dissertation fellowship berkeley

Graduate Fellowships and Awards

Deadlines and application materials for Graduate Division, Berkeley, and extramural fellowships can be found below. Incoming students are eligible to apply for Fellowships for Entering Students .

To learn more, explore our list of fellowships databases .

File your Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) by March 2, 2015 , the deadline for California residency eligibility for 2015-2016 fellowship and grant proposals.

Fellowships Coordinated by the Graduate Division (University and Extramural)

Fellowships and awards coordinated by uc berkeley.

UC Berkeley coordinates awards outlined below. To learn more about these awards, contact the program department directly.

Extramural Fellowships

Extramural fellowships are those awarded by governmental agencies, private foundations, and corporations. Applying for extramural fellowships can be a lengthy and time-consuming process. Begin your search early, at least one year before the intended onset of funding. Prospective students applying for extramural fellowships should consult The Grants Register and the Annual Register of Grant Support at their campus or local library for information. A partial list of extramural fellowships and deadlines appears below. Some of the deadlines are approximations based on competitions from the previous year. To learn more, explore our list of fellowships databases .

The Program in Critical Theory

News archive, the program in critical theory dissertation fellowship.

Application Deadline: Friday, April 29, 2022

The Critical Theory Dissertation Fellowship is awarded to UC Berkeley Critical Theory Designated Emphasis (DE) graduate students with records of achievement and promising dissertation projects. The fellowships support students writing their dissertations, providing full fee remission (where required) and a full stipend, usually for a semester.

Applications for the 2022-2023 Critical Theory Dissertation Fellowship are due  Friday, April 29, 2022, by 4 pm.  Eligible students must be enrolled in the Critical Theory DE and not receive significant (non-teaching) financial support from their home departments during the period of the award. Applicants must have completed their Qualifying Exams and have an approved dissertation prospectus.

Application Guidelines

Applicants must submit a cover letter, a 2-3 page abstract of the dissertation, an academic CV, and a letter from the dissertation adviser evaluating the project’s promise. Applicants planning on having the prospectus approved by the end of May 2023 should explain this in the application cover letter and should have the dissertation director, in their letter, evaluate the draft or proposed prospectus and the likelihood of its approval.

Applicants should specify in the cover letter whether they would prefer to have the award in the fall or spring semester.

Completed applications, including all supporting materials, must be received by  Friday, April 29, 2022, at 4 pm. 

Please submit applications to  critical_theory@berkeley.edu

Deadline for applications: April 29, 2022, by 4 pm Award Announced: May 2022 Award Period: July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023 Award Amount: Varies according to the applicant pool and funds available.

The Dissertation Fellowship is open to Critical Theory students in UC Berkeley Departments including African American Studies, Anthropology, Berkeley Law, Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages and Cultures, English, Ethnic Studies, Film & Media, French, Gender & Women’s Studies, German, Geography, History, History of Art, Italian, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Rhetoric, School of Education, School of Public Health, Slavic Languages and Cultures, Social Welfare, Sociology, South & Southeast Asian Studies, Spanish & Portuguese, and Theater, Dance and Performance Studies

Dissertation Fellowships

American Academy in Rome Dissertation Fellowships (link is external)

The Academy offers 11-month and two-year pre-doctoral fellowships in Ancient Studies, Medieval Studies, Renaissance/Early Modern Studies, and Modern Italian Studies. Pre-doctoral fellowships are meant to provide scholars with the necessary time to research and complete their doctoral dissertations.

American Council of Learned Societies  (link is external)

Dissertation fellowships of up to $25,000 for writing dissertations in Southeast European Studies. Also provides Southeast European language training grants.

Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (link is external) The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner.

Council on Library and Information Resources (link is external) The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is pleased to offer fellowships generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for dissertation research in the humanities in original sources. The program offers about fifteen competitively awarded fellowships a year. Each provides a stipend of $2,000 per month for periods ranging from nine to 12 months. Each fellow will receive an additional $1,000 upon participating in a symposium on research in original sources and submitting a report acceptable to CLIR on the research experience. Thus the maximum award will be $25,000.

DePauw University Consortium for Faculty Diversity in Liberal Arts Colleges (link is external) The Consortium invites applications for dissertation fellowships and post-doctoral fellowships from U.S. citizens or permanent residents who will contribute to increasing the diversity of member colleges by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, maximizing the educational benefits of diversity and/or increasing the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of students.

Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) (link is external) This program provides academic year and summer fellowships to institutions of higher education to assist graduate students in foreign language and either area or international studies. Students can use the Summer FLAS internationally or domestically. Apply through UC Berkeley.

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (link is external) Provides grants to colleges and universities to fund individual doctoral students to conduct research in other countries in modern foreign languages and area studies for periods of six to 12 months. Proposals focusing on Western Europe are not eligible.

Gaius Charles Bolin Dissertation Fellowship (link is external) The Gaius Charles Bolin Fellowships at Williams College are designed to promote diversity on college faculties by encouraging students from underrepresented groups to complete a terminal graduate degree and to pursue careers in college teaching.

Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Dissertation Fellowships  - Now HFG Emerging Scholars Awarded to scholars whose work can increase understanding and amelioration of urgent problems of violence, aggression, and dominance in the modern world. Particular questions that interest the foundation concern violence, aggression, and dominance in relation to social change, the socialization of children, intergroup conflict, drug trafficking and use, family relationships, and investigations of the control of aggression and violence.

Huntington Library Fellowships (link is external) Short-term residencies (up to $2300/month) at the library are available for Ph.D. students at the dissertation stage.

IHR Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in the Humanities (link is external) $5,000 for pre-doctoral fellows and $25,000 for doctoral fellows will be awarded for archival history research in the United Kingdom.

International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) (link is external) The International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) offers nine to 12 months of support to graduate students in the humanities and social sciences who are enrolled in doctoral programs in the United States and conducting dissertation research outside of the United States. IDRF promotes research that is situated in a specific discipline and geographical region but is also informed by interdisciplinary and cross-regional perspectives. 

Mabelle McLeod Lewis Fellowships (link is external) Provides grants to advanced doctoral candidates in the humanities for completion of a scholarly dissertation project on which significant progress has already been made.

National Gallery of Art Dissertation Fellowships (link is external) The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Artshosts an annual program of support for advanced graduate research in the history, theory, and criticism of art, architecture, and urbanism. Each of the nine fellowships have specific requirements and intents, including support for the advancement and completion of a doctoral dissertation, for residency and travel during the period of dissertation research, and for post-doctoral research.

Samuel H. Kress Dissertation Fellowships in Art History (link is external) Competitive Kress Fellowships administered by the Kress Foundation are awarded to art historians and art conservators in the final stages of their preparation for professional careers, as well as to art museum curators and educators.

Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowships (link is external) Offers approximately 30 fellowships of $20,000 to support dissertations bringing "fresh and constructive perspectives to the history, theory, or practice of formal or informal education anywhere in the world."

Soroptimist International Founder Region Women’s Fellowship (link is external) The mission of the Founder Region Fellowship is to advance the status of women. This will be accomplished through financial support to women in the last year of their doctoral degree. Competition is open to any outstanding graduate woman who is working toward a doctoral degree, preferably in the last year of study but permissibly during the last two years. She must be enrolled in a graduate school within Founder Region, Northern California.

Templeton Dissertation Fellowship at University of Notre Dame (link is external)   “The Problem of Evil in Modern and Contemporary Thought.”   The Center for Philosophy of Religion at University of Notre Dame invites doctoral candidates working in the areas of early modern philosophy of religion and/or theology to apply for a one-year fellowship. The program aims at encouraging Ph.D. students to pursue research in this area while in residence as dissertation fellows in the Center for Philosophy of Religion. 

The Erksine A. Peters Dissertation Year Fellowship at Notre Dame (link is external) The Peters Fellowship will enable two outstanding African American doctoral candidates (at the ABD level) to devote their full energies to the completion of the dissertation, and to provide an opportunity for African American scholars at the beginning of their academic careers to experience life at a major Catholic research university. Administered by both the Office of the Provost and the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the Peters Fellowship invites applications from African-American doctoral candidates in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and theological disciplines who have completed all degree requirements with the exception of the dissertation.

