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Postdoctoral Scholar to Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, Humanities-based Interdisciplinary World Languages and Cultures
Digital Visual Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa
Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures
College of Arts and Sciences
The Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures (NESA) at The Ohio State University invites applications for a Postdoctoral Scholar to Tenure-Track Assistant Professor position in Humanities-based Interdisciplinary World Languages and Cultures beginning August 15, 2027. We aim to hire a dynamic scholar who will contribute to the vibrant and collegial intellectual communities of our department by engaging with interdisciplinary research, innovative teaching, program development, community engagement, and service.
This is one of three Postdoctoral Scholar to Tenure-Track Assistant Professor positions in Humanities-based Interdisciplinary World Languages and Cultures, the other two being in the departments of French and Italian and Germanic Languages and Literatures. We are also conducting searches for three Tenure-Track Assistant Professors position in Transnational World Language Studies in the departments of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Spanish and Portuguese and Slavic, and East Europeans Languages and Cultures.
In keeping with the department’s commitment to interdisciplinarity, we are especially interested in scholars of digital visual cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. The successful candidate will engage the relationship between cultures, identities, and digital visual media in the Middle East, North Africa (MENA), and/or its diasporas globally, focusing on areas such as cinema, digital arts and curatorial practices, and the circulation of images across platforms. The successful candidate will fill a critical gap in our departmental offerings by studying visual cultures and/or media in dynamic relationship with the social, political, and artistic communities they create or engage.
We are particularly interested in scholars whose research and teaching reflect the department’s commitment to interdisciplinary research in the languages of MENA expressive cultures. Candidates must demonstrate high proficiency in at least one major language of the region and a record of integrating language expertise and interdisciplinary scholarship.
Experience in and/or commitment to public-facing or community engaged scholarship is preferred, in particular around initiatives relating to working with undergraduate students through interdisciplinary experiential learning initiatives to help prepare them for a variety of careers. Community engagement is an essential component of this position. The successful candidate will propose a plan for pursuing publicly engaged research and/or teaching. Potential pathways include local K-12 partnerships, curation of film festivals and/or film series, and promoting intercultural competency and global fluency broadly across the campus community.
Following a two-year Postdoctoral Scholar appointment, the Post-Doctoral Scholar will then transfer to a tenure-track faculty position at the rank of assistant professor within the Department and the tenure clock will begin. The postdoctoral scholar positions are funded by the Mellon Foundation grant “Global Fluency, Career Agility: Transforming World Languages at Ohio State.” Mellon Post-docs will focus time on research for up to two years allowing for an in-depth start on scholarship, teach one course per academic year, be involved with the Center for Languages, Literatures, and Cultures’ extensive programming around preparing students to enter careers in our global environment, participate in the activities within the Department, and have a set of designated faculty mentors who are engaged in research on topics relating to world language education, global fluency and intercultural competence, and their area of specialization.
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Ohio State provides access to a depth and breadth of opportunities and resources. Starting your first day, Ohio State offers you a comprehensive benefits package.
How to Apply
To be considered, please submit your application electronically via Workday, https://osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/OSUCareers/job/Columbus-Campus/Postdoctoral-Scholar-to-Tenure-Track-Assistant-Professor---Digital-Visual-Cultures-of-the-Middle-East-and-North-Africa_R160526
The application period closes December 4, 2026.
Inquiries may be directed to Johanna Sellman (Sellman.13@osu.edu).
You will be presented with the opportunity to attach up to FIVE documents in the Application Documents section. Please include the following:
Candidates selected to move forward in the process will be asked to provide three letters of reference.
The College
With more than 80 majors and 100 minors, the College of Arts and Sciences is the academic heart of the university. The Arts and Sciences provides extraordinary opportunities to collaborate across disciplines, blending creativity and analysis to truly be at the forefront of thought. The breadth and depth of knowledge in the college gives students and researchers the critical thinking and adaptability essential for a lifetime of success.
The mission of the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures (NESA) aims to build and cultivate a community of colleagues, which includes faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, staff, and friends, to further our research, teaching, and service missions, stated below. Geographically, NESA’s scope of concern spans the overlapping and historically connected areas of the Near East, Middle East, northern Africa, South Asia, and Central Asia – the “NESA region.” Linguistically, NESA is concerned with the Afroasiatic, Semitic, Turkic, and Indo-Aryan languages spoken in that region. These include Arabic, Hebrew (modern and biblical), Persian, Turkish, Uzbek, and Hindi; as well as a range of ancient Semitic languages such as Akkadian, Aramaic, Syriac, Ugaritic, and Phoenician – all constituting the “NESA languages”, an offering unmatched by most U.S. universities. Chronologically, NESA is concerned with the entire time span from prehistory to the present, bridging the ancient, late antique, medieval, and modern periods. Topically, NESA is concerned about language, culture, religion, scriptures, literary and scientific works, law and society. We study these topics from an interdisciplinary range of approaches from the humanities and social sciences. One distinctive value of NESA is our conviction that these concerns are best understood through careful analysis of sources in original languages in their cultural-historical contexts.
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