Graduate Students
General Fellowship Information
There are several categories of fellowships available each year to graduate students in this department. Our students regularly compete for and succeed in winning these fellowships. Such successes are an important aspect of building your professional profile. The faculty therefore expects each of you to apply for and to take advantage of those opportunities as they become available to you over the course of your graduate studies.
Departmentally Supervised Fellowships:
During the summer break each year, you and the faculty will receive a notice from the Graduate Secretary alerting you to the application deadlines for “departmentally supervised” fellowships. This notice is also posted on the department bulletin boards and students should check the graduate student calendar for deadlines as well.
Departmentally supervised fellowships are those fellowships that require approval of a department committee (composed of art history faculty members) before they can be forwarded on for consideration by a university or external review panel. University fellowships of this sort include the annual Mellon and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships. External fellowships in this category are the National Gallery (CASVA) fellowships and Kress Foundation fellowships. These and other fellowships typically provide full tuition and a living stipend for one academic year or more. They allow students to pursue their studies and research without having to teach or assume other work responsibilities.
Departmentally supervised fellowships also include the Summer Dissertation Development and Friends of the Frick Fine Arts/Wilkinson Travel grants. These funds, which are awarded competitively, help students to conduct research trips and attend conferences for the development of dissertation proposals and furtherance of the dissertation project.
Because notification of specific deadline dates and procedures will be announced by email, it is vital that you keep your email address up-to-date with the department. All departmentally supervised fellowship applications must be complete—including any letters of recommendation—and handed in to the department Graduate Secretary by the announced deadline date.
Following the deadline date, a faculty review committee is constituted to assess your applications. Such review committees are typically composed of faculty from across the department’s range of specializations. Committees assess the viability of the proposal and application and produce a rank-ordered list of the applications (if there is more than one for a given fellowship and if such a ranked list is called for by the fellowship sponsor). These committees may also decide not to forward an application if it is judged to be underdeveloped or incomplete.
In the interest of impartiality, faculty whose students are among the applicants for a given fellowship are not permitted to take part in the review and evaluation for that fellowship competition.
Other Fellowships:
There are many other, non-departmentally supervised fellowship opportunities. You are encouraged to join listserves (H-Arthist, for example, or more specialized listserves appropriate to your research area) that regularly announce fellowships and grants. Unlike departmentally supervised fellowships, however, these applications will not involve department review. Students are to handle application procedures in such cases according to the guidelines provided by the sponsoring institution. It is your responsibility, first and foremost, to keep yourself current on any fellowship support opportunities that might become available to you.
Writing Proposals:
Students are strongly encouraged to make use of guidelines on how to write a successful proposal that are contained in the Graduate Handbook. Approximately every other year, the department also offers a 1 to 2 credit graduate course on proposal and publication writing. Students should take advantage of this course when it is offered.
Your advisor and the faculty as a whole know how important fellowships are to the advancement of your intellectual and professional goals. We are committed to helping you shape your research projects and develop competitive proposals. If you have any other questions regarding fellowships, please contact the department’s Graduate Secretary.