"Postdoctoral Associate for Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis"

Two Interdisciplinary Fellowships at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis 2026-2027

The Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences and the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis invite applications for two interdisciplinary residential postdoctoral fellowships in the Center’s seminar for academic year 2026-2027 on “Ugly: Bodies, Aesthetics, and the Politics of the Unpleasant,” directed by Professors Yesenia Barragan and Elaine LaFay, Department of History.

The 2026-2028 RCHA seminar interrogates what is socially deemed “unpleasant” and its relations to power, violence, and inequality. We do so through the critical social category of the “ugly” and “ugliness”; that is, as a contested aesthetic site shaped by dynamics of gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, age, and body size.

Borrowing from feminist scholars Ela Przybylo and Sara Rodrigues, we are especially interested in understanding “ugliness” as a form of “visual injustice”—one that can have aural, olfactory, and other sensory modalities as well. In this seminar, we ask what is feared, dreaded, and shamed in what is normatively and socially prescribed as “ugly” and “unpleasant”? What are the historic relationships between social stratification, hierarchy, inequality, biopolitical power and visual appearance? How are these relations grounded in markers of social difference—race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, gender, class, age, sexuality, ability, and/or size? How do these socially and historically constructed fears deepen or consolidate relations or infrastructures of power? How do we tell “ugly histories” that are accountable, liberatory, and do not reify the very categories we use? We are especially interested in applications from scholars who are invested in activist approaches and/or commitments to these questions.

Drawing upon insights from history, anthropology, disability studies, psychology, Black studies, fat studies, queer and gender studies, architecture, and other humanistic and social science disciplines, this seminar seeks to bring together scholars to critique and interrogate what is socially deemed “ugly” and “ugliness” across different times and spaces. Ultimately, we aim to understand the relationship between aesthetics and power amid the “state of emergency” (Benjamin) that is our present.

The postdoctoral residential fellows will receive a salary of $70,000 for the year as well as a research allocation of $2,000; they will also receive Rutgers University health benefits. The fellows will pursue research, participate in the weekly seminars, and engage in other activities at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis. They are also asked to teach or participate in one three-credit course during the academic year.

*based on NJ Transparency Law, the minimum salary is $63,968

To apply, please submit an application consisting of the following items:

• a curriculum vitae or resume
• a project abstract of about 150 words
• two-page description of your research project and its relationship to the theme of “Ugly: Bodies, Aesthetics, and the Politics of the Unpleasant.”
• the names of three references; letters will be requested for shortlisted applicants