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Library Fellowships

The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies has partnered with the seventeen research institutions listed below to jointly fund fellowships for projects in eighteenth-century studies. ASECS also supports research at other institutions through the ASECS Travel Grants program.

Scholars of eighteenth-century studies who hold a PhD or are graduate students working on their dissertations are eligible for ASECS library fellowships. Applicants need not be members of ASECS when submitting their applications, but they must be members of the Society in good standing for a fellowship to be awarded.

Unless indicated below, applications for the library fellowships should be submitted directly to the library. For due dates and application materials, consult the institutions’ websites. Please note that members may accept only one ASECS travel grant or fellowship in any given year (1 July – 30 June).

American Antiquarian Society 

http://www.americanantiquarian.org/acafellowship.htm

Fellowship Amount: $2,600
Application Deadline: January 15

The Bibliographical Society of America

http://bibsocamer.org/awards/fellowships/

Fellowship Amount: $3,000
Application Deadline: November 1

The Boston Athenaeum
The Burney Centre, McGill University

https://www.mcgill.ca/burneycentre/mcgill-asecs-fellowship

Fellowship Amount: $3,000 (CAN)
Application Deadline: December 31

Folger Institute, Folger Shakespeare Library

http://www.folger.edu/fellowships

Fellowship Amount: $2,500
Application Deadline: consult website

Goucher College Library

Jane Austen Scholar-in-Residence
Fellowship Amount: $2500

https://www.goucher.edu/library/about-the-library/library-prizes-and-awards/jane-austen-scholar-in-residence-program/

Applications accepted on a rolling basis.

Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin

https://www.hrc.utexas.edu/fellowships/#program-guidelines

Fellowship Amount: $3,000
Application Deadline: November 11

*Fellowship only available to members holding the Ph.D. or equivalent degree.

Houghton Library, Harvard University

https://library.harvard.edu/grants-fellowships/houghton-library-visiting-fellowships

Fellowship Amount: $3,600
Application Deadline: January 17

W. Jackson Bate/ Douglas W. Bryant, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Fellowship.

Submission link: https://houghtonlibrary.submittable.com/submit/9c3f35c7-f4b8-4fd8-b1d9-7e3508851d50/houghton-library-visiting-fellowships

The Huntington

https://www.huntington.org/available-fellowships

Fellowship Amount: $3,500
Application Deadline: 1 April

The Howard and Dawn Weinbrot Research Fellowship for the Study of Eighteenth Century British Society and Culture, provides one month support for research in politics, literature, religion, and art, among other germane eighteenth century topics. To be eligible, fellowship recipients must be a member or agree to join the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. All applicants must demonstrate by competitive application and through appropriate selection criteria that research at The Huntington is critical to their project. Applicants must either hold the PhD or be graduate students advanced to doctoral candidacy.

Applications for the ASECS/Huntington Fellowship are to be submitted to the ASECS Business Office. For more information, see: ASECS Travel Grants.

Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies

http://irishstudies.nd.edu/faculty/asecs-fellows/

Fellowship Amount: $4,000
Application Deadline: January 15

Lewis Walpole Library

http://www.library.yale.edu/walpole/research/visiting_fellowships.html

Fellowship Amount: $3,000
Application Deadline: early January

Library Company of Philadelphia

https://librarycompany.org/academic-programs/fellowships/short-term/

Fellowship Amount: $3,000
Application Deadline: March 1

Short-term Fellowship Awards at the Library Company of Philadelphia, 2002–present