United States Institute of Peace Dissertation Fellowships (link is external) One-year stipend ($17,000) supports students who have completed all requirements for their degree, except the dissertation, by the start of the fellowship. Dissertation must advance the state of knowledge about international peace and conflict management. 

Dissertation Fellowships

American Academy in Rome Dissertation Fellowships (link is external) (link is external)

The Academy offers 11-month and two-year pre-doctoral fellowships in Ancient Studies, Medieval Studies, Renaissance/Early Modern Studies, and Modern Italian Studies. Pre-doctoral fellowships are meant to provide scholars with the necessary time to research and complete their doctoral dissertations.

American Council of Learned Societies  (link is external) (link is external)

Dissertation fellowships of up to $25,000 for writing dissertations in Southeast European Studies. Also provides Southeast European language training grants.

Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (link is external) (link is external) The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner.

Council on Library and Information Resources (link is external) (link is external) The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is pleased to offer fellowships generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for dissertation research in the humanities in original sources. The program offers about fifteen competitively awarded fellowships a year. Each provides a stipend of $2,000 per month for periods ranging from nine to 12 months. Each fellow will receive an additional $1,000 upon participating in a symposium on research in original sources and submitting a report acceptable to CLIR on the research experience. Thus the maximum award will be $25,000.

DePauw University Consortium for Faculty Diversity in Liberal Arts Colleges (link is external) (link is external) The Consortium invites applications for dissertation fellowships and post-doctoral fellowships from U.S. citizens or permanent residents who will contribute to increasing the diversity of member colleges by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, maximizing the educational benefits of diversity and/or increasing the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of students.

Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) (link is external) (link is external) This program provides academic year and summer fellowships to institutions of higher education to assist graduate students in foreign language and either area or international studies. Students can use the Summer FLAS internationally or domestically. Apply through UC Berkeley.

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (link is external) (link is external) Provides grants to colleges and universities to fund individual doctoral students to conduct research in other countries in modern foreign languages and area studies for periods of six to 12 months. Proposals focusing on Western Europe are not eligible.

Gaius Charles Bolin Dissertation Fellowship (link is external) (link is external) The Gaius Charles Bolin Fellowships at Williams College are designed to promote diversity on college faculties by encouraging students from underrepresented groups to complete a terminal graduate degree and to pursue careers in college teaching.

Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Dissertation Fellowships (link is external)  - Now HFG Emerging Scholars Awarded to scholars whose work can increase understanding and amelioration of urgent problems of violence, aggression, and dominance in the modern world. Particular questions that interest the foundation concern violence, aggression, and dominance in relation to social change, the socialization of children, intergroup conflict, drug trafficking and use, family relationships, and investigations of the control of aggression and violence.

Huntington Library Fellowships (link is external) (link is external) Short-term residencies (up to $2300/month) at the library are available for Ph.D. students at the dissertation stage.

IHR Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in the Humanities (link is external) (link is external) $5,000 for pre-doctoral fellows and $25,000 for doctoral fellows will be awarded for archival history research in the United Kingdom.

International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) (link is external) (link is external) The International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) offers nine to 12 months of support to graduate students in the humanities and social sciences who are enrolled in doctoral programs in the United States and conducting dissertation research outside of the United States. IDRF promotes research that is situated in a specific discipline and geographical region but is also informed by interdisciplinary and cross-regional perspectives. 

Mabelle McLeod Lewis Fellowships (link is external) (link is external) Provides grants to advanced doctoral candidates in the humanities for completion of a scholarly dissertation project on which significant progress has already been made.

National Gallery of Art Dissertation Fellowships (link is external) (link is external) The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Artshosts an annual program of support for advanced graduate research in the history, theory, and criticism of art, architecture, and urbanism. Each of the nine fellowships have specific requirements and intents, including support for the advancement and completion of a doctoral dissertation, for residency and travel during the period of dissertation research, and for post-doctoral research.

Samuel H. Kress Dissertation Fellowships in Art History (link is external) (link is external) Competitive Kress Fellowships administered by the Kress Foundation are awarded to art historians and art conservators in the final stages of their preparation for professional careers, as well as to art museum curators and educators.

Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowships (link is external) (link is external) Offers approximately 30 fellowships of $20,000 to support dissertations bringing "fresh and constructive perspectives to the history, theory, or practice of formal or informal education anywhere in the world."

Soroptimist International Founder Region Women’s Fellowship (link is external) (link is external) The mission of the Founder Region Fellowship is to advance the status of women. This will be accomplished through financial support to women in the last year of their doctoral degree. Competition is open to any outstanding graduate woman who is working toward a doctoral degree, preferably in the last year of study but permissibly during the last two years. She must be enrolled in a graduate school within Founder Region, Northern California.

Templeton Dissertation Fellowship at University of Notre Dame (link is external)   (link is external) “The Problem of Evil in Modern and Contemporary Thought.”   The Center for Philosophy of Religion at University of Notre Dame invites doctoral candidates working in the areas of early modern philosophy of religion and/or theology to apply for a one-year fellowship. The program aims at encouraging Ph.D. students to pursue research in this area while in residence as dissertation fellows in the Center for Philosophy of Religion. 

The Erksine A. Peters Dissertation Year Fellowship at Notre Dame (link is external) (link is external) The Peters Fellowship will enable two outstanding African American doctoral candidates (at the ABD level) to devote their full energies to the completion of the dissertation, and to provide an opportunity for African American scholars at the beginning of their academic careers to experience life at a major Catholic research university. Administered by both the Office of the Provost and the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the Peters Fellowship invites applications from African-American doctoral candidates in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and theological disciplines who have completed all degree requirements with the exception of the dissertation.

United States Institute of Peace Dissertation Fellowships (link is external) (link is external) One-year stipend ($17,000) supports students who have completed all requirements for their degree, except the dissertation, by the start of the fellowship. Dissertation must advance the state of knowledge about international peace and conflict management. 

• Continuing Students (Diversity Resources) topic page

Townsend Dissertation Fellowships

The Townsend Fellowships program for advanced graduate students at UC Berkeley supports research that significantly involves humanistic material or problems that have a significant bearing on the humanities. The purpose of the Fellowship is both to further the research of the individual recipients and to enable faculty and graduate students within the humanities to meet and work with colleagues in other disciplines and departments. However, projects need not be "interdisciplinary" by definition. Awards are based on the scholarly merit of the individual applications. The selection committee will also take into consideration the research project's potential interest to scholars in different fields of the humanities, and the likelihood of the applicant’s contribution to interdisciplinary discussion.

Townsend Fellowships are awarded to assistant professors, associate professors, and graduate students completing their dissertations, as well as library and museum professionals. Fellows meet in person for weekly discussions of work in progress. Each year a number of senior faculty and visiting postdoctoral fellows are invited to join the group.

Townsend Dissertation Fellows will also be eligible to apply for the  Professor Norman Jacobson Memorial Teaching Award , which supports innovative teaching efforts in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, and which provides the awardee with an additional stipend. Applications will be evaluated on the strength of the applicant’s teaching dossier and on the description of a teaching-related project to be carried out during the course of the academic year.

Townsend Dissertation Fellowships are awarded to graduate students at UC Berkeley who have advanced to candidacy for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) by the time of application, and whose dissertation projects involve humanistic material or problems that have a significant bearing on the humanities. Once selected, Dissertation Fellows are eligible to apply for the Jacobson Memorial Teaching Award.

Townsend Dissertation Fellows receive a $30,000 stipend for the academic year. The Jacobson Memorial Teaching Award provides an additional $2,500 stipend to one Townsend Dissertation Fellow. The Townsend Center will also provide payment of in-state tuition.

Townsend Dissertation Fellows may combine other fellowship awards, if also permitted by the terms of the other awards, up to the maximum amount set by the Graduate Division. Because the purpose of the Townsend Fellowship is to enable full-time research, Townsend Fellows are not eligible to hold teaching appointments in the academic year during which they hold the fellowship.

The Townsend Fellows meet over lunch every Tuesday throughout the academic year. The award of a Townsend Fellowship carries with it the understanding that the recipient will attend and participate actively in the weekly meetings.

