From: David Smith Mon, 13 Feb 1995 17:13:57 -0500 To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: World-system grad studies (I tried to send this yesterday and it seems to have disappeared into hyperspace. My apologies if it eventually turns up twice! -- DS) Please add UC-Irvine to the list of places where one might consider studying the world-system and global political economy. Currently we have a very small faculty in Sociology (six in residence now). But two of us (Jozsef Borocz and David A. Smith) are actively involved in this sort of research and, indeed, we hosted last year's spring PEWS conference. (The volume -- like the conference, entitled A NEW WORLD ORDER? GLOBAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY is already in page-proofs and should be out by summer. I will post the table of contents sometime soon). Other faculty in our small department are also interested in comparative and historical sociology and political economy. Two of the faculty in the Anthropology Department at UCI (which jointly administers our PhD program with Sociology) are explicitly interested in world-system analysis (Michael Burton and Doug White) and have published research on the topic. Historians and political scientists also have overlapping interests and have served on student committees. Most exciting of all are two new programs that have just gotten underway. One is a major hiring initiative by UCI's School of Social Sciences (where we live) of "star quality" young scholars in "the new international sociology." Although the candidates that we are looking at this year are not world-system analysts per se, they are prominent comparative and historical sociologists who would add great expertise (and luster!) to our graduate program. We are in the middle of the interviews now, but we may be allowed to tender TWO offers at the associate professor level. Stayed tuned! The other new program is explicitly tied to graduate education. A few months ago UCI was awarded funding for an NSF Graduate Training Program in Democratization. Professor Borocz was one of four co-authors of the proposal, which provides a generous fellowship to incoming graduate students for the next five years (total funding: approximately $500,000). The "blurb" on the flyer advertising this program states, "The global wave of democratization is prompting a reconsideration of past models of political development and the lessons of earlier academic debates on the social, cultural and institutional foundations of democracy (both in the "less developed"/underdeveloped countries and the advanced "core" nations)..." Clearly students interested in world-system analysis are likely receipients for a chunk of this support. In the interest of full disclosure -- it's true: Joszef Borocz will be away from UCI next year exploring other options (but we hope that hiring strong new colleagues in comparative/historical sociology, plus the Democratization Training Fellowships for students will lure him back!) UC-Irvine's PhD program in Social Relations will be of most interest to graduate students who are seeking an relatively small interdisciplinary PhD program which (we think at least!) will be growing in size, quality and reputation. We try to provide funding for all our PhD students. And we offer some intangible advantages of location (we're at the southern edge of the LA metropolitan area, and about five miles from the sunny beaches of the Pacific Ocean.) Please contact me for information: David A. Smith Department of Sociology UCI Irvine, CA 92717 phone: 714-824-7292 fax: 714-824-4717 PS: I will graciously accept Terry B's apologies! (And would add that our UC friends up north in Santa Cruz might also want to be added to the list -- but I'll let them do that themselves!) Prof. Chris Chase-Dunn Department of Sociology Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD. 21218 USA tel 410 516 7633 fax 410 516 7590 email chriscd@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu