About the Department

Congratulations to Eric Nelson for receiving both the 2011 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the  Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars!

The Fellowship

Often characterized as "midcareer" awards, Guggenheim Fellowships are intended for men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.

Fellowships are awarded through two annual competitions: one open to citizens and permanent residents of the United States and Canada, and the other open to citizens and permanent residents of Latin America and the Caribbean.  Candidates must apply to the Guggenheim Foundation in order to be considered in either of these competitions.

The Foundation receives between 3,500 and 4,000 applications each year.  Although no one who applies is guaranteed success in the competition, there is no prescreening:  all applications are reviewed.  Approximately 220 Fellowships are awarded each year.

During the rigorous selection process, applicants will first be pooled with others working in the same field, and examined by experts in that field: the work of artists will be reviewed by artists, that of scientists by scientists, that of historians by historians, and so on. The Foundation has a network of several hundred advisers, who either meet at the Foundation offices to look at applicants' work, or receive application materials to read offsite.  These advisers, all of whom are themselves former Guggenheim Fellows, then submit reports critiquing and ranking the applications in their respective fields.  Their recommendations are then forwarded to and weighed by a Committee of Selection, which then determines the number of awards to be made in each area.  Occasionally, no application in a given area is considered strong enough to merit a Fellowship.

The Committee of Selection then forwards its recommendations to the Board of Trustees for final approval.  The successful candidates in the United States and Canada competition are announced in early April; those in the Latin America and Caribbean competition, in early June.

We guarantee our advisors and Committee of Selection members, as well as those who submit letters of reference, absolute confidentiality.  Therefore, under no circumstances will the reasons for the rejection of an application be provided.

The Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowships for Recently Tenured Scholars, is named for Frederick Burkhardt, President Emeritus of ACLS, whose decades of work on The Correspondence of Charles Darwin constitute a signal example of dedication to a demanding and ambitious scholarly enterprise. This fellowship supports long-term, unusually ambitious projects in the humanities and related social sciences. The ultimate goal of the project should be a major piece of scholarly work by the applicant. ACLS does not fund creative work (e.g., novels or films), textbooks, straightforward translation, or pedagogical projects.

Burkhardt Fellowships are intended to support an academic year (normally nine months) of residence at any one of the national residential research centers participating in the program. Such an environment, beyond providing free time, encourages exchanges across disciplinary lines that can be especially helpful to deepening and expanding the significance of projects in the humanities and related social sciences. This year's successful applicants may take up the fellowship in 2011-2012 or in either of the succeeding two academic years, but candidates must commit themselves firmly to their preferred year and residential center on their completed applications. Candidates must also commit themselves to relocating as needed in order to be in residence for the tenure of the fellowship.

ACLS awards up to nine Burkhardt Fellowships, depending on the availability of funds. Each fellowship carries a stipend of $75,000.