Applications are submitted online through Submittable. Click to access the  Townsend Dissertation Fellowship application . For technical assistance, please visit the Submittable help page .

Required application materials: CV; cover letter with project summary; detailed description of proposed work (1,500 word limit); two letters of recommendation, one of which must be from the dissertation advisor.

For inquiries about the Townsend Fellows program, please contact  [email protected] .

GIAS Fellowships & Grants

Note: the 2023 grant deadline for all gias fellowships has been extended to 8:00 am on monday, april 17..

GIAS provides several fellowships to support graduate students conducting research in international and area studies. This page lists grants administered by GIAS itself. For fellowships administered by individual GIAS units, please click here . 

Please apply to all fellowships below through this Google Form . You must be logged in to your Berkeley email account to submit your application.  Applications submitted by e-mail will not be considered.

Faculty letters of recommendations should be emailed by the author directly to [email protected] .

The Reinhard Bendix and Allan Sharlin Fellowships

Supported Activities: UC Berkeley graduate students in all fields who have obtained ABD status or will formally advance to candidacy by the fall of the fellowship term and plan to do research in the fields of historical sociology, historical demography, social history, political and social theory, or historical studies of society and politics. Fellowships are intended to support research on campus, within the United States, or abroad.

Application details: Eligible candidates must submit an application that includes: 1) a description of the research project of up to four pages (single spaced); 2) a CV of up to two pages; 3) a budget plan; 4) a list of other sources of financial support; 5) an unofficial UC Berkeley transcript; 6) a letter of recommendation from a UC Berkeley faculty member, emailed directly to [email protected] , with indication “The Reinhard Bendix & Allan Sharlin Fellowships.”

Eligibility: This fellowship is intended for all UC Berkeley graduate students in good standing, who have obtained ABD status or will formally advance to candidacy (will have satisfied all requirements of the Ph.D. except the dissertation) by the fall of the fellowship term. Students must be registered with the Graduate Division for their award term. Student applications need to be compliant with human subject research requirements, if applicable. Requests for tuition and fee costs as separate items will not be considered.

Award amount: up to $7,500. Grant amounts are at the discretion of the jury.

Application deadline: April 14, 2023

The John L. Simpson Pre-dissertation Research Fellowship in International & Area Studies

Supported Activities: UC Berkeley graduate students in all fields who have not yet advanced to candidacy and plan to do research in international & area studies, in the broadest sense, both from a contemporary and a historical perspective. Fellowships are intended to support travel, lodging, and/or research-related expenditures.

Application details: Eligible candidates must submit an application that includes: 1) a description of the proposed research of up to two pages (single spaced); 2) a CV of up to two pages; 3) a budget plan; 4)  a list of other sources of financial support; 5) an unofficial UC Berkeley transcript; 6) a letter of recommendation from a UC Berkeley faculty member, emailed directly to  [email protected] , with indication “John L. Simpson Pre-dissertation Research Fellowships in International & Area Studies.”

Eligibility: This fellowship is intended for UC Berkeley graduate students who will not formally advance to candidacy by the fall of the fellowship term. Students from all departments are eligible, including students in terminal degree MA programs.

Award amount: up to $5,000. Grant amounts are at the discretion of the jury.

The John L. Simpson ABD Graduate Students Research Fellowship in International & Area Studies

Supported Activities: UC Berkeley graduate students in all fields who have obtained ABD status or will formally advance to candidacy by the fall of the fellowship term and plan to do research in international & area studies, in the broadest sense, both from a historical and a contemporary perspective. Fellowships are intended to support research on campus, within the United States, or abroad.

Application details: Eligible candidates must submit an application that includes: 1) a description of the  research project of up to four pages (single spaced); 2) a CV of up to two pages; 3) a budget plan; 4) a list of other sources of financial support; 5) an unofficial UC Berkeley transcript; 6) a letter of recommendation from a UC Berkeley faculty member, emailed directly to  [email protected] , with indication “ABD Graduate Students Research Fellowships in International & Area Studies.”

Award amount: up to $11,000. Grant amounts are at the discretion of the jury.

For questions on the GIAS grants, please contact Tomás Lane, Fellowships Coordinator ( [email protected] ).

Bancroft fellowships and awards

Graduate fellowships.

• The Bancroft Library Hill Study Award  assists advanced graduate students from any University of California campus and is funded by the Kenneth E. and Dorothy V. Hill Fellowship Fund. 
• The Bancroft Library Meylan Study Award  assists advanced graduate students from any recognized institution of higher education in the United States or abroad, and is funded by the Edward F. and Marianne E. Meylan Fellowship Fund.
• The Bancroft Library Summer Study Award  assists advanced graduate students from any University of California campus and is funded by the Friends of the Bancroft Library.
• The Arthur J. Quinn Memorial Fellowship , established in memory of Professor of Rhetoric Arthur Quinn (1942-1997), supports research by doctoral candidates in the history of California.
• The Gunther Barth Fellowship  supports undergraduate or graduate students researching the 19th-century history of the North American West. $2,500
• The Reese Fellowship , available to qualified researchers, supports research relating to print culture in any part of the Western Hemisphere, or any investigation of the history of the book in the Americas. $2,500
• The Donald Sidney-Fryer Fellowship , available to qualified researchers, supports research relating to the Clark Ashton Smith’s literary circle. $2,500
• The Robert E. Levinson Fellowship , available to qualified researchers, supports original research relating to the depth and breadth of the Jewish experience in California from 1848 to 1915. $1,000

Undergraduate fellowships

• The Meyers-Putnam Family Bancroft Library Fellowship  supports research at The Bancroft Library by undergraduates enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. $1000
• The Hill-Shumate Book Collecting Prize  was established by Kenneth E. Hill and Albert Shumate to encourage Berkeley undergraduate students to collect books.

Independent scholar fellowships

Affiliated fellowships.

All affiliated fellowship opportunities listed here have their own separate deadlines and application process.  Refer to their respective pages for further details.

• Carmel and Howard Friesen Prize in Oral History Research  is awarded to the Berkeley undergraduate student who submits the best essay that draws upon The Bancroft Library’s Oral History Center interviews.

Fellowships and prizes

How to apply

Hill study award

Meylan study award, summer study award, gunther barth, hill-shumate, meyers-putnam, quinn memorial, sidney-fryer, application forms and submission instructions.

The Fellowships and Prizes Forms may be requested from The Bancroft Library Administrative Office, 510-642-3782, or downloaded below. 

The application deadline is the first Monday in February by 5 p.m. Be sure to include your name and contact info on all elements of your submission.

Applications for The Bancroft Study Award and assorted Fellowships require submission of:

1. Fellowship application form

• Graduate fellowships   (PDF)
• Undergraduate fellowships   (PDF)
• Independent scholar fellowships   (PDF)

2. Letters of recommendation

• For undergraduate fellowships: ONE letter of recommendation directly from recommender with  Bancroft’s Cover Letter Form   (PDF)
• For graduate fellowships: TWO letters of recommendation directly from recommender with  Bancroft’s Cover Letter Form   (PDF)
• For independent scholar fellowships: TWO letters of recommendation directly from recommender with  Bancroft’s Cover Letter Form   (PDF)

3. Statement of purpose (1,000 words or less, one-sided, double-spaced, 12 size font, your name and page numbers on all pages)

4. Transcripts

• For undergraduate fellowships: Unofficial transcript
• For graduate fellowships: Sealed official transcripts of all college and university work
• For independent scholar fellowships: No transcripts needed

Note: Some fellowships require additional material for application submission. Refer to their respective pages for further details. Undocumented students eligible to apply. No work authorization required.

Submit your application in writing to

Bancroft Library Fellowship Committee The Bancroft Library University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000 Attn: Hannah Martin 

Or by email to  [email protected] .

All applications and awards will be made within the framework of existing fellowship programs. Awards will be announced each spring at the Annual Meeting of the Friends of The Bancroft Library. Winners should plan to attend the Annual Meeting.

For all other questions please call Hannah Martin at 510-642-3782.

The fellowship

Fellowship offered for academic year 2023-2024. Application deadline is the first Monday in February by 5 p.m.

