Fellowships for Trans-Atlantic Summer Institute in European Studies (TASI), July 8 - July 20, 2013
"Borders in Motion: New Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion across Europe and North America"

The DAAD Center for German & European Studies at the University of Minnesota invites applications to the 13th Trans-Atlantic Summer Institute in European Studies (TASI). The Institute will bring together 11 German or other European, and 11 North American advanced graduate students for an intensive two-week seminar on the campus of the University of Minnesota. The 2013 topic is "Borders in Motion: New Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion across Europe and North America." The 2013 faculty leaders are Matthias Rothe (German, Scandinavian and Dutch; University of Minnesota) and Anika Keinz (Anthropology; European University Viadrina, Germany). The Institute offers a diverse mix of seminar discussions of key readings, research presentations by guest faculty and fellows, and formal discussions of fellows' research projects. The international faculty team encourages applications from young scholars in the social sciences and humanities. All selected applicants will receive fellowships. Institute language is English. A reading knowledge of one other European language is required. Application deadline: April 22, 2013.

topic abstract:

"Mobility" and "flexibility" are buzz words of the postsocialist, post-9/11 decades. With E.U. enlargement, national borders between member states have become less important. At the same time, new internal boundaries proliferate: distinctions between immigrants and native citizens, between "ethnic" and supposedly non-ethnic groups, between religious communities and a supposedly secular and liberal society. Emancipatory values and human rights seem to become instruments of distinctions. Religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities are often pitted against one another. The new boundaries are reconfirmed through public policy, practices, and security technology and reflected in discourses of belonging. The 2013 Trans-Atlantic Summer Institute draws on a broad range of academic fields—including anthropology, sociology, political philosophy, history, political science, and cultural studies—to investigate dynamics of inclusion and exclusion across Europe and North America. Fellows will engage an array of intriguing questions: How do we most appropriately conceptualize phenomena of inclusion and exclusion in late modern heterogeneous societies? What criteria are employed to mark differences and how does the function of difference itself change? How do security regimes reinscribe differences of gender, sexuality, and race? How do these processes and dynamics resemble each other or differ in the E.U. and North America?

Full details and application materials at
http://cges.umn.edu/fellowships/tasi.htm