Postdoctoral Researcher / Health and the Environment in the Nineteenth-Century United States

Project "AmHealth" aims to investigate the tangled histories of health and ecological crises as they are represented in a wide range of literary and cultural productions of the nineteenth-century United States. It focuses on the notion of "environment" as a complex nexus of contradictory theorizations and pressures, between a natural resource for obtaining or preserving health and a human-made site where toxic forces have pushed many species on the verge of extinction. Doing so, the project elaborates literary and cultural criticism as a set of methods for thinking about the interrelated, and ongoing, health and ecological crises that shape our current condition through the action of environmental factors.

We are looking to hire a postdoctoral researcher to advance research on the relations between health and the environment in the nineteenth-century United States’ literature and culture. The successful post-doctoral fellow will play a crucial role in implementing the objectives of this initiative. This is an 18-month fixed-term contract (starting date: November 1st, 2023, or as soon as possible thereafter). The researcher will be supervised by Prof. Thomas Constantinesco (Sorbonne Université) and will be a member of the VALE research team at Sorbonne Université.

Main activities:

- The fellow is expected to be in residence in Paris and will carry on a research project of their own at the crossroads of nineteenth-century United States’ literature and culture, health humanities and / or environmental humanities, whose objectives are relevant to project “AmHealth.”

- They will also work with the team members of project “AmHealth” to develop relevant research and outreach activities. In particular, the researcher:

• will assist with the organization of the project’s worskshops and conference;
• will promote the project’s activities by administering its website and social media accounts;
• will monitor recent and ongoing research in the core fields of the project.