Eligibility for awards

The Kenneth E. and Dorothy V. Hill Fellowship Fund provides one year-long fellowship to graduate students from any campus of the University of California who are conducting research that would benefit from the use of source materials in The Bancroft Library.   This fellowship is not offered every year.  

The holders of the fellowships, designated as Bancroft Fellows, will conduct their research in The Bancroft Library during the fellowship and must therefore be registered during the academic year at Berkeley or their home campus under the inter-campus exchange program.

Students must be beyond the first year of graduate study; in the past, awards have generally gone to students who have passed their qualifying examinations, have exhausted other forms of support, and are engaged in dissertation research.

The applicant's statement of purpose must describe how the research project will make use of The Bancroft Library's collections.

For applicants

Completed applications must include: statement of purpose, 1000 words or less; official transcripts of all undergraduate and graduate coursework; two letters of recommendation from instructors, and, for summer fellowships, the estimated length of time that the applicant would be in residence. The selection committee will balance all of these factors in determining the recipients of the full year fellowships as well as the summer fellowships.

All awards are made by The Bancroft Library Fellowship Committee. All applications and awards will be made within the framework of existing fellowship programs. The applicant will conduct the research project within one year of notification.

For further instructions on how to apply for a Bancroft Library Study Award, please see How to apply.

2022-2023 academic year Andrew Klein, Militant Capital: How Oakland Became an Outpost of Empire and Rebellion in the Long Twentieth Century.

2021-2022 academic year Cycle canceled due to Covid-19.

2019-2020 academic year Alexander Scott Arroyo, Designing an Ocean: Oceanic Imaginaries of American Empire in the New Arctic.

2017-2018 academic year Alexandra Havrylyshyn, Free Under the Laws of France: How Enslaved Women and Girls Accessed Justice in Antebellum Louisiana, 1837-1857. 

2016-2017 academic year John Elrick, Model City: Technologies of Government in the San Francisco Bay Area.

2015-2016 academic year Nancy Gallman, American Constitutions: Life, Liberty, and Property in Colonial East Florida. 

2014-2015 academic year Peter Ekman, Suburbs of Last Resort: Order and Ruin on the Edge of San Francisco Bay. 

Simon Abramowitsch, The Production of Multi-Ethnic American Literature in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1966-1996: From the Black Panther Party to the Institutionalization of “Diversity.”

2013-2014 academic year Adam Romero, The Afterlives of Industrial Byproducts: The Necessity of Industrial Byproducts in the Industrialization of California Agriculture.  

Emily Cole, Translation Ideology in Graeco-Roman Egypt (ca. 332 BCE – 300 CE).

2012-2013 academic year Adrianne Francisco, Colonial Subjects: American Colonial Education and Philippine Nation-Making , 1900-1934.  

2011-2012 academic year Diana Negrín, Changing Wixárika Lives and Livelihoods in Mexico’s Cities. 

Israel Pastrana, Brazos de Oro: Mexican Contract Labor Migration and the Political Economy of the American Southwest, 1917-1973.

2010-2011 academic year Tara McDowell, Jess and the Language of Pictures, 1951-1991. 

Hannah Haynie, The Linguistic Geography of the Sierra Nevada and Central California. 

2009-2010 academic year Colin Dingler, Lyric Impurity: Genre, Serial Poems, and the Form of History in Mid-Century and Contemporary American Poetry. 

Sarah Lopez, Migrating Mexico: A Material History of Remittance Space in Sur de Jalisco and Los Angeles.

2008-2009 academic year Audrey Wu Clark, The Asian American Avant-Garde: Internationalist Aspirations in Early Asian American Literature, 1882-1945.

William Wagner, Reading, Writing, and Rambling: The Literary Culture of Travel in Antebellum America. 

2007-2008 academic year Seth Roger Lunine, Private City, Public Threat: Entertainment, Industry and Illusion in Emeryville, California, 1880-1950. 

Maria Belen Bistue, Collaborative Writing: Translation Strategies in Early Modern Multilingual Texts.

2006-2007 academic year Sean Burns, Working Class Hero: The Intellectual and Activist Legacy of Archie Green. 

Natale Zappia, The Autonomous Interior: Trading, Raiding, and Freedom in Native California, 1700-1857. 

2005-2006 academic year Ruben Flores, States of Culture: The Central Government and Ethnoracial Consolidation in Mexico and the US, 1920-1950.

Francisco Casique, Race and Space in San Francisco’s Mission District. 

2004-2005 academic year

Rachel A. Chico, Navigating Nation: Communication and Orientation in the Veracruz-Mexico City Corridor, 1812-1867.

Anil K. Mukerjee, An Examination of the Engel Sluiter Historical Documents Collection. 

Hellen Lee, Never Done: Women’s Work and Culture in the United States, 1870-1910. 

2003-2004 academic year Kimberly Bird, Unsettled Frontier: Poetic Radicalism and the Question of Nationalism in California, 1930-1940. 

Lisa Conathan, Language Contact and Linguistic Change in Northern California. 

Karen McNeill, Building the California Women’s Movement: Architecture, Space and Gender in the Life and Work of Julia Morgan. 

2002-2003 academic year Yu-fang Cho, Visions of Pacific Destiny: Culture of Western Expansionism and American Women’s Work of Benevolence, 1880s-1900s.

Dulcinea Michelle Lara, Historical Evolution of Education and Its Detrimental Ideological and Identity Forming Consequences in New Mexico. 

Jeffrey Alan Ow, Contested Isles: The History and Representation of Ellis Island and Angel Island.

2001-2002 academic year Isabel Breskin, Above the City upon a Hill: Lithographic City Views of San Francisco, 1848-1914. 

Andrew Johnson, Quicksilver Mining Landscapes of California and the West, 1840-1920.  Adrienne Williams, UCB 92 and the Re-Vision of Miracles of the Virgin. 

2000-2001 academic year Donald Michael Bottoms, Race, Politics, and the Law in 19th Century California.

Anne Burnett Keary, Christian Missionaries, Colonial Knowledges, Contested Geographies: The Missionary Translation of Indigenous Language and Culture in New South Wales and Oregon Territory in the Nineteenth Century.  

Fellowship not offered this academic year.

The Edward F. and Marianne E. Meylan Fellowship Fund provides one year-long fellowship to graduate students from any recognized institution of higher education in the United States or abroad who are conducting research that would benefit from the use of source materials in The Bancroft Library.   This fellowship is not offered every year . 

2022-2023 academic year Ian Halter, Worlds for Sale, Peoples for Purchase: Living Alaska’s Cession, 1862-1896. 

2021-2022 Cycle canceled due to Covid-19. 

2020-2021 academic year Maria Barreiros Almeida-Reis, Backwaters of the Atlantic World: Slavery, Governance, and the Scramble for the Amazonian Borderlands, 1580-1700.

2018-2019 academic year Amrit Deol, Ghadri and Sikh Poetry: Interrogations of Subjugated Knowledges in History.  

Application deadline is the first Monday in February by 5 p.m.

The Friends of The Bancroft Library award $45,000 in fellowships for summer study to graduate students from any University of California campus  in the form of stipends in a range of amounts .

2022 Summer Cameron Black, Playing a Different Game: Student-Athlete Protest at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Alexander Chaparro-Silva, Writing the Other America: Democracy, Race, and Print Culture in the Americas, 1821-1898. 

Katherine Hobbs, Romance, Politics, and the Law in British Women’s Rights Reform, 1830-1900.

Caroline Johnston, The Sagebrush Rebellion and the Making of the Right: Political Synthesis in the Rocky Mountain West, 1976-1984.  

Patrick Reilly, Scholars and Social Control: The Politics of American Police Research in the Twentieth Century. 

Jonathan van Harmelen, Legislating Injustice: Congress and the Wartime Incarceration of Japanese Americans. 

2019 Summer Juan Pablo Morales Garza, Politics, Religious Hierarchy and Land Property in Indigenous Villages in the Valley of Mexico, 1853-1862. 

Anthony Joshua Meyer, Attending to the Sacred: Tlamacazque and Their Complex Roles in Mexica and Christian Spaces. 

Alice Regina Lapoint, Spiritual Forces Compel [Miwok and Tlingit Beliefs].

