Call for Proposals: First Book Fellowships

Description

In recognition of the challenges faced by early career tenure-track faculty, and in response to the very positive reception of our faculty summer fellowship program, the Simpson Center will offer support for First Books during the summer of 2025.

We will offer funding for assistant professors to give intensive attention to first book manuscripts that are near completion. Applicants may propose, for example, to finish revisions before submitting the entire manuscript to a press for the first time, or to undertake late-stage revisions in response to peer-review feedback. In general, we seek to support faculty who will have made substantial progress on their first book by the beginning of the fellowship term. The deadline for proposals is Friday, March 7, 2025. We expect to award support to 6 faculty members.

Eligibility 

Tenure-track, junior faculty in the humanities and humanistic social sciences whose appointment carries with it the expectation of a book for tenure and who are in the final stages of completing their first book manuscript.

Terms of Award

Summer salary support of $10,000 and an additional $1500 research budget.

In-person participation in the 6 weekly meetings of the fellowship cohort is an expectation of the program. This fellowship is not appropriate for those whose projects require time away from the university during the period of the meetings of the fellows. In Summer 2025, the meetings are anticipated to take place from the beginning of A term, on Monday, June 23, to the end of July.

Criteria

Awards are based on the scholarly merit of the individual applications. Scholarship likely to contribute to intellectual exchange among a diverse group of colleagues especially encouraged.  

To assess scholarly merit, we have drawn on the criteria used by the NEH and the ACLS for the evaluation of fellowship proposals:

• The intellectual significance of the proposed project; the potential of the project to advance the field or fields of study in which it is proposed and make an original and significant contribution to knowledge.
• The quality and innovativeness of the proposal with regard to its methodology, scope, theoretical framework, and grounding in the relevant scholarly literature.
• The clarity of the conception, definition, organization, and description of the project.

Selection Process

We will accept proposals early in 2025 through a special funding round (the submission form will open on February 7, with a deadline of March 7, 2025) and convene an ad hoc review committee to make selections. Applicants will be notified of decisions by early April 2025.

Application Materials

• Proposal Narrative. Limit 1,750 words (approximately six double-spaced pages). Proposal narratives should describe the research project in language clear to non-specialists in the field. Narratives should address:
  1. Objectives
  2. Significance (to the scholarship in and outside the field)
  3. Methodology
  4. Timeline (progress to date; what will be accomplished during the summer)
• Bibliography. Limit 550 words.  Select primary and secondary sources directly related to the project.
• CV. Please limit to five pages. Please specify any other fellowships you have received in the last three years in support of your research. 
• Letter of Support. Limit one, from a colleague knowledgeable about your field of research. Letters may be external (from a contact at another institution) or written by a colleague at the University of Washington. Please ask that your letter be sent to us directly at schadmin@uw.edu.
• Departmental Acknowledgement Form. This form documents the expected timeline of your tenure review and is to be completed by your department chair. It can be requested by sending an email to schadmin@uw.edu.     

Questions

Please direct any questions to Rachel Arteaga, Simpson Center Associate Director, at rarteaga@uw.edu.