The Ph.D. Program in History

at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York

FundingGC Events

December 15 The Leon Levy Center for Biography: Resident Fellowships at the Graduate Center, CUNY

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The Leon Levy Center for Biography offers four resident fellowships at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) for the academic year beginning each September. Awards include writing space, full access to research facilities, and a stipend of $60,000. Applications for 2016-2017 are due December 15, 2015.

 

Fellows devote their time to their projects and participate in monthly seminars and the public events of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, including the annual lecture and the annual conference, and they are encouraged to join in the dynamic intellectual community of the Graduate Center.

 

Former fellows who have published books worked on during their fellowships include Adam Begley (Updike), James Davis (Eric Walrond: A Life in the Harlem Renaissance and the Transatlantic Caribbean), Langdon Hammer (James Merrill: Life and Art), Elizabeth Kendall (Balanchine and the Lost Muse), Wendy Lesser (Music for Silenced Voices: Shostakovich and His Fifteen Quartets), John Matteson (The Lives of Margaret Fuller), D.T. Max (Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace), Pamela Newkirk (Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga), Molly Peacock (The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life’s Work at 72), and Siobhan Roberts (Genius at Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway).

 

Applications are particularly welcome from CUNY faculty, but fellows may not teach or partake in other full-time employment during their academic year-in-residence. While our selection committees evaluate each application on its own merits, preference in the award of fellowships is given to those who have not yet published a biography or received fellowships for the writing of a biography. We also welcome applications from published and accomplished writers who are undertaking their first biography. The Leon Levy Center for Biography does not award fellowships for work on autobiographies, memoirs, essays, plays, films, or fiction.

 

Biography Fellowship applications are available on our website for online submission, or as a PDF file to download, print and mail, with a deadline of December 15, 2015: http://www.leonlevycenterforbiography.org/fellowships  Applications require a brief CV or resume (3 pages max), a narrative account of the applicant’s career (250 words), a project description (750 words), a sample of the proposed biography (maximum 2,500 words), and four letters of reference, which much be postmarked by the deadline. Fellowship decisions will be announced, and all applicants notified, in mid-April.