Alessia Cecchet, Monarch: The Last California Grizzly Bear.

Sarah Elizabeth Biscarra Dilley, Where are You From and Where are You Going?: Patterns, Parcels, and Place.

Nitoshia Lashawn Ford, A Consideration of Presence: Black Women LIS Professionals and the Historical Record. 

Janice Yu, Strange Selves: Representations of the Othered Body. 

2018 Summer Carrie Alexander, Rush: Time, Haste, and Negotiations of Power in Mid-Nineteenth Century California. 

Sarah Bane, Join the Club: Regional Print Clubs in America During the Interwar Period. 

Kristina Borrman, The Architecture of Belonging: ‘Livable Places’ in California since 1945. 

Sarah Quincy, ‘Loans for the Little Fellow’: Credit, Crisis, and Recovery in the Great Depression. 

Michelle Ripplinger, Chaucer’s Women from Script to Print: John Stow’s and Thomas Speght’s Collected Works. 

Andrew Shaler, Mariposa: Violence, Colonial and Indigenous Histories of the California Gold Rush. 

Claire Urbanski, (Re)Emergent Bones and Sacred Formations: The Accumulation of Ohlone Remains in the Construction of the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Desirée Valadares, Race, Rights and Reparations: The Material Culture of World War II Confinement Camps in Canada and the United States. 

Tara Keegan, The Endurance of the Upriver People: A Karuk Story of Sport and Survival, 1877-1928. 

2017 Summer  Christina Bush, Fashioning the Black Masculine.

Kelly Easterday, Uniting a Century of Forest Survey Collection to Determine Drivers of Change in California Forests.

Kimberly Killion, From Farms to Kitchens to the “Body Laboratory”: Nutritional Science and the Politics of Food in the United States, 1885-1930. 

Savannah Kilner, Pride and Property: Queer Settler Colonialism and the Landed Politics of Solidarity in Oakland, CA, 1979-present.  

Christopher Miller, Public Enemies: Transience and Lyric in American Poetry. 

Carlos Rivas, Urban Utopia? The Reducción General de los Indios and Coloniality of Space at Nahuizalco, El Salvador after 1520. 

Joanne Tien, Educating for Freedom: A study of the Berkeley Experimental Schools Project, 1968-1976. 

2016 Summer Xan Chacko, Moving, Making, Saving: Experimental Agriculture in California. 

Nancy Gallman, American Constitutions: Life, Liberty, and Property in Colonial East Florida. 

Theodora Dryer, Designing Certainty: A History of Model Based Thinking in the Era of Scientific Planning, 1929-1970.  

Maggie Elmore, Building Community through Politics: The Catholic Church, the State, and Ethnic Mexicans in the US Southwest, 1923-1986. 

Gary Fox, Aesthetic Futures, On Air: Donald Appleyard, Kenneth Craik, and Berkeley’s Environmental Simulation Laboratory.

Camilo Lund-Montano, Out of Order: Radical Lawyers and Revolutionary Movements in the Global Sixties.

Amani Morrison, Black Chicago through the Pen of Gwendolyn Brooks.

Alexander Werth, Culture Wars: Race, Citizenship, and Violence in Oakland, California’s Urban/Colonial Frontier.

2015 Summer Spencer Strub, Robert Doughtie and the Readers of the Print Piers Plowman.  

Jennifer Terry, Shifting Conceptions of Juvenile Labor and Employment in California, 1938-1980. 

Jessica Stair, Textual-Pictorial Literacies in the Techialoyan Manuscripts of New Spain.

Cori Knudten, Constructing Gender in California’s East Bay, 1920-1941. 

Dexter Hough-Snee, Mining Anxiety while Mocking the Marketplace: Economic Thought in the Latin American Satirical Archive, 1598-1880. 

2014 Summer Natalie Mendoza, Domesticating Foreign Policy: Inter-Americanism and Mexican Americans in the US Southwest, 1930s-1950s. 

Jeffrey Yamashita, Manufacturing Japanese American War Heroes: Incarceration, a “Suicide Battalion,” and Ben Kuroki.

Elizabeth Miller, The American Expeditionary Tradition, Pre-Colombian Architectures and the Indigenous Specter in American Art since 1960. 

Robert Lee, Louisiana Purchases: The US-Indian Treaty System in the Missouri River Valley.

Katherine Kadue, “The Living Labours of Publick Men”: Intellectual Labor as Domestic Practice from Erasmus to Milton. 

Daniel Benjamin, Excavating Excluded Affects in the Poems of Jack Spicer. 

Griselda Jarquin, The Transnational Politics of Remembering: Revolution and Counterrevolution in Nicaragua and the US. 

Yve Chavez, Indigenous Agency and Artistic Production at California’s Missions. 

Ziza Delgado, The Third World Liberation Front at UC Berkeley: An Anti-Hegemonic Movement for Radical Pedagogy and Revolutionary Curriculum. 

2013 Summer Robert Kett, Stones, Feathers, Crude: Art and Science in Twentieth Century Southern Mexico. 

Terence Przeklasa, The Mission Indian Federation: American Indian Rights on the Right. 

Susan Wood, Gathering the “Other”: Salvage Ethnography and the Construction of Culture in Southern California, 1897-1909. 

Marilola Perez, Pacific Exceptionalism? A Sociolinguistic Examination of Cavite Chabacano. 

Amy Lee, Coolies and Opium: Comparative Anglo-American Empires, Chinese Globalism, and Literary Modes of Uneven Development.

Samia Rahimtoola, Open Form: The Ethos of the Given in Robert Duncan's Life-Work.

2012 Summer  Marcel Brousseau, Imaginary Lines: Data, Narration, Cartography, and the Speculation and Historicization of the U.S. Mexican Indigenous American Borderlands.

Kevin Whalen, Beyond School Walls: Indian Education in Southern California.

Alicia Cowart, Natural and Anthropogenic Influences on Fire Regimes and Vegetation Change in Central California.

Di Hu, The Transformation of Identity, Daily Life and Resistance in the Colonial Obraje of Pomacocha, Vilcashuaman, Peru.

Sara Jensen, The Topography of Wellness: Mechanisms, Models and Metrics of Health in the Urban Landscape.

Jacob Lee, Imaginary Empires: Kinship, Power and Alliance in the Illinois Country, 1550-1840.

Alexander Tarr, Have Your City and Eat It Too: Los Angeles and the Renaissance in Urban Agriculture.

Travis Wilds, Assembling the Science of the Future: Epistemic Virtues in the Exact Sciences, Physiology and Literature of Post-Enlightenment France, 1780-1840.

2011 Summer Javier Arbona, Racialized Homefronts: Reclaiming the Port Chicago Explosion.

Erin Collins, Recombinant Social(ist) Antagonist on the Landscape of the Lower Mekong Delta.

Emily Colbert Cairns, The Other Carvajal: Reading Crypto-Jewish Feminine Space.

Anita Huizar-Hernández, Histories of Contact: Arizona's Multi-Ethnic Heritage.

Bianca Brigidi, Being Native American: Race, Ethnicity and Mission in Spanish, Mexican and U.S. California, 1769-1852.

JoAnna Wall, Virgin Territory: Women in the Monjeríos of Alta and Baja California, 1697-1834.

Elizabeth Sine, Movements on the Margins: An Archaeology of Struggles for Survival and Dignity in Depression-Era California.

Leece Lee, Modernity and the "Death Ethic": Western Expansion as War in the Northern Plains, 1820-1880.

María Covadonga Lamar Prieto, Spanish Language in XIX California.

2010 Summer Natalia Cecire, The Girl Modest Witness and the Poetics of Knowledge.

Funie Hsu, Blackboard Frontiers: American Expansion and U.S. Colonial Education Policy, 1887-1914.

Diana Greenwold, Skins and Carcasses: Stereoscopic Vision and the Native American in Nineteenth-Century Utah.

Nicole Pacino, Prescription for a Nation: Public Health in Post-Revolutionary Bolivia.

Swati Rana, Who You Calling Immigrant?: Alienage and Nativity in the Literature of Brown America, 1900-1965.

Clare Robinson, The California Memorial Union.

