Fellowships
The American Antiquarian Society offers four broad categories of research fellowships, with tenures ranging from one to twelve months.
All of the fellowships are designed to enable academic and independent scholars and advanced graduate students to spend an uninterrupted block of time doing research in the AAS library. Discussing this work with staff and other readers is a hallmark of an AAS fellowship.
- Long-term Visiting Academic Research Fellowships
Hench application deadline: October 15
AAS-NEH application deadline: January 15
- Short-term Visiting Academic Research Fellowships
Application deadline: January 15
- Short-term Virtual Academic Research Fellowships
Application deadline: June 30
- Fellowships for Creative and Performing Artists and Writers
Application deadline: October 5
Please contact Nan Wolverton at nwolverton@mwa.org or 508-471-2119 with questions.
Meet the Fellows
2023-24 Fellows and Their Projects Fellows Directory: All fellows, 1972-present
Artists in the Archive: Creative and Performing Artists and Writers Fellowships
- Jesse Alemán, Mellon Distinguished Scholar in Residence
Jesse Alemán, Ph.D., is a professor of English and a Presidential Teaching Fellow at the University of New Mexico (UNM), where he has worked since 1999. His research spans two fields: nineteenth-century American literature and Latinx literary and cultural histories in the United States. He has recovered and republished The Woman in Battle, the 1876 autobiographical narrative of Loreta Janeta Velazquez, who fought for the Confederacy as Lt. Harry T. Buford. He co-edited Empire and the Literature of Sensation (with Shelley Streeby) and The Latino Nineteenth Century (with Rodrigo Lazo)—two foundational collections of US Latinx literary and cultural histories. Currently, he is working on finishing Latinx Civil Wars, a book that recovers and analyzes letters, memoirs, manifestos, novels, and other forms of print cultures by U.S. Latino/as who observed or participated in the US Civil War.
He has also published over thirty influential articles and essays, including pieces in The Cambridge History of Latina/o Literature, Timelines in American Literature, The Spectralities Reader, American Literary History, Azltán, and Latino Literature in the Classroom. His most recent pandemic piece, titled “The End of English,” appeared in PMLA, the journal of the Modern Language Association of America.
Alemán is the recipient of the University of New Mexico’s College of Arts and Sciences’ Award for Teaching Excellence; the American Indian Student Services’ STARS Award; the Wertheim Award for Outstanding English Faculty Member; and he’s been twice named Outstanding Faculty Member by the English Graduate Student Association and UNM’s Peer Mentoring for Graduate Students of Color. He also holds the title of Presidential Teaching Fellow, the highest recognition for teaching excellence UNM bestows. He recently served as the university’s associate dean and dean of graduate studies.
- Chip Badley, Hench Post-Dissertation Fellow
Chip Badley is the 2023-24 Hench Post-Dissertation Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society. A former managing editor of Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, he researches aesthetics, literature, and gender and sexuality studies in pre-1900 American culture. He is at work on “Kindred Arts: Painting and Queer Sexuality in American Literature,” which offers a prehistory of queer identity prior to the so-called “invention of the homosexual” typically dated to the 1870s. “Kindred Arts” considers ekphrasis, or the verbal description of a work of art, as an archive of burgeoning queer expression—one in which spectators could explore same-sex and non-normative attachments by describing their impressions associated with painting. Focusing on literature from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it proposes that ekphrastic writing fostered queer encounters that frequently transgressed racial and ethnic boundaries, especially between Anglo-American spectators and people of color. In addition to this book project, his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Early American Literature, the Henry James Review, J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, and elsewhere. His work has been supported by the American Antiquarian Society, the American Philosophical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.
Books by Fellows
Since the inception of the AAS fellowship program in 1972, fellows have written over five hundred books based on research conducted at AAS. Below is an illustrated directory of these books. Books may be sorted by author's last name, title, date, subject, and fellowship. Many public programs featuring fellows discussing their books have also been recorded and made available to view online.
Browse by author | Browse by title | Browse by publication date | Browse by subject | Browse by fellowship | Recorded public programsScholarship Based on Research at AAS
Fellows' books, articles, and awards are included in the list of recent scholarship based on research at AAS.
Accommodations
Scholars housing at Reese House and the fellows’ residence at 4 Regent Street is available. These residences are spaces for fellows to live, meet, share ideas, and fully immerse themselves in their time at AAS.