The University of Wisconsin-Madison invites applications for its A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, it will provide 3 two-year postdoctoral fellowships for recent PhD recipients starting on August 28, 2017. Fellows are members of the Institute for Research in the Humanities and Center for the Humanities, and are also affiliated with a humanities or humanistic social science department in the College of Letters & Science, where they will teach a total of three undergraduate courses over two years with no teaching in the first semester of the fellowship.

The theme for 2018-2020 is Truth, Fact, and Ways of Knowing. We seek applications from scholars whose research addresses conceptions of truth (or lie), fact (or fiction) as well as questions of epistemology, representation, and evidence.  Scholars may take up these themes directly as the topic of their research in fields that could include philosophy, literature, the arts, cultural studies, politics, or media studies, among others, or through methodological approaches that reflect novel ways of thinking about evidence, proof and argument. We also are interested in scholars who are concerned with the ways in which truth is manipulated, whether by groups, individuals, or discourses. Projects may focus on any area of the world, including cross-regional analyses, at any historical or prehistorical moment.

We welcome applications from scholars who work in philosophy, literary studies, cultural studies, rhetoric, religious studies, art history and visual cultures, sound studies and musicology, history of science and technology, critical and political theory, legal studies, critical race studies, gender studies, linguistics, film and media studies, and other core and emerging fields in the humanities.

Interdisciplinary scope across these fields as well as between the humanities, arts, sciences, and social sciences is encouraged. Likewise, the selection committee welcomes projects that employ innovative methods. However, in 2018, we are unlikely to appoint fellows in the Departments of History, English, or Geography.