Barbara Zimbalist, The Devil in Disguise: Incarnational Politics in Medieval Miracles of the Virgin.

2009 Summer Kathleen Adams, Kindergarten and Community: The Silver Street Kindergarten Society of San Francisco.

Rachel Brahinsky, The End of Gentrification: Development, Politics and Race in San Francisco.

Allison Ferrell, Collaborated Lives: Individualism and Collectivity in the Avant-Garde of Jay DeFeo.

Cheryl Holzmeyer, Toward Interactivity: Transformations of the U.S. Science Museum Field, 1830-Present.

Adam Lewis, Liberal Citizenship and National Sovereignty in the Antebellum Empire.

Rebecca Munson, "The Text Is Foolish": The Telling Choices of Shakespeare’s First Editions.

Marques Redd, Imaginal Mapping, Psychospirituality, and the Multidimensional Complexities of British and American Romanticism.

Lauren Chase Smith, Bawdy Amusements of Progress in the Transpacific Borderlands.

Christina Zanfagna, Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels.

2007 Summer Ricardo Fagoaga Henandez, Regions, Markets and Indigenous Economic Participation: Chiapas and Guatemala.

Brian Grossman, Investigating the Influence of Social Science Measurement on the Development of the Disability Rights/Independent Movement.

Heidi Hoechst, Refusable Pasts: Spatial Economics and the Politics of the U.S. Tradition.

Christine Hong, Captivity in Translation: Huckleberry Finn as Intertext in Ralph Ellison's and Ôe Kenzaburo's Mid-century Prisoner-of-War Narratives.

Andrea King, Forbidden Pleasures, Damnable Sin, and Municipal Corruption: Race, Gender, and Respectability in San Francisco’s Vice District, 1900-1940.

Emily Moore, Aesthetic Confrontations: Chilkat Tunics and the Evolution of Northwest Coast Designs.

Joseph Ring, Transported by the Mode: Milton's Sublime Aesthetics and the Politics of Astonishment.

Citlali Sosa-Riddell, The Culture of Commemoration among the Californios: Changing Cultural Practices, Honor, and Race Ideology, 1850-1900.

Warren Wood, City Fathers: The Influence of Social and Economic Changes on the Meaning and Practice of Fatherhood in San Francisco, 1849-1915.

2006 Summer Peter Allen, A Space for Living: Regionalism and the Rise of Environmental Planning in the Bay Area, 1939-1969. 

Amy Lippert, Consuming Identities: Visual Culture and Celebrity in Nineteenth-century San Francisco. 

Timothy Pepper, Economic and Social Interaction in the Papyri from Ptolemaic Tebtunis. 

Maria Ramnath, Haj to Utopia: Anti-systemic Ideologies in the South Asian Diaspora, 1905-1930. 

Lilia Soto, Migration as a Matter of Time: Perspectives from Mexican Immigrant Girls in the Napa Valley. 

Sarah Thomas, The Politics of Growth: Land-Use in Postwar America, 1950-1975. 

Zeb Tortorici, The Appearance of Colonial Order: Sexuality in Colonial Mexico, 1600-1800. 

Richard Welker, The Roots of Agribusiness.

2004 Summer Penelope Anderson, The Rhetoric and Politics of Audience: Lucy Hutchinson, John Milton, and Katherine Philips. 

Steven Fountain, Big Dogs and Scorched Streams: Horses, Beavers, and Ethnocultural Change, 1769-1849. 

Jean V. Gier, Writing Communities and Constituencies: Literature of the U.S. Filipino Press During the Early Twentieth Century.  

Ki Won Han, The Rise of Oceanography in the United States, 1900-1940.  

Stacy Kozakavich, The Archaeology of the Kaweah Co-operative Commonwealth’s Advance Townsite. 

Michael Kunichika, Vision for Verbal Art in the Russian Symbolist Journal, 1899-1917.

Marissa López, Nationalism, Narrative, and History: The Formal Case for Chicana/o Literature. 

Elisabeth O’Connell, Recontextualizing the Tebtunis Papyri. 

Julie Tanaka, German Fiat: German Historiography and Identity in the Holy Roman Empire. 

2003 Summer Nicole Caso, Practicing Memory in Central American Literature: Reflections on Histories, Space and Language.

Alison Fraunhar, Revisioning the Mulata in Cuban Visual Culture, 1880-1980.

Haden Guest, The Police Procedural Film and the Organization of Postwar America, 1930-1960.  

Joyce Mao, China-town: Cultural Politics and Racial Space in San Francisco, 1850-1980.  

Nadia Nurhussein, Verbal Topiary Work: Reading Dialect in American Poetry, 1870-2001.

Jose Pastrano, Immigration Policies and Low-cost Labor: The 1920s Political Debates over Mexican Labor. 

Evelyn Rodriguez, Coming of Age: Identities and Transformations in Filipina Debutantes and Mexican Quinceañeras. 

2002 Summer Samantha Holtkamp Gervase, Life and Law in the Lower Mississippi River Valley: Categories and the Expansion of America, 1800-1860. 

Rudy Poscallo Guevarra, On Common Ground: Mexican and Filipinos in San Diego Agriculture, 1920-1965. 

Chantelle Nicole Warner, Literacy Identity Construction in Works of Dutch Clandestine Literature Written During the Second World War. 

2001 Summer Jessica Delgado, The Inquisition and Women’s Voices: Female Accusers and Witnesses in the Mexican Inquisition.

Yolanda James, California Malinches in the Project to Recover a Chicana/o Lit. Heritage.

Delberto Ruiz, Teki Lenguas del Yollotzin (Cut Tongues from the Heart). 

Anna More, Colonial Baroque: Siguenza y Góngora and the Politics of 17th-Century New Spain. 

Michelle Morton, Utopian and Dystopian Visions of California in the Literary Imagination. 

Anna Naruta, Creating Whiteness in California: An Examination of White and Chinese Relations from 1865-1910.

Suzette Spencer, Sounding Freedom: Maroonist Poetics, Signifyin’ Language, and the Black Vernacular. 

Allison Varzally, Ethnic Crossings in California, 1930-1950

The Gunther Barth Fellowship, established in memory of Gunther Barth, Professor of History, supports projects at The Bancroft Library by formally enrolled college and university students, regardless of academic degree sought.

Such projects will generally be in the area of nineteenth-century history of the North American West, with preference given to areas of special interest to Professor Barth: the environment, exploration, immigrants, urban history, cultural landscapes, and built environments (such as city or memorial parks).

Size of awards

This fellowship is offered for short term research projects. Awards may be used to defray travel expenses, living expenses, or research costs.

For more details on applying for the Gunther Barth Fellowship, please see How to apply.

2022-2023 academic year

Francisco Céntola, An Environmental History of the Transportation Revolution, 1850-1910. 

Hope McCaffrey, Free-State White Women in Antebellum Democratic Politics. 

Brian Wright, Conquest on Paper: Archives and the American West.   

2021-2022 academic year

Cycle cancelled due to Covid-19

2020-2021 academic year

Laura Gómez,  Farmworkers’ Labor Camps: Race, Gender and the Family in California’s Central Valley, 1880-1940

Cooper Weissman,  Invasive Bodies, Natural Borders: Eugenics, Conservation and Eco-nativism in the U.S. 1918-1988

2019-2020 academic year

Yoav Hamdani,  Uncle Sma's Slaves: Slavery in the United States Regular Army, 1797-1865

Lorraine Dias Herbon,  "Give 'em Jessie": The Life of Jessie Benton Frémont

Mark Jordan Keagle,  Cold Commodities: Ice and the Building of the American West, 1848-1945

2018-2019 academic year

Charnan Williams,  Slavery and Freedom in the City of Angels: Black and Indian Angelenos from the Mexican Period to the United States Civil War, 1820–1865

2017-2018 academic year

William Cowan,  The Pacific Slope Megaflood of 1861-1862

2016-2017 academic year

Richard Soash,  Tempered Inclusion: Syrian-Lebanese and Armenian Mobility in the U.S. Progressive Era

2015-2016 academic year

John Suval,  Dangerous Ground: Squatters, Statesmen, and the Rupture of American Democracy, 1830–1860

