and Central Asia from a historical perspective. The centre currently employs about 40 research fellows from a variety of countries. UMAM Documentation & Research is a Beirut-based civil society organization that confronts civil violence and war by revisiting Lebanon’s violent past through diverse cultural and community-based activities as well as extensive documentation.
Requirements: Working language is English. Good field research skills as well as a good command of written and spoken Arabic is necessary. The workplace is Berlin. Applications outlining the relevant qualifications should also contain a CV, a sample of scholarly work (10 to maximum 20 pages from an article, conference paper, or dissertation chapter) and a letter of recommendation by one university instructor. Submission deadline: 30 July 2011.
Disciplines: Middle East Studies, Visual Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Literature and Film Studies. Please very shortly expound from which perspective you would work on the project.
Contact: Dr. Sonja Hegasy at Zentrum Moderner Orient, Kirchweg 33, D-14129 Berlin or zmo@rz.hu-berlin.de. Remuneration will be according to Tarifvertrag für den öffentlichen Dienst, grade 13, 50% (http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/tvoed/bund/). For further information on ZMO and its programme see http://www.zmo.de.
Applications should not contain any original materials, as the documents will not be returned.