SU Library, SU Humanities Center announce Central New York Humanities Corridor Visiting Scholar Program

Monday, February 27, 2012, By Pamela Whiteley McLaughlin

Syracuse University Library and the SU Humanities Center, along with their partners in the (Colgate University, Cornell University, Hamilton College, SU and the University of Rochester), will award four visiting scholar grants of $2,500 each in 2012 to support research at two or more Corridor institutions.

This program’s primary goal is to attract national and international attention to Central New York’s primary source collections. Applicants, therefore, need not be based at a Corridor institution. Similarly, projects need not focus on central or upstate New York topics, but rather draw upon shared collection strengths of Corridor institution libraries. Those strengths include:

  • abolitionism (Gerrit Smith, Samuel J. May, Frederick Douglass archives)
  • architecture (Marcel Breuer, William Lescaze, Claude Bragdon, Andrew Dickson White archives)
  • archival sound (Belfer Audio Archive, Hip Hop Collection, Sibley Music Library)
  • cultures of print, in particular New York state
  • gender and sexuality (Human Sexuality Collection, Grove Press Records, Suffrage Collections)
  • modern literature (T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Walt Whitman, Rudyard Kipling, Joyce Carol Oates papers)
  • photography (Andrew J. Russel and Margaret Bourke White papers, George Eastman House)
  • popular culture (dime novels, pulp magazines, children’s literature, war posters)
  • post-colonialismand ethnic studies, in particular Native American studies
  • American religion (Shaker and Oneida Communities, other communal societies, anti-Catholic and Masonic propaganda, Norman Vincent Peale papers.)

Current faculty and graduate students are eligible to apply. It is expected that each visiting scholar will spend one to two weeks in residence; however, the amount of time spent at each institution need not be equal. All visiting scholars will be expected to present their work at SU toward the close of their stay. Criteria that factor into the selection process include the anticipated impact of the project on the applicant’s field of inquiry (and on the humanities generally), the degree to which targeted collections support the proposed project and the innovative use of primary sources in research.

Applications should include:

  • Narrative (three pages): The narrative should frame the overall scope of the project and make an argument for project’s significance within the context of the applicant’s discipline. It should target specific collections from at least two Corridor institutions.
  • Project timeline (one page): This should include start and end dates for the project and the amount of time the scholar will spend at each institution. Applicants may wish to designate a “home base” and then detail how they will access other collections in the Corridor.
  • Budget (one page): The budget should show expenses for transportation, lodging and board. Other expenses may be allowed. (one page).
  • Curriculum vita(two pages)
  • Twoletters of support (sent with other application materials).

Please send completed applications no later than April 15 to:Barbara Brooker, assistant to the senior director, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library, or bbbrooke@syr.edu.

Applications will be evaluated by a selection committee composed of directors, curators and faculty from each Corridor institution. Grant recipients will be announced in May 2012. Research visits may commence as early as the summer of 2012.

Special Collections in the CNY Humanities Corridor are:

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The is a unique regional collaboration in seven different areas of research and humanistic inquiry. Each institution brings a vibrant and distinguished humanistic scholarly tradition to the collective work of the CNY Humanities Corridor. In the aggregate, the Corridor’s programs bolster the relationships, productivity and reciprocity common to the region’s humanities community, as well as heightened visibility, enhancing public engagement in its activities.The initiative is today regarded as a highly visible scholarly presence in the region, if not nationally, as a new model of collaboration and resource-sharing that can also be adapted to other regions and inter-university partnerships.

Since its establishment in 2006, through a$1 million award by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the CNY Humanities Corridor’s mission has gradually evolved over the last five years to represent the following objectives:

  • to sustain a scholarly network of faculty members and graduate students who share teaching, research and public engagement across the humanities;
  • to support research in specialized disciplinary areas under fiscal duress;
  • to support emergent areas of interdisciplinary inquiry that are not consolidated or financially supported at the academic level;
  • to enhance the overall profile, scholarly prominence and impact of the interdisciplinary humanities in Central New York through the advancement of individual and collaborative teaching, research and public engagement;
  • to increase connectivity and collaboration among academic humanists throughout the Central New York region; and
  • to foster cross-institutional partnerships and resource-sharing mechanisms in emerging and established scholarly fields through thematic research clusters and faculty working groups.