Writing fellowships

[JustChill]

Dissertators: any recommendations for writing fellowships (i.e., post-research), aside from the Mellon-ACLS and one's university? I'm doing a PhD in history. 

[rising_star]

Yes, there are lots out there though some are specifically for underrepresented groups (whether the applicant or in the applicant's research), specific research areas (countries, time periods, fields of study), and some are open to everyone. Google to find the names of programs and check their requirements to see if you're eligible. Your university/department might also be able to provide a list of what's available or what people have applied to.

[Riotbeard]

What do you study?  Most of the writing fellowships I applied for this year were narrowly directed toward my research interests, i.e. early America, history of science, history of medicine.  At least for history of science, there are a good couple in residence dissertation writing gigs, and I would imagine this is true for other fields.  Question would be best directed towards people in your field...

[JustChill]

Thanks, folks. I'm focusing on nineteenth-century East European history, and so far I've seen just a couple of options, whether in my field or more broadly. 

[rising_star]

I'll be quite honest: I applied for a bunch of these when I was heading toward the writing stage. The way to find them is to use google/bing/yahoo in all seriousness, as well as the more typical grant/scholarship databases (UCLA GRAPES, Cornell, Duke, etc.). I unearthed ones via google that I hadn't found anywhere else and which I wouldn't have otherwise known about. As far as I know, there's one or two compiled lists out there that you should be able to find easily but a lot of this will really be on you.

[Imaginary]

I have to say that it can be frustrating to search for these types of scholarships, given that many sites are outdated. For instance, many of the websites I searched said that the Javits fellowship was still available.

[JustChill]

Yeah, I've stumbled into that too, and also I've had two instances where something that was available as recently as four to six months ago is now unavailable without an explanation. 

[rising_star]

That is always the case when applying for any sort of funding. Granting agencies (i.e., NSF, Mellon, NIH, etc.) change what they're offering, the requirements, and the amounts. That said, the reason I recommended doing your own searches is because there are also new opportunities or revisions to previous opportunities that you may be eligible for and that you might not find out about otherwise.