Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowships 2021-22

Workshop Date:

Sep 30, 2020, 3:00 PM

Join UChicagoGRAD for an information session on the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship. This program supports a year of research and writing to help advanced graduate students in the humanities and related social sciences in the last year of PhD dissertation writing.

Assistant Professor Tamara Golan, a former fellow, will attend the info session to answer questions from her experience successfully applying. Applicants must be prepared to complete their dissertations within the period of their fellowship tenure and no later than August 31, 2022. ACLS will award 65 fellowships in this competition for a one-year term beginning between June and September 2021 for the 2021-2022 academic year. The fellowship may be carried out in residence at the fellow's home institution, abroad, or at another appropriate site for the research. The total award of up to $43,000 includes a stipend plus additional funds for university fees and research support. Note that this program is open to international students. The deadline for the 2021-22 fellowship is 9 pm Eastern Daylight Time, October 28, 2020. More information on the fellowship can be found here: https://www.acls.org/programs/dcf/

ACLS invites applications for Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowships, which support a year of research and writing to help advanced graduate students in the humanities and related social sciences in the last year of PhD dissertation writing. The program encourages timely completion of the PhD and is open to scholars pursuing humanistic research on topics grounded in any time period, world region, or methodology. Applicants must be prepared to complete their dissertations within the period of their fellowship tenure and no later than August 31, 2022. A grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supports this program.

ACLS will award 65 fellowships in this competition for a one-year term beginning between June and September 2021 for the 2021-22 academic year. The fellowship may be carried out in residence at the fellow's home institution, abroad, or at another appropriate site for the research. These fellowships may not be held concurrently with any other fellowship or grant.

The total award of up to $43,000 includes a stipend plus additional funds for university fees and research support. In addition to the monetary support that the fellowship offers, Dissertation Completion Fellows may apply to participate in a seminar on preparing for the academic job market. The seminar takes place over three days in the fall of the fellowship year.

ACLS believes that humanistic scholarship benefits from inclusivity of voices, narratives, and subjects that have historically been underrepresented or under-studied in academe. We especially welcome applications from PhD candidates whose perspectives and/or research projects cultivate greater openness to new sources of knowledge, innovation in scholarly communication, and, above all, responsiveness to the interests and histories of people of color and other historically marginalized communities, including (but not limited to) Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, and Indigenous communities from around the world; people with disabilities; queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people; and people of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. We also believe that institutional diversity enhances the scholarly enterprise, and we encourage applications from PhD candidates from all types of institutions in the United States. 

ELIGIBILITY

Applicants must:

• be PhD candidates in a humanities or social science department in the United States. 
• have completed all requirements for the PhD except the dissertation (i.e., obtained ABD status) by the application deadline.
• be no more than six years into the degree program at the time of application. This includes time spent earning an MA within that program. In special circumstances, an applicant who is in their seventh year may petition to have this eligibility requirement extended by one year. Please see the FAQ for more information about time to degree. 
• not currently hold or have previously held a dissertation completion fellowship.
• have not previously applied for this fellowship more than once.

APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS

Applications must be submitted online and must include:

• Completed application form
• Proposal (no more than five pages, double spaced, in Times New Roman 11-point font)
• One-page timeline for the expected completion of dissertation writing and defense/filing (see sample timelines)
• Up to three additional pages of images, musical scores, or other similar supporting non-text materials (optional)
• Bibliography (no more than two pages)
• Completed chapter of the dissertation (that is neither the introduction, nor the conclusion, nor the literature review) of not more than 25 double-spaced pages, in Times New Roman 11-point font; or a representative 25-page excerpt from a longer chapter. The chapter must be in English, though citations may be in other languages (with translations provided).
• Two reference letters, one of which must come from the applicant's dissertation advisor
• A statement from the applicant’s institution (preferably from the applicant’s department chair, director of graduate studies, or dean). The provided form asks the institutional representative to (1) attest to the viability of the proposed timeline for completion; (2) stipulate that, in the event of an award, the university will not charge the student tuition or fees beyond a limit of $5,000; and (3) pledge that if an ACLS award is made, the university will not provide the applicant with any subsequent aid. The person submitting the statement should not be one of the reference letter writers.