Clements Center Research Fellowships for the Study of Southwestern America

Clements Center for Southwest Studies 2017-2018 Fellowship Applications: Deadline for Submission, January 20, 2017.

Since 1996, the Clements Center for Southwest Studies, located at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, has nurtured scholars – both junior and senior – who work on the Southwest and Borderlands.  Scholars are given a year, in residence, in which to focus solely on completing a book manuscript. Past fellows include: Juliana Barr (Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands), Monica Perales (Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community), Katrina Jagodinsky (Legal Codes and Trees: Indigenous Women’s Sovereignty in the Sonoran and Puget Sound Borderlands, 1854-1946) and Pekka Hämäläinen (The Comanche Empire).

If you are interested in applying for a fellowship for the 2017-2018 academic year, the following (copied with permission from the Clements Center website) provides more information about the fellowships and application process:

Clements Center Research Fellowships for the Study of Southwestern America

The William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies welcomes applications for residential research fellowships. Clements Center Research Fellowships provide senior or junior scholars with an essential element for producing successful books, and that is time. Scholars not only need time to do research, a task that often requires travel, but as Pauline Yu, the president of the American Council of Learned Societies has written, “Scholars need time to write. In the humanities the expression of the idea is the source of its power, and crafting that expression is essential to the process of research.”

Fellowships are for a full academic year.  Competition is open to individuals in any field in the humanities or social sciences doing research on Texas, the American Southwest or the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. (Please note that because of the specific terms of our endowment, we are unable to fund projects focused primarily on California after 1848; we do, however, encourage submissions from applicants studying California prior to the U.S.-Mexican War.)  The fellowships are designed to provide time for senior or junior scholars to bring book-length manuscripts to completion. The fellowships cannot be used to complete a dissertation.

There are four fellowships available:

The Bill & Rita Clements Senior Fellowship for the Study of Southwestern America: funded by an anonymous donor in honor of Rita Clements and in memory of the late Bill Clements, supports work on the US-Mexico borderlands and the Southwest by an invited senior scholar.

The Bill & Rita Clements Fellowship for the Study of Southwestern America: funded by Rita Clements, the late Bill Clements, and the late Louis Beecherl, supports work on the US-Mexico borderlands and the Southwest.

The Summerlee Fellowship for the Study of Texas History: funded by the generosity of the Summerlee Foundation, supports work on Texas history.

The David J. Weber for the Study of Southwestern America: funded by Rita Clements, the late Bill Clements, and an anonymous donor, in memory of the late David J. Weber, supports work on borderlands history.

Fellows will be expected to spend the 2015-16 academic year in Dallas and to participate in Clements Center activities.  Each fellow will receive the support of the Center and access to the extraordinary holdings of the DeGolyer Library. Full-year fellowships carry a stipend of $42,500, benefits where appropriate, a $3,000 allowance for research and travel expenses, and a publication subvention.

Applicants should send a copy of their curriculum vita, a description of their research project, and a sample chapter or extract.  If the sample is from a dissertation, please include the introduction. Applicants must arrange to have letters of reference sent from three persons who can assess the significance of the work and the ability of the scholar to carry it out.

Applications must be received by Friday, January 20, 2017.

If you have questions, please call (214) 768-3684 or send an email to raelmore@smu.edu.

Link to the Clements Center Website:

http://www.smu.edu/Dedman/Academics/InstitutesCenters/swcenter/Fellowships/Apply