Florida Atlantic-Huntington Library Collaborative Short-Term FELLOWSHIP
Florida Atlantic University and the Huntington Library jointly offer three Collaborative Short-Term Fellowships to facilitate the research of advanced graduate students in the complementary holdings of the Weiner Spirit of America Collection and the Huntington Library.
The collections are particularly strong in Anglo-American political philosophy, the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and religion and reform movements. Further information on holdings can be found here: https://library.fau.edu/special-collections/weiner/about-marvin-and-sybil-weiner-spirit-america-collection and http://www.huntington.org/research/.
To create a collaborative scholarly community around the Weiner Spirit of America Collection, all three fellows will be in residence at Florida Atlantic in Boca Raton, FL, simultaneously in October 2025. At the end of the month, all three will present their work at a Florida Atlantic forum. Each individual recipient may take the second month of the fellowship at the Huntington Library at any time between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026. All fellows are expected to be in residence for the period of their fellowships at each institution.
Each fellow receives $6,000 to cover travel expenses: $2,500 for one month at the Florida Atlantic University Libraries in Boca Raton using the materials from the Weiner Spirit of America Collection, and $3,500 for one month at The Huntington in San Marino, California.
Eligibility
Open to doctoral candidates in fields related to the collections (including but not limited to History, English, Material Texts, Political Philosophy, American Studies, etc.) who have completed their qualifying exams and received approval for their dissertation proposal from their department.
Candidates generally may apply for and hold additional fellowships issued by the Huntington in the same award cycle, such as a standard short-term fellowship, as long as the recipient is in Boca Raton throughout October 2025. (Other restrictions, however, may originate with other Huntington awards such as a Joint Short-Term Fellowship that involves a third institution.)
Application Procedure
Candidates must submit the following by email to Dr. Jason Sharples (jsharples@fau.edu) by 11:59 PST on November 15, 2024:
- CV (no more than three pages)
- Two letters of recommendation from faculty members familiar with your project emailed by the recommenders to Dr. Jason Sharples (jsharples@fau.edu). You will be notified by email as each letter is received.
- A proposal that includes: (1) a description of the dissertation and its significance to the field of study (approximately 1,000 words), (2) a list of the materials they plan to consult at each library, and (3) a plan of work for the fellowship period that explains how those materials could inform the dissertation project. Successful candidates will be specific about the materials they wish to consult. Applicants are encouraged to contact the librarians at each institution with any questions about holdings.
Any questions about the fellowship or the application process may be directed to jsharples@fau.edu.
Testimonials
"The Fellowship experience was particularly well-suited toward ... exploratory and framing work. .... An entire month allotted plenty of time not just to quickly examine and photograph material, but to really peruse it, taking notes and pursuing avenues of inquiry which might not be possible under shorter, more frenetic trips and fellowships. Similarly, over that month I came to know not just the FAU faculty and staff, but my other fellows as well. Our daily discussions on archival materials, historiographies, dissertation arguments and public framings were immensely useful in helping me to think about and present my work more effectively, both within my own fields, and to the broader discipline."
"My time with the Spirit of America Collection provided me crucial access to varied materials and helped me to complete and even expand the scope of my dissertation."
"The Weiner Spirit of America Collection houses several holdings key to our understanding of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century [America.] .... I am very happy to have had the opportunity to engage the texts and collaborate with the sensational faculty at FAU."
"The Foreign Language pamphlets are remarkable in the breadth they cover, while still offering topical depth – if a subject appeared in one section of the holdings, there were, without fail, related holdings elsewhere. All told, I made a number of discoveries, both expected and unexpected which will certainly feature in my dissertation, both in terms of specific material and my broader intellectual framings of the project."
Where Are They Now?
Jordan Wingate (cohort of 2018) completed his Ph.D. at UCLA in 2019 and became an academic editor at UNC-Chapel Hill
Deborah Charnoff (cohort of 2018) earned her Ph.D. from CUNY Graduate Center in 2019 and has been teaching at Baruch College in New York
Jason Herbert (cohort of 2019) finished his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota in 2022 and became an ethnographer at Seminole Heritage Services in Stuart, FL
Dusty Dye (cohort of 2021) is an assistant director at the Center for Public History at the University of West Georgia