Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Visual Studies

We seek a practicing fiction filmmaker and interdisciplinary thinker with experience in all aspects of contemporary visual storytelling: pre-production, production, post-production, and distribution.

Qualifications

The successful candidate is a filmmaker who creates work that creatively engages with critical frameworks addressing gender, sexuality, disability, race, and/or class, and who has a global perspective on film and digital media.  They will teach and mentor a diverse body of undergraduate students with a range of academic interests, experiences, and backgrounds.  They will be engaged in interdisciplinary work in film and digital media production, film history, and film theory as they contribute to and are studied by different disciplines in a liberal arts context.  They understand the technical and aesthetic features of camera operation, sound recording, lighting, and editing.  They will teach introductory and capstone courses that anchor the Visual Studies program, in addition to courses in the area of their practical and scholarly expertise.  They will support our efforts to promote environmental sustainability, accessibility, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are particularly interested in candidates who have administrative experience in building and growing programs, and who demonstrate the capacity to build a multidisciplinary program and establish productive collaborations with faculty and students across disciplinary boundaries.

The candidate’s degree must be a PhD in art practice, an MFA in filmmaking, or a terminal degree in a related field.

A full-time teaching load includes five courses a year: a combination of introductory and upper-level courses, as well as courses in the Visual Studies core curriculum, which includes VIST 142: Introduction to Visual Studies, and VIST 399:  Visual Studies Capstone, the concluding course for senior Visual Studies minors in which students create work for a final exhibition.

About the Visual Studies Program at Haverford College

The Interdisciplinary Visual Studies Minor (https://www.haverford.edu/visual-studies-minor) invites students both to investigate their place in a global system of images and to make media of all kinds, from images and films to objects and performances. Additionally, the program trains students in interdisciplinary rigor and shows them how to examine the relationship between the visual and various structures of power.    

Located in the Visual Culture, Arts and Media building (VCAM), Visual Studies links elements of the curriculum, campus, and broader community, highlighting the intersections between courses, faculty, students, departments, and programs engaging the visual.

For more information about Haverford and this position, please see here: https://www.haverford.edu/provost/available-positions/tenure-track-search-visual-studies-additional-information-2024

Learning Goals:

To teach students visual literacy
Students of Visual Studies will investigate their place in the global system of images. Through a Visual Studies framework students have the ability to describe, analyze, and negotiate an increasingly complex world of information technologies; the impact of these technologies on art, culture, science, commerce, policy, society, and the environment; and the interrelationship of these technologies with historical and material forms.

To engage students in critical making
Visual Studies creates curricular opportunities for students to make images, objects, and digital artifacts with critical awareness of their powers and limitations. Critical making, or thinking with process, encourages students to develop production skills which, when coupled with theoretical training and analytical rigor, will broaden their ability to improvise and problem-solve in a variety of disciplinary contexts.

To train students in interdisciplinary rigor
Visual Studies encourages conversation between scholars working on the relationship between text and the visual, the nature of perception, cognition and attention, and the historical construction of looking. Visual Studies can help students perceive when disciplines are essential to understanding a subject, and when they can be combined for a more expansive or more precise critical engagement.

To guide students in an ethics of the visual
Visual Studies invites a return to the liberal arts as processes of creativity, critique, and reflection. It links creative expression to cultural analysis and social engagement, training a generation of theoretically informed makers, artists, innovators, teachers, and civic leaders. We invite students to examine the relationship between the visual and structures of power, to analyze the role of images in making and swaying consumers, and to attend to the role that images play in constructing “others” through race, gender, or disability.

Application Instructions

To apply for this position, candidates must submit to the Visual Studies Search Committee via Interfolio (http://apply.interfolio.com/152174) the following documents addressing the scholarly qualifications identified above:

• A cover letter
• A curriculum vitae
• An artist statement of 1-2 pages 
• A work sample in the form of a document with a single vimeo (or similar platform) link to no more than twelve minutes of moving image media, either several complete works, or excerpts of longer works.  No more than three works should be represented.  The document should also include a brief contextualizing paragraphs about excerpts and/or brief director’s statements about complete works. Links to complete works should be included if works are being excerpted.
• A teaching statement of 2-3 pages that articulates the candidate's approach to pedagogy and mentorship.  The statement should briefly discuss two of their courses and the candidate’s efforts to foster a diverse and inclusive academic environment.
• Candidates may include writing samples of 15-25 pages representing no more than three written works, which could include excerpts of essays or other critical writings and links to complete works if written works are being excerpted.
• Candidates invited to a Zoom interview will be asked to provide two sample syllabi for courses they would be excited to teach at Haverford, one a course for beginning students, another for advanced students.  
• All candidates should submit names and contact information for three recommenders. Letters of recommendation will be solicited for finalists, those invited for on-campus interviews, in December.

All application materials must be submitted by September 27, 2024 via Interfolio. 

Questions about the position or application process should be directed to: hc-visstudsearch [at] haverford.edu. For technical questions, please contact Interfolio directly at 1-877-997-8807 or help [at] interfolio.com.

Haverford College is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice, and providing equal opportunities and access to all individuals regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry, age, marital status, disability, or veteran status. Women, non-binary and transgender individuals, people of color, Indigenous people, and those with other or multiple historically marginalized and/or underrepresented identities are especially encouraged to apply. Haverford College and our consortial partners are located on Lenape lands.