Call for Proposals:

Newberry Library Scholarly Seminar - Premodern Studies 2025-2026

"Premodern Ecologies"

Application deadline: July 7, 2025

This seminar provides a forum for new approaches to classical, medieval, and early modern studies, allowing scholars from a range of disciplines to share work-in-progress with the broader community at the Center for Renaissance Studies. We meet four times a year, and every meeting is free and open to the public.

Our theme for this year is “Premodern Ecologies,” and our aim is to explore the entanglements of nature and culture and of the human and other-than-human before 1800. How did people in the ancient, medieval, and early modern world think about and describe their relationship with the natural and built environments in which they lived and worked? How did they use natural resources, and with what lasting legacies? How were political, economic, religious, artistic and intellectual choices and priorities in the premodern world influenced by ecological possibilities and restraints? What can the surviving material witnesses of the premodern past tell us about the natural world at the times they were produced? How did environmental concerns and understandings intersect with practices of power and resistance in the ancient world, Middle Ages, and early modernity? How might premodern approaches and interactions with the natural environment inform, anticipate, or provide alternative models to contemporary efforts towards conservation, sustainability, and environmental justice? What does “greening” premodern studies do for our understanding of premodern pasts, and what does a focus on premodernity bring to the environmental humanities and the study of human-and-other-than-human relationships more generally? 

We welcome submissions on these questions from all fields of premodern studies. Global approaches are particularly welcome, and we invite work that is both archival and theoretical. Papers will be pre-circulated, so that the majority of the seminar session will be devoted to discussion. For 2025-2026, all meetings will be held in-person at the Newberry Library.

Submissions must include a one-page proposal (300 words), a list of Newberry materials related to your research, a statement explaining the relationship of the paper to your other work, and a brief CV (maximum 2 pages). If you have any questions about the submission process or the seminar in general, please send an email to:fletcherc@newberry.org.

Please submit your application here!

Apply to be the Director of Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks

Job Summary

Dumbarton Oaks is a leading research center in Garden and Landscape Studies, with a library that is a point of reference for the field, joined to world-renowned museum collections and a historic garden designed by Beatrix Farrand. In recent years, thanks to a grant from the Mellon Foundation, Dumbarton Oaks has expanded its support of landscape studies in the areas of urban studies, and landscape and democracy.

The Director of Studies is a key contributor to Dumbarton Oaks’ mission to support residential fellows and scholars, promote advanced research in our fields of study, and advocate for the humanities. Candidates should have a distinguished record of scholarly achievement, as well as significant experience in program management and academic administration, and a desire to contribute to a wide array of programs and activities in a collaborative environment.

Reporting to the Director, the Director of Studies oversees and coordinates all programming related to Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, including the residential fellowship program, scholarly visitors, scholarly events, and committee meetings. Additionally, the Director of Studies administers the Mellon grant that supports the Landscape and Democracy Initiative at Dumbarton Oaks.

This is a term position (five years, potentially renewable for another five years).

For full details follow this LINK.

Position at St. Olaf College

The Department of Environmental Studies at St. Olaf College invites applications for a 5/6-time, one-year position at the level of Visiting Instructor or Assistant Professor, to begin August 2025. The teaching load is 5 of a possible 6 courses (0.83 FTE). The successful candidate will teach 2 sections of an intermediate level “topics” course in Environmental History; 1 section of an upper level “topics” course in the candidate's area of specialization; and 2 sections of ENVST 233 Environmental Justice. Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. More information and a link to apply are available  HERE.