Call for Papers - Women Writing Diaspora: Transnational Perspectives in the 21st Century

Assistant Professor of Dance - Department of Dance - The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Position: Tenure-track position, UNC Charlotte, Department of Dance. Nine-month appointment beginning August 2018.

Primary Responsibilities: Maintain an active research agenda. Teach the Department's arts and society-themed general studies course, dance history, and dance studies. Contribute critical and intercultural perspectives to curriculum planning and revisions. Teach and stage dance forms that support our commitment to diversity and broaden our course offerings. Participate in creating and teach interdisciplinary and honors coursework for the College of Arts and Architecture and the Honors College. Teach other courses in area of expertise. Serve on committees for department, college, and university. Contribute to diversity initiatives.

Degree Required: PhD. in Dance, Dance Studies, or related field preferred; other terminal degree with commensurate experience considered; and significant university teaching experience.

Desirable Additional Experience: Contribute to Dance Education curriculum and/or hold K-12 teaching licensure; teach and use new media technologies; teach large, online, or hybrid classes; interest or experience fostering intercultural relationships with other departments across campus and groups in the community; community-engaged scholarship.

Setting: The University of North Carolina at Charlotte is a doctoral, research intensive university located in one of the nation's fastest growing metropolitan areas on an expanding modern campus. It is part of one of the oldest public university systems in the United States. UNC Charlotte offers over 28,000 culturally diverse students a wide range of undergraduate and graduate degree programs.

Department: The Department of Dance offers exciting and rigorous approaches to dance in higher education with a commitment to diversity and engagement with dance as cultural practice, art form, and interdisciplinary subject. We have 10 full-time faculty and hire part-time adjuncts, guest artists, and accompanists. There are approximately 90 majors, and the program offers a B.A. degree in Dance with two concentrations: Performance, Choreography, and Theory, and Dance Education. The Department resides within the College of Arts and Architecture, a community of visual & performing artists and design professionals who work in both intellectual and material practices. We maintain relationships with professional companies including Charlotte Ballet. In conjunction with that prestigious company, the Department offers a Professional Training Certificate in Dance for those specializing in ballet performance. The Department also offers a Certificate in Advanced Dance Studies for students to deepen and focus their study by developing a specialized area of interest and undertaking a final project. Robinson Hall, our state-of-the-art performing facility, includes a generously sized dance studio and a large dance lab/smart classroom fully equipped for performances. The Dance survey course is taught in a multi-media lecture hall. Faculty and guest artist works are regularly performed in the Anne R. Belk Theater, a proscenium-style theater which seats 340. The theater's orchestra, mezzanine, and box seating offer patrons an environment that is both intimate and elegant.

AA/EOE: The Department of Dance is actively seeking to increase the participation of underrepresented faculty and strongly encourages minorities and individuals with disabilities to apply.

Application: Complete application materials include:

Applicants must apply electronically at https://jobs.uncc.edu/. Please attach: letter, current vita, transcript, teaching philosophy, and writing samples. The chosen candidate for this position will be required to submit an official transcript of their highest earned degree. References should be sent via U.S. Mail to Gretchen Alterowitz, Search Committee Chair, Department of Dance, UNC Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd., Charlotte, NC 28223-001. Please direct electronic inquiries to [email protected]. For more information please access: http://coaa.uncc.edu/. Review of applicants will begin November 1, 2017 and continue until the position is filled.

The Department of Pan-African Studies Kent Sate University Presents Its Fourth Biennial Africa and the Global Atlantic World Conference

"Intersectional Approaches to Survival: Legacies of Resistance"

APRIL 12-13, 2018

Keynote Speaker: Professor Linda James Myers

The Department of Pan-African Studies at Kent State University will hold its fourth biennial Africa and the Global Atlantic World Conference on April 12th and 13th, 2018. This year's conference focuses on intersectionalities between approaches to resistance that various communities have historically deployed to confront systemic forms of dominance. At a time when wellness, health, clean environment, and sustainability are as threatened as economic and gender equality, disadvantaged communities of color find themselves uniquely periled by detrimental public policies and social attitudes. In such perilous moments, it becomes imperative to examine the ways in which freedom struggles in the Pan-African world are intersectional with other liberation struggles in which similar and different strategies and legacies of resistance exist. Knowing that resistance and survival often require broad coalitions of experiences among diverse groups, this conference wants to draw on the creative ways in which such approaches have or have not been successful in addressing the predicament of people of African descent. Relying on the insights of both activists and scholars, this conference hopes to encourage crucial exchanges on how various communities choose to resist oppression. In honoring creative approaches to survival and resistance this year's conference will run concurrently with our annual Pan-African Festival, which will take place on April 12-14. The festival activities will include free health and wellness workshops, art exhibitions, live performances, a Black Playwrights Showcase and a Pan-African Vendors Marketplace.

This year's Keynote Speaker will be Professor Linda James Myers, Director of the AAAS Community Extension Center, College of Arts and Sciences, and Faculty of the Department of African American and African Studies at Ohio State University. Professor Myers specializes in psychology and culture; moral and spiritual identity development; healing practices and psychotherapeutic processes; and, intersections of race, gender and class. Internationally known for her work in the development of a theory of Optimal Psychology, Dr. Myers has conducted lectures and trainings in England, South Africa, Ghana and Jamaica. She is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and five books, including: Understanding an Afrocentric World View: Introduction to a Optimal Psychology; and, most recently, co-editor of Recentering Culture and Knowledge in Conflict Resolution Practice. Dr. Myers' oneness model of human functioning offers a transdisciplinary focus that builds on insights from the wisdom tradition of African deep thought, and converges with modern physics and Eastern philosophies.

Topics and themes of papers/artistic work will include:

We invite abstracts for papers, workshops, panels, video and poetry performances, and other artistic forms that address the above goals and themes. Abstracts should not exceed 250 words. Abstracts should explain the topic, the content, and highlight key discussion points that advance the conference theme of intersectional approaches to survival and legacies of resistance. All abstracts are due November 15, 2017. Please submit a 50-word biography.

For more information about the conference, please contact the Conference Committee electronically (at [email protected]) or by mail at: Conference Committee, Department of Pan-African Studies, Kent State University, P.O. Box 5190, Kent, Ohio, USA, 44240.