The Fellowship includes a Graduate School tuition waiver, a $25,200 stipend, and health insurance. The two Graduate Fellows will share an office at the A.D. White House during the academic year.

Qualifications
Cornell University graduate students in the humanities who are working on topics related to the year’s theme are invited to apply. Applicants must have completed the A exam and all requirements for the degree other than the dissertation before the application deadline on October 1, 2011. Awards will be restricted to students entering their 4th, 5th or 6th year of study at the time the Fellowship begins.

Application Procedures
The following application materials must be delivered to the Program Administrator on or before October 1, 2011:

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 One writing sample (published or unpublished) that is no more than 35 pages long.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. Two letters of recommendation. Letters of recommendation should include an evaluation of the candidate's research proposal. Please ask referees to send their letters directly to the Society. Letters must be delivered to the Program Administrator on or before October 1, 2011.

Send applications and letters of recommendation to:

Program Administrator
Society for the Humanities
212 A.D. White House
27 East Ave.
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-1101

For further information:
Phone: 607-255-9274
Email: humctr-mailbox@cornell.edu

Awards will be announced by the end of December 2011.

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. Emailed applications will not be accepted.

The Society for the Humanities Focal Theme, 2012-2013:
RISK @ Humanities

The Society for the Humanities calls for scholarly reflections on risk. We seek interdisciplinary projects that reflect on historical, theoretical, and global understandings of risk as a concept and a reality that lies at the heart of the humanities and the arts. The Society wishes to open the question of how risk shapes the humanities and how the humanities might dialogue with broader biological, ecological, economic, and technological approaches to risk.

We invite considerations of how risk might be inherent to the humanities. Scholars could reflect on the relation of accident, danger, and uncertainty in cross-historical letters and arts. How might risk lie at the heart of ritual and religion / legislation and government / letters and art? Some scholars might consider the philosophy and anthropology of probability and chance or even the history or theory of gaming. How do scholarly and artistic practices that cut across and against boundaries depend on and profit from risk?

Questions of geographies and environments at risk raise adjacent considerations of travel, politics, and transgression. What is the relation of the humanities and the arts to “risk society,” “writers at risk,” or “risk territory”? From risky behavior and risky thinking to risk in sexuality or the risk of torture, from questions of terror to threats of surveillance, from the transgression of creative production to the mixtures of cultures, peoples, and religions, risk @ humanities sits on unstable terrain. What might it mean to research the humanities in relation to economic collapse, environmental degradation, immunological threat, or military incursion?

Artistic form and practice themselves also contribute to an ongoing understanding of risk. How might experiments in new media, performance, film, literature, music, art, and architecture articulate aesthetic interventions across the topography of risk? Might new electronic and digital networks, mobilities, and artistic projects threaten or empower the arts? Are indigenous or traditional practices at risk in the age of global communication and exchange? These questions are meant to suggest, not delimit, possible approaches to the focal theme.

Scholars are encouraged to investigate ideas, instances, and inferences of risk across geographies, historical periods, disciplinary boundaries, and social contexts. The Society for the Humanities welcomes applications from scholars and practitioners who are interested in investigating this topic from the broadest variety of international and disciplinary perspectives.