Summary
The University of California, Irvine (UCI) Program in Religious Studies supports promising PhD students or recent graduates (within 1 year of graduating with PhD and in an teaching or independent research position of some kind) to pursue targeted scholarship in Process-relational philosophy in substantive dialog with any aspect of South Asian traditions and praxis. Projects that engage the Jain tradition are particularly welcome. The PhD Process Studies and South Asia Fellowship comes with a stipend of $1500 to be used at the fellow’s discretion for support during the fellowship period. An additional $500 can be offered to support a presentation at a conference or other public forum.
Description
This fellowship is meant to engage the work of Alfred North Whitehead or other significant process philosophers or process theologians (including, but not limited to: C.S. Peirce, William James, Friedrich Nietzsche, Samuel Alexander, Henri Bergson, John Dewey, Gilles Deleuze, George Herbert Mead, Charles Hartshorne, John Cobb, Marjorie Suchocki, Carol Christ, Rosemary Radford Reuther, among many others including contemporary voices). This work should be put into dialog with any aspect of South Asian thought or praxis such as violence/nonviolence, literature, poetry, political philosophy, sociology, religion, arts, education, economics, healthcare, environment, plants, animals, gender, materialism, mysticism, duality, constructive metaphysics, transreligious futures, post/secularism, post/coloniality, race or casteism, yoga, self-rule, or other topics. Projects that engage the Jain tradition are particularly welcome.
“South Asia” can be interpreted broadly to include recognized traditions within the Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Muslim, Zoroastrian, or Sikh spheres among other minority Indian traditions, as well as diaspora movements and perspective/philosophies/practices originating in South Asia (even if no longer centered there) or overlapping South Asia historically, conceptually or in praxis. Training in relevant languages is helpful though not required.
The fellowship is a 1-quarter (10 week) commitment for intensive mentored scholarship with Professor Brianne Donaldson (UCI), either virtually or in person depending on context, followed by up to two additional 10-week quarters of virtual mentorship to support scholarship completion. The expectation is that the end of the Fellowship corresponds with submission of the completed article (or other relevant output) to at least one peer-reviewed journal.
Funding offered through the UCI Shri Parshvanath Presidential Chair in Jain Studies. This grant is co-sponsored by the Center for Process Studies.
Brianne Donaldson explores the implicit foundational beliefs that inform social inclusion and ethical action toward plants, animals, and marginalized people. She is the author of Creaturely Cosmologies: Why Metaphysics Matters for Animal and Planetary Liberation (2015) exploring Jainism and Whitehead’s process philosophy, and Insistent Life: Principles for Bioethics in the Jain Tradition (2021, co-authored with Ana Bajželj). She is the editor of Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature: A Common World for Animals and the Environment (2014), The Future of Meat Without Animals (2016; co-edited with Christopher Carter), and Feeling Animal Death: Being Host to Ghosts (2019; co-edited with Ashley King). Brianne holds the Shri Parshvanath Presidential Chair in Jain Studies at University of California, Irvine.