Brown University's Department of Classics and the Center for the Study of the Early Modern World invite applications for an International Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship in early modern studies with a focus on ‘Humanities in the Colonial World c. 1500-1750’. The position will be held at the Center for the Study of the Early Modern World (EMW) in the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University, and at the Brown Department of Classics, for a two-year term beginning July 1, 2023. The Fellow will teach two courses each year in Classics which will be crosslisted as Cogut/EMW courses.

We are seeking an outstanding scholar of early modern intellectual history with an interest in the various roles and functions of colonial education in Africa, Asia, or the Americas and the Atlantic World, c.1500-1750. We are particularly keen to receive applications from those whose work offers a critical perspective on the history of European disciplines outside Europe. Lines of enquiry might include (but are by no means limited to):

• examination of ways in which the humanities served as an instrument of imperial expansion or domination;
• how the humanities were transformed or appropriated by subjected or colonized groups;
• how European education interacted with non-European/indigenous forms of knowledge.

Knowledge of Latin (the main medium of early modern education in the humanities) will be an advantage, but the position is open to applicants specializing in any period or region within the stated remit, whose areas of expertise may range from the history of technical training (grammar, rhetoric, philosophy) and the history of disciplines (literature, history, antiquarianism) to the history of the book.  

The Ph.D. must be in hand by July 1, 2023 and must have been awarded in the last five years. Recipients of a Ph.D. from Brown University are ineligible.