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ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS
AT THE SOCIETY FOR THE HUMANITIES 2008/2009
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
Graduate Fellowship Program
The Mellon Foundation has made available two fellowships for graduate students to become Fellows of the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University during the 2008/2009 academic year. Graduate Fellows will not teach courses but will be asked to organize a workshop on the 2008/2009 focal theme, “Water, A Critical Concept for the Humanities.” Graduate Fellows will be invited to all events at the Society for the Humanities.
The Fellowship includes a Graduate School tuition fellowship, a $21,525 stipend, and health insurance. The two Graduate Fellows will share an office at the A.D. White House during the academic year.
Focal Theme 2008-2009: Water, A Critical Concept for the Humanities
The Society for the Humanities calls for scholarly reflection on critical concepts of water from a broad range of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary perspectives. While well-established as a subject of literary, historical, political, and aesthetic analysis, water also traverses emergent fields of inquiry such as ecopoetics and ecopolitics, ancient studies, critical geography, mapping and cartography, environmental humanities, oceanic studies, indigenous studies, and studies of diasporic arts and cultures. Scholars have considered water as an object of conflict and contest, as boundary, and as divider of regions and cultures, but also as a source of life and wealth, and as a medium of communication, migration, transport, commerce, and redistribution.
As access to fresh water becomes one of the most contentious issues of the twenty-first century, the study of water as well as disputes over water rights, especially those involving indigenous peoples and minorities, have increasingly become a focus of inquiry from many different disciplines. While the classical themes of water travel and the healing properties of water are richly elaborated in literary, visual, and ethnographic texts, scholars also investigate the ideological connection between voyages of exploration, colonization, and scientific inquiry. From the complexities of ecopolitics or theorizations of chaos and sexual fluids to natural events such as floods, droughts, tsunami, and hurricanes, frameworks of water pose complex poetic, ethical, aesthetic, political, cultural, technological, and scientific challenges to the humanities. Critical reflection on water, ecology, and migration evokes current and future crises, extending from Australia to the Mediterranean Basin, from sub-Saharan Africa to India. While the Mediterranean is now being rethought as a distinctive unity across time and space, from prehistory to the present, involving encounters between African, Arab, and European worlds, the Indian Ocean is acknowledged as a center of exchange in early modern times. Trans-oceanic movement is studied in relation to the slave trade, to imperial expansion, exploration, and exploitation, as well as a feature of global cosmopolitanism. Thus powerful metaphors like the “Black Atlantic” and the “Pacific Rim” have emphasized continuous trans-oceanic dialogue and inter-continental exchange, allowing for reassessment of cultural products as hybrid forms transcending cultural and ethnic boundaries. Finally the enigmatic nature of water and corollary fluids has catalyzed exciting experiments in the arts, music, and performance while dialoguing with challenging work in theory and philosophy for which water has been an important referent. The Society for the Humanities welcomes applications from scholars and artists who theorize, research, and perform water as a critical concept for the humanities.
Qualifications
Cornell University graduate students in the humanities who are working on topics related to the year’s theme are invited to apply. Awards are restricted to those students who will have completed all requirements for the degree other than the dissertation and who will be no more than six years into the program at the time the Fellowship begins.
Application Procedures
The following application materials must be delivered to the Program Administrator on or before October 1, 2007:
1. A curriculum vitae.
2. A Cornell University transcript.
3. One writing sample(published or unpublished) that is no more than 35 pages long.
4. A one-page dissertation abstract in addition to a more detailed statement of the research project the applicant will pursue during the Fellowship year (1,000-3,000 words).
5. A brief (two-page maximum) proposal for a workshop related to the focal theme.
6. Three letters of recommendation. A letter of recommendation should include an evaluation of the candidate's research and workshop proposals. Please ask referees to send their letters directly to the Society. Letters must be delivered to the Program AdmiSend applications and letters of recommendation to:
Program Administrator
Society for the Humanities
212 A.D. White House
27 East Ave.
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-1101nistrator on or before October 1, 2007.
For further information:
Phone: 607-255-9274
Email: humctr-mailbox@cornell.edu
Awards will be announced by the end of December 2007.
Note: Extensions for applications will not be granted. The Society will consider only fully completed applications. It is the responsibility of each applicant to ensure that ALL documentation is complete, and that referees submit their letters of recommendation to the Society before the closing date.
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