Laura Fravel,  Gazing Westward: The Quest for Unity in American Art Displays at the World's Fairs, 1876–1916

2014-2015 academic year

Darren Raspa,  Pacific Policeways: Grassroots Control and Power in San Francisco, 1850-1950

2013-2014 academic year

Travis Ross,  Machines of Memory: Hubert Howe Bancroft's History Company and the Making of Western History

2012-2013 academic year

Daniel Lynch,  The Lost Cause of the Californio: Southern and Californio Convergence in Southern California, 1846-1920

2011-2012 academic year

Michael Caires,  Greenbacks in the Golden State: California, Legal Tender and the State Resistance during the Civil War

2010-2011 academic year

Christina Salerno,  Fire: Not a Natural Disaster

Mackenzie Moore,  Our Hearts Are Unalienated from the Land of Our Birth: Isolation and the Americanization of Oregon, 1834-1859

2009-2010 academic year

Alexander Olson,  Scars and Signs: Natural History at the University of California, 1869-1906

2008-2009 academic year

Richard Welker,  The Culture of Agrarian Capitalism: Farmers, Neighbors, and Economic Relationships in Nineteenth Century California

Prizes are open to undergraduates currently enrolled at UC Berkeley. Kenneth E. Hill and Albert Shumate established the prizes to encourage Berkeley students to collect books, to build their own libraries, to appreciate the special qualities of the printed word, and to read for pleasure and education.

The Hill-Shumate Prize awards $1,500 to the winning entry and $1,000 for second place. In addition, all entrants will receive one-year gift memberships in the Friends of The Bancroft Library.

To be considered for the Hill-Shumate Prizes, collections must include at least 50 items. Collections may:

• Cover specific authors or subjects, contemporary or historical
• Stress bibliographical features (edition, illustrations, binding, etc.)
• Include paperbacks and ephemeral material, as long as they significantly reflect the purposes of the collection

Modern textbooks should not be submitted.

Judges will give special consideration to how well the collection reflects the student's stated goals and interests. Age, rarity, or monetary value of material in the collections submitted is less important than the thought, creativity, and persistence demonstrated in defining a collection and bringing it into being.

The statement of purpose section of your Hill-Shumate Book Collecting Prize application should include:

A brief essay of up to 1,000 words describing:  

• The nature and character of the collection
• How and why it was assembled 
• When it was begun 
• Its significance
• The future direction(s) the collection may take.

An informal list of the items in the collection, citing:

• Place and date of publication
• Type of binding
• Optional annotations on the importance of individual pieces.

After reviewing the essays and lists, the judges may ask finalists to bring selected items from their collections to The Bancroft Library for final judging.

For further instructions regarding how to apply for The Hill-Shumate Book Collecting Prize, and to download the application form referenced above, please see the How to apply section of this page.

First Place : Lily Garcia, The Bookworm’s Trail to the Wilderness: A Literary Collection. 

Second Place : Patricia Iley, Americana: A Library of American Narratives . 

First Place : Nicole Su-Wen Lee,  A Library of Dragons: Friend not Foe

Second Place : Geraint R. H. Hughes,  Historical Fiction from Alexander to Napoleon

Ian Stevens Erickson,  Geometry: The Diagram and The Description

Henry Weikel, Visual Legacy of Late 20th Century Science Fiction

Elise Levin-Guracar, Education in America: Policy, Practice, Theory, and History

Samuel Diener,  Down to the Sea in Ships:Voyage Narratives and the Epistemic Power of Fictionality

No award granted

First Place : Reginald James,  Oakland, California: The Epicenter of the Black Radical Imagination

Second Place : Rebecca Peters,  Water, Rights, and the Spirit of Resistance in Latin America

Third Place : Hunam Rostomyan,  A Logico-Philosophical Collection

Luciano Concheiro,  Becoming Mexican: A Collection

Kathleen O'Connell,  Library of Books in Warfare: Military History and Fiction

Anthony James Wright,  Traditions of the University of California: Yearbooks

First Place : Kathleen O'Connell,  Library of Books in Myths, Legends, and Fantasy

Second Place : Candace Cunard,  Science Fiction Through the Years: A Critical/Historical Collection

Third Place : Steven Broderick,  Classical Latin and Greek Literature

Rhae Lynn Barnes,  The Print Culture of American Amateur Minstrelsy, Blackface Plays, and Dialect in Black Literature (circa 1890s-1940s)

First Place : Sudev Jay Sheth,  Library of Books in Northern Indian Classical Vocal and Percussion Music

Second Place : Ashley Fiutko,  Library of Books in Ancient Egypt

Third Place : Christopher Montes,  Library of Books in Modern American Military History

First Place : Alexis Ashot,  Library of Books in Russian Published in the 20th Century

Second Place : Gustavo Buenrostro,  Encountering Mexico: History, Politics, and Culture

Third Place : Matt Werner,  Jorge Luis Borges and the McSweeney's School

First Place : Raul Diaz,  Evolutionary Biology and Herpetology

Second Place : Billy Chen,  Feminist and Queer Cultural Studies and Psychoanalysis

Third Place : David Singer,  Jewish Religion and History

First Place : Danielle Peterson,  The Poet, John Ashbery

Second Place:  Anobel Odisho,  Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology

Third Place : Mai Der Vang,  Hmong Culture

First Place : David Weinrich,  Classics

Second Place : Ken Chen,  Modern Poetry

Sean Nye,  Scottish Literature

First Place : Lyubov Golburt,  Poetry

Second Place : Carolyn Babauta,  Beat Poets

Third Place : Christina Tran,  World Literature

The program will support original research relating to the depth and breadth of the Jewish experience in California from 1848, the beginning of the Gold Rush era to 1915, the opening of the Pan Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, with preference for the relation to the California Gold rush experience. The research must include investigation of the original and related secondary materials of the Bancroft Library

Robert E. Levinson, PhD, was an historian and pioneer scholar in the study of the Jewish experience in the California Gold Rush. His doctoral thesis, The Jews in the California Gold Rush, University of Oregon, 1968, and subsequent book of the same title, published by the Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley, 1978, opened an exciting chapter for researchers to examine the complexity, diversity, and impact of the Jewish experience in early California history.

The Robert E. Levinson Fellowship for the study of the history of Jews in California has been established by the Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks in the West. This fellowship has been established to encourage the further exploration of primary and related secondary resources to further expand the original research of Dr. Levinson.

The fellowship is offered in the amount of $1000. Awards may be used to defray travel expenses, living expenses or research costs.

Please see the  How to apply  section of this page for further instructions.

On the application form, applicants should describe the purpose and scope of the proposed project, detailing sufficient information about relevant holdings of the Bancroft Library that would support the project. Indication of qualifications of the applicant to undertake the proposed work will help the review committee evaluate the proposal.

All awards are made by the Bancroft Library fellowship committee. No awards are made directly by the donor, The Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks. The applicant will conduct the research project within one year of the notification. The recipient will be asked to write a report for the Bancroft Library and the Commission for Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks on their research.

Michel Sunhae Lee,  Contesting the Sabbath: A History of the Weekly Sacred Times in America, 1848–1920

Benjamin Steiner,  Ketubot from Early California: Jewish Acculturation in the American West

Lori Harrison-Kahan,  The Deghettoization of American Jewish Literature: Pioneering Women Writers in the Progressive Era

Meyers-Putnam Family Bancroft Library Fellowship established in 2007 celebrates the important role of the University of California, Berkeley in the lives of its family members: Leslie O. Meyers (BS Mechanical Engineering, 1922), Kathryn P. Meyers, Peggy Jane Meyers Putnam (BA Physics, 1948; C.LS 1949), and Malcolm G. Putnam (BA Labor/Industrial Relations, 1953; MBA 1955). Leslie O. Meyers served as Captain of the 1921 Cal baseball team. Jane Meyers Putnam was employed as a UC Berkeley technical reference librarian from 1949 through 1955.

This fellowship supports research at The Bancroft Library by undergraduates currently enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley.

This fellowship is offered in the amount of $1000. Awards may be used to defray travel expenses, living expenses, or research costs.

To apply for the Meyers-Putnam Family Bancroft Library Fellowship, please see the  How to apply  section of this page.

