2011 Mellon Fellowships

CLIR is now accepting applications for the 2011 Mellon Fellowships.

Deadline: November 15, 2010
Open to: applicants of any nationality, enrolled in a doctoral program in a
graduate school in the United States

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is pleased to offer fellowships generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for dissertation research in the humanities in original sources.

The purposes of this fellowship program are to:

- help junior scholars in the humanities and related social-science fields gain skill and creativity in developing knowledge from original sources
- enable dissertation writers to do research wherever relevant sources may be, rather than just where financial support is available
- encourage more extensive and innovative uses of original sources in libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, and related repositories in the U.S. and abroad, and
- provide insight from the viewpoint of doctoral candidates into how scholarly resources can be developed for access most helpfully in the future.

The program offers about fifteen competitively awarded fellowships a year. Each provides a stipend of $2,000 per month for periods ranging from 9-12 months. Each fellow will receive an additional $1,000 upon participating in a symposium on research in original sources and submitting a report acceptable to CLIR on the research experience. Thus the maximum award will be $25,000.

Original source material means primary sources such as the following:

- records, documents, manuscripts, and other written material
- photographs, films, sound recordings, oral histories, and other audiovisual material
- maps, blueprints, drawings, and other graphic material library special collections, including books used as primary, not secondary, sources
- original artwork, artifacts, and museum objects born-digital sources such as websites, wikis, and blogs

For purposes of this program, eligible fields of the humanities and related elements of the social sciences will include:

- area studies
- art history
- classics
- comparative literature
- critical theory
- cultural anthropology
- cultural studies
- economic history
- ethnic studies
- ethnomusicology
- history
- history and philosophy of mathematics
- history and philosophy of science and medicine
- language and cultural linguistics
- literature in any language
- music history
- philosophy
- political theory
- religion (exclusive of theological training for the ministry)
- rhetoric
- women's studies
- interdisciplinary studies involving fields above.

For information about the requirements and the application process, please click here.