Description

Society for the Humanities Fellowships

The Society for the Humanities at Cornell University invites applications for residential fellowships from scholars and artists whose projects reflect on the 2026-27 theme of Survival. Up to six fellows will be appointed. The fellowships are held for one year (August through July). Each Society Fellow will receive $64,000.

Fellows include scholars and practitioners from other universities and members of the Cornell faculty released from regular duties. Fellows at the Society for the Humanities are “residential,” and will collaborate with one another and the Taylor Family Director of the Society for the Humanities, Durba Ghosh, Professor of History. Fellows spend their time in research and writing during the residential fellowship, and are required to participate in a weekly Fellows Seminar workshopping each other’s projects and discussing readings based on the yearly theme.

The nature of this fellowship year is social and communal—fellows forge connections outside the classroom and the lecture hall by sharing meals following the weekly seminar and attending post-lecture receptions and other casual events throughout the year. Fellows live and work in Ithaca, NY, and are expected to be in their offices on campus frequently. All applicants for Society Fellowships should share in this commitment to creating a supportive and intellectually stimulating community.

Fellows teach one small seminar during their fellowship year appropriate for graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Though courses are designed to fit the focal theme, there are no additional restrictions on what or how the course should be taught. Fellows are encouraged to experiment with both the content and the method of their seminar particularly as it relates to their current research.

Focal Theme Description: Scale

The Society for the Humanities at Cornell University seeks fellows for year-long residential fellowships who are conducting interdisciplinary research projects exploring the literary, historical, ethical, and political registers of survival. 

We invite humanistic engagement on what it means to live in moments that are marked by precarity, fragility, and catastrophe. What might it mean to flourish in a world on the brink of extinction or exhaustion? Survival can be individual or collective, shaped by cultural imperatives, ideological commitments, or existential negotiations in the face of political, economic, environmental, social, and technological upheavals. Under these conditions, survival is more than living: survival can be a form of living on, a form of sustenance. We ask: what practices and imaginaries survive as individuals, movements, or species confront erasure? How does sudden or slow violence produce ways of surviving? Is refusal, dissent, resilience, or renewal sufficient to counter destructive forces?

We draw inspiration from ideas about “survivance,” and ask what it means to endure and transform amid the catastrophes (past and present) that challenge our existence. As Audre Lorde asks, what does it mean to craft a good life in a world structured so that some were never meant to survive? Have our visions of the good life become sources of cruel optimism, to follow Lauren Berlant?

In posing these questions, we invite humanistic research that engages or critiques the idea of survival. From environmental challenges (hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, famine, and rising sea levels) to political landscapes (wars, military action, regime change), we invite research that considers survival through questions of poetics, aesthetics, ethics, history, or biopolitics. Could we rethink the literary, material, psychic, and symbolic survival of the past? Is one avenue for survival to embrace the fugitive possibilities of living on amongst the ruins?  We welcome projects that collectively press us to confront the survival of care, creativity, freedom, prosperity, and knowledge. 

The Society for the Humanities welcomes applications from scholars and artists who are interested in participating in a productive, critical dialogue concerning the theme of Survival from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

Qualifications

Fellows should be working on topics related to the 2026-27 focal theme of “Survival.” Their approach to the humanities should be broad enough to appeal to students and scholars in several humanistic disciplines. Applicants must have received the Ph.D. degree before January 1, 2025. The Society for the Humanities will not consider applications from scholars who received the Ph.D. after this date. Applicants must also have one or more years of teaching experience, which may include teaching as a graduate student. International scholars are welcome to apply, contingent upon visa eligibility.

Application Procedures

1. A curriculum vitae

2. A one-page abstract describing the research project the applicant would like to pursue during the term of the fellowship (up to 300 words)

3. A detailed statement of the research project (1,000 – 2,000 words). Applicants may also include a one-page bibliography of the most essential materials to the project.

4. A course proposal for a seminar related to the applicant’s research. Seminars meet 2.5 hours per week for one semester and enrollment is limited to a combined audience of advanced undergraduates and graduate students (capped at 15 students). The course proposal should consist of:

a. A brief course description suitable for the University course catalog (50-125 words)

b. A detailed course proposal (up to 300 words)

c. A list of the essential texts for the course

5. One scholarly paper (no more than 35 pages in length)

6. Two letters of recommendation from senior colleagues in your field (from any institution) to whom candidates should send their research proposal and teaching proposal. Letters of recommendation should include an evaluation of the candidate’s proposed research and teaching statements. Please ask referees to submit their letters directly through the application link. Letters must be submitted on or before September 22, 2025.