2022-2023 Gianfranco Gastelo, Colonialism in Peru: Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Identities. 

Joseph Lerdal, Laboratory of Intervention: The Pershing Punitive Expedition and the Production of Military Knowledge. 

Maya Luong, Investigating California’s Asian American Women’s Experiences of Sexual Violence and Harassment.   

Gitika Nalwa,  Strange Fruit: Male Racial Identity and the American Wilderness, 1830-1950

Emma Bianco,  What are They Doing to your Children? Examining Orange County's Right-Wing War on Progressive Education in the 1960s

The Arthur J. Quinn Memorial Fellowship was established in memory of Arthur Quinn (1942-1997), Professor of Rhetoric.  These fellowships support research by doctoral candidates (i.e., those who shall have been advanced to candidacy by the time the fellowship is taken up) in the history of California from any recognized institution of higher education in the United States or abroad, with a preference for students carrying out research in The Bancroft Library. Applicants must be enrolled in an accredited university.

Applicants should indicate the scope and purpose of their proposed projects and how collections at The Bancroft Library will support their research. All awards are made by The Bancroft Library Fellowship Committee. All applications and awards will be made within the framework of existing fellowship programs. The applicant will conduct the research project within one year of notification.

For more details on applying for an Arthur J. Quinn Memorial Fellowship, please see the  How to apply section above.

Paul Burow, Ecologies of Belonging: Settler Colonialism and Environmental Change in Rural Communities of California and Nevada. 

Michelle Donnelly, Impressions of Internment: Amy Kasai’s Prints at the Tule Lake Relocation Center. 

Alexander Jin, Heathen Intimacy: A Sexual History of Chinese Migrants in Turn of the Century California.   

Nicholas Anderman,  Anachronic Ocean: Automation and the Time of Labor in Maritime Shipping

Kyle DeLand,  Land Monopoly and the Crisis in California Settler Society 1860-1890: Liberalism, Law and Empire

Kevan Malone,  Borderline Sustainability: Urbanization and Environmental Diplomacy at the Tijuana-San Diego Boundary 1919-1999

Grace Morrison Goudiss,  California Converts: New Religious Movements and American Politics, 1965-1989

Arang Ha,  Free Labor, Free Trade, Free Immigration: The Vision of the Pacific Community After the Civil War

Lauren Paige Hunter,  Meals of Change: San Francisco Food Activism in the 1960s and 1970s

Antonina Griecci Woodsum,  Fiesta Immemorial: Native and Settler Political Economies in Southern California

Tian Xu,  Navigating Worthiness in America: White Attorneys, Chinese Immigrants, and African American Civil War Pensioners, 1873-1910

Ivon Padilla-Rodriguez,  Hidden in the Fields: The Racial Politics of Laboring Childhoods in California and the Limits of Reform

Calvin Snyder,  The State and the Underworld, Los Angeles, 1919–1973

Richard Elliott,  A Nation of Silver and Gold: Comstock Mines, California Finance, and the Business of Making Money in America, 1860-1879

Rosario Vasquez Montano,  Tras los pasos de Ethel Duffy Turner: La Mujer que Recuperó su Propia Sombra / In the Footsteps of Ethel Duffy Turner: The Woman Who Recovered her Own Shadow

Julia Lewandoski,  Surveying Settler Treaties and Indigenous Land Tenure in North America, 1763-1856

Emilie Raymer,  Evolution for the Twentieth Century: Carl Sauer and the Development of Cultural Geography, 1920-1950

Kevin Waite,  The Slave South in the Far West: California, the Pacific, and Postslavery Visions of Empire

Josi Ward,  A Place for Our Landless Farmers: Recovery and Reform in the FSA Migratory Labor Camps

Alanna Hickey,  The Forms of National Belonging: Cherokee Poetry in Gold-Rush California

Minyoung Lee,  The California Gold Rush, American Empire, and the Transformation of a Pacific World, 1848-1898

Thomas Richards,  The Texas Moment: Breakaway Republics and Contested Sovereignty in North America, 1836-1846

Gregory Rosenthal,  Work, Body, and Environment in the Hawaiian Diaspora, 1786-1876

Simone Diender,  Expert Power in the Knowledge Economy: Clark Kerr, The University of California, and Private Citizenship in the 1940s-60s

Jessica Christian,  Return to the Mission: Gendered Bonds, Women, and Colonization in San Diego, 1769-1910

Emmanuelle Perez,  Between the United States of Mexico and the United States of America: Californios and Politics, 1821-1879

The Reese Fellowship in American Bibliography and the History of the Book in the Americas have been established by the William Reese Company to encourage research on material printed in or related to the Americas. The fellowships support qualified individuals at the institutions participating in the fellowship program, regardless of academic degree, who are pursuing research in the areas listed below.

The program will support research relating to print culture in any part of the Western Hemisphere, or any investigation of the history of the book in the Americas. Preference will be given to projects in materials printed prior to 1920. Projects may investigate any printed genre (e.g. books, prints, pamphlets, photographs intended for publication, broadsides). They may be purely bibliographical, or they may address any issues of ownership, readership, or use of printed materials. Support for work in manuscript collections will be limited to projects related to printed materials (e.g. annotations in books, publishers' business archives, etc.). They are not intended to support the editing of an author's papers.

The fellowship is offered in the amount of $2,500, to support a month of study. Awards may be used to defray travel expenses, living expenses, or research costs. It is assumed that the recipient of the award will be in residence for whatever term is set by the awarding institution.

To apply for the Reese Fellowship, please see the please see the  How to apply  section of this page.

Indication of qualification of the applicant to undertake the proposed work will help the review committee evaluate the proposal.

All awards are made by The Bancroft Library Fellowship Committee. No awards are made directly by William Reese Company. All applications and awards will be made within the framework of existing fellowship programs. If applying for a Reese fellowship at more than one institution in one year, this should be clearly stated in the application.

The applicant will conduct the research project within one year of notification. All recipients will be asked to write a brief report on their research for The Bancroft Library and the William Reese Company.

Antonio Barrenechea, One Hemisphere, Many Nations: Boltonian Americanism and Literary Historiography.

2021-2022 academic year

2020-2021 academic year

Rafael Cerpa,  Exploring the Sources of the Enlightenment in Hispanic America

2019-2020 academic year

2018-2019 academic year

Carla Fumagalli,  The Editorial and Paratextual Representation of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz and Her Work in Her First Editions (1689, 1692, and 1700)

2017-2018 academic year

2016-2017 academic year

2015-2016 academic yearr

Albert Palacios,  Preventing "Heresy": Publishing in Sixteenth-Century Mexico

2014-2015 academic year

Maria Belen Bistue,  Multilingual-Translation Practices and Multi-Version Texts Printed in Colonial Spanish America, 1530-1800

2013-2014 academic year

Garrett Morrison,  The Place of Print: Publication and the Regional Imagination in the Mining West, 1849-1869

2012-2013 academic year

Bert Emerson,  Local Rules: The Alternative Democracies of Mid-19th Century American Fiction

2011-2012 academic year

Benjamin Reed,  Devotion to Saint Philip Neri in Colonial Mexico City, 1657-1821

2010-2011 academic year

Christina Cruz Gonzalez,  The Published Sermon as Reflection and Extension of Faith and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Queretaro

2009-2010 academic year

Daniel Wasserman,  Translating the Words of God: Evangelization and the Politics of Language in the Spanish World, 1524-1700

2008-2009 academic year

Andrina Tran,  Resurrecting the Forgotten Cookbook

Donald Sidney-Fryer is a surviving member of Clark Ashton Smith's literary circle, having been his student at the end of Smith's life. In the realm of scholarship, Sidney-Fryer's bio-bibliography of Clark Ashton Smith,  Emperor of Dreams  (1976) remains the cornerstone of all Smith studies.

The Donald Sidney-Fryer Fellowship, funded by the Aeroflex Foundation, supports scholarly use of primary source materials at The Bancroft Library related to the works of writers, poets, artists and their community collectively referred to as the West Coast Romantics. Notable members of this group, located in Northern California, include Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, Robinson Jeffers, Mary Austin, George Sterling, Clark Ashton Smith, Nora May French, Henry Lafler, James