  • 2024–25 Katie Sagal, Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, Cornell College Transatlantic Specimens: Women and Marine Ecology of the Eighteenth Century
  • 2022–2023 Eric Trautman-Mosher, PhD candidate, Department of History, University of New Hampshire Purchasing Power: Indigenous Consumers, Political Economy, and Nation-Building in a Revolutionary Era, 1740s–1790s
  • 2021–2022 Short-term awards paused due to pandemic.
  • 2020–2021 Keith Pluymers, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Illinois State University Water, Steam, and Philadelphia’s Eighteenth-Century Anthropocene
  • 2019–2020 Christopher Baldwin, PhD Candidate in History, University of Toronto An Empire of Plunder: Slavery and the Prize Economy in the British Caribbean, 1739–1763
  • 2018–2019 Zach Bates, PhD Candidate in History, University of Calgary Crown and Constitution: Scottish Colonial Administrators and the Theory and Practice of Empire in the Atlantic World, 1710–1768
  • 2017–2018 Ross Nedervelt, PhD Candidate in History, Florida International University The Border-seas of a New British Empire: The British Atlantic Islands in the Age of the American Revolution 2016–2017 Dr. Sean Moore, Department of English, University of New Hampshire Slavery and Abolition in the Making of the Library Company of Philadelphia
  • 2015–2016 Alyssa Reichardt, PhD Candidate in History, Yale University War for the Interior: Imperial Conflict and the Formation of North American and Transatlantic Communications Infrastructure, 1735–1774
  • 2014–2015 Katlyn Carter, PhD Candidate in History, Princeton University Practicing Representative Politics in the Revolutionary Atlantic World: Publicity, Accountability, and the Making of Representative Democracy
  • 2013–2014 Elizabeth Athens, PhD Candidate in History of Art, Yale University “Substances in Themselves”: William Bartram’s Material Sources
  • 2012–2013 Dr. Zara Anishanslin, Department of History, City University of New York, College of Staten Island Portrait of a Woman in a Silk Dress: Reframing the Landscape of Empire in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World
  • 2011–2012 Dr. Cynthia Bouton, Department of History, Texas A&M University Subsistence, Society, and Culture in the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century and Age of Revolution
  • 2010–2011 Molly O’Hagan Hardy, PhD Candidate in English, University of Texas at Austin Imperial Authorship and Eighteenth-Century Transatlantic Literary Production
  • 2009–2010 Dr. Vincent Carretta, Department of English, University of Maryland ‘Genius in Bondage’: A Cultural Biography of Phillis Wheatley
  • 2008–2009 Laura Keenan Spero, PhD Candidate in History, University of Pennsylvania “Stout, Bold, Cunning and the Greatest Travellers in America”: The Colonial Shawnee Diaspora
  • 2007–2008 Matthew Garrett, PhD Candidate in English, Stanford University Episodic Poetics in the Early Republic, 1787–1837
  • 2006–2007 Dr. Daniel Hulsebosch, New York University School of Law Writs to Rights: The Transformation of the Anglo-American Common Law in the Age of Revolution
  • 2005–2006 Dr. Konstantin Dierks, Department of History, Indiana University The Cultural Reach of Letter Writing in Anglophone Print Culture of the Eighteenth Century
  • 2004–2005 Dr. Kate Haulman, History Department, University of Alabama Political Modes: The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America
  • 2003–2004 Benjamin L. Carp, PhD candidate in History, University of Virginia Cityscapes and Revolution: Political Mobilization and Urban Spaces in North America, 1740–1783
  • 2002–2003 Dr. Phyllis Whitman Hunter, Assistant Professor of History, University of North Carolina, Greensboro Geographics of Capitalism: Imagining ‘the Orient’ in Early America
McMaster University Library

https://library.mcmaster.ca/research-grants

Fellowship Amount: $1750 USD or Canadian equivalent
Application Deadline: January 31

The Newberry Library

http://www.newberry.org/short-term-fellowships

Fellowship Amount: $2500
Application Deadline: December 15

Rare Book School

http://rarebookschool.org/admissions-awards/scholarships/rbs-asecs//

Fellowship Amount: tuition at one RBS course
Application Deadline: November 1

William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA

Fellowship Amount: $3,000
Application Deadline: February 1

Yale Center for British Art

http://britishart.yale.edu/research/residential-scholar-awards/visiting-scholar-awards

Fellowship Amount: Awards cover the cost of travel to and from New Haven and provide accommodation as well as a living allowance.

Application Deadline: January 13