Mellon Post Doctoral Teaching Fellowships
University of Pennsylvania
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship
Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences ==================
I am writing to remind you of the continuation of the Mellon Foundation postdoctoral teaching fellowship program in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences. (This program is separate from the Penn Humanities Forum Mellon Postdoctoral program). We hope to attract young scholars to Penn for research while also giving them the opportunity to teach in some of the best humanities and social science departments in the nation. These postdoctoral fellows, who will serve a term of two years, will be departmentally based and housed. Your department is eligible to host such a postdoctoral teaching fellow and we are inviting you to participate in the process. Your help is critical in reaching the best applicants across fields.
The fellows will teach one course a semester for the two years of their appointment at Penn. These courses should include a wide range of teaching experiences at Penn, with a preference for general education courses, including freshman seminars and interdisciplinary courses.
Eligibility is limited to applicants who have received the Ph.D. within two years of the time they would begin their appointment at Penn, that is, no earlier than August, 2009. Penn Ph.D.'s are eligible. For the class of 2011-2013, we are especially seeking fellows in Music Theory, Art History (specializing in Renaissance and/or Baroque), History (specializing in 19th-20th century U.S. International history, or environmental history in any place or time), East Asian Studies (specializing in East Asian religion or East Asian popular culture), and South Asian Studies.
Advertisements for the fellowships will be made in the Chronicle of Higher Education and appropriate disciplinary job lists. We encourage you to place this ad in your appropriate lists as soon as possible (the costs will be covered by the SAS Dean's Office). The deadline for applications is November 30, 2010. The successful candidates will be announced by January 30, 2011. The approved ad is attached to this memo.
Applicants will be asked to indicate their own preferences for a faculty mentor (with a list of three possibilities). The departments and the Dean's Office will find the best fit between an applicant and a mentor on the basis of faculty willingness and research interests. A mentor will be asked to agree to serve and to sponsor the applicant in the competition. The quality of match between sponsor and applicant will be an important criterion in the choice of applicant.
An interdisciplinary faculty committee, chaired by the Associate Dean for Arts and Letters, will review the applications. The appropriate departments will then evaluate the best applications. The Dean's committee will make the final decision regarding the fellowship offers.
The fellows will be provided with an office by their departments; the Mellon funds will pay to provide them with a computer and printer. The chair and undergraduate chair of the department will work with each fellow on matters of teaching. However, as indicated above, each fellow will also be assigned a faculty mentor closely connected with the area of his or her research; and that mentor will be responsible for ensuring that the fellow is connected to the research resources and community at Penn. The fellows will also be affiliated with the Penn Humanities Forum and be invited to take a place in all of its activities, including the weekly seminars and programs. The goal is to make sure that, while the Fellows will thus be closely attached to their departments and involved in departmental activities, they will also be connected to a wider community of humanities scholarship at Penn.
The stipend for 2011-13 will be $48,000. Fellows will also have a one-time $5,000 budget for research support during the two years of their appointment, to be used for research travel, conference travel, publication expenses, or stipends to student research assistants.
We are delighted that the Mellon Foundation has given us this opportunity to widen the intellectual community and support our best teaching programs in SAS.
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Sara J. DeMucci
University of Pennsylvania
School of Arts and Sciences
Office of the Dean, 116 College Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6377
Phone: (215)898-7320
Fax: (215)898-0821
E-Mail: sdemucci@sas.upenn.edu