Eligibility and Guidelines
Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University
- Award Period: Academic year 2025-2026
- Application Deadline: 30 September 2024 11:45 PM EDT
The Society of Fellows brings together early career scholars engaged in innovative scholarship to be part of a cross-disciplinary community. The Society offers one-year fellowships, renewable for up to two additional years, to support teaching, research, and professional development, in part through its lecture series, manuscript workshops, and opportunities to organize conferences and other public events.
Fellowships
Fellows are appointed as Postdoctoral Research Scholars (Mellon Fellows) in the Society of Fellows at Columbia University and as Lecturers in appropriate departments, centers, and institutes at Columbia University (see list of participating Departments, Centers, and Institutes below). This one-year fellowship is renewable for a second and a third year. In the first year, Fellows teach one course per semester. At least one of these courses will be in the undergraduate general education program: Contemporary Civilization. Literature Humanities, Music Humanities, Art Humanities, or Global Core. Courses in the Global Core typically explore the cultures of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East in an historical context. For more information on Columbia’s Core Curriculum please visit www.college.columbia.edu/core/. The second course may be a departmental course, the design of which will be determined jointly by the Fellow and the Fellow’s academic department. In the second and third years, Fellows teach one course per year, leaving one semester free of teaching responsibilities. The courses taught in the second and third years of the fellowship may be departmental courses or Core courses as described above; however, at least two of the four courses taught over the three Fellowship years must be in the Core.
Application
The Application Form can be accessed at sofcolumbia.onlineapplicationportal.com. Before you can proceed to the application form itself and detailed application instructions, you must register as a new user on the landing page. Please follow the instructions carefully, noting that the deadline for submission is Monday, 30 September 2024. A select number of candidates will be invited to interview in January 2025. Fellowship decisions will be announced by early March 2025.
Columbia University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.
Eligibility
PhD (or disciplinary equivalent) in the humanities or humanistic social sciences received within the past four years and completed by the fellowship start date. For the current application cycle, the PhD must have been completed between 1 July 2021 and 1 July 2025.
Departments, Centers, and Institutes
- African American and African Diaspora Studies
- Anthropology
- Art History & Archaeology
- Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
- Classics
- East Asian Languages & Cultures
- English & Comparative Literature
- Film Studies
- French
- Germanic Languages
- History
- Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
- Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender
- Italian
- Latin American and Iberian Cultures
- Middle Eastern, South Asian, & African Studies
- Music
- Philosophy
- Political Science
- Religion
- Slavic Languages
- Sociology
General Instructions
The application consists of the following:
- Application. Complete and submit the Application. Please note that the Application must be submitted by the deadline in order for the submission to receive consideration. In addition to your personal information, the Application requires submission of Microsoft Word or PDF files containing your curriculum vitae, a research project proposal (no more than 1,500 words), a writing sample (no more than 3,500 words; footnotes and bibliography, which do not count in the word limit, may be appended), and a two-page undergraduate course syllabus of your own design.
- TWO letters of recommendation. In order for your recommenders to be alerted to your request for their recommendations, you must enter their names and emails. You can do so by clicking the “Add Recommender” button found under “Reference Letters” in the Side Menu. Please alert your recommenders that you have asked them to write a recommendation on your behalf, as spam filters can interfere with the delivery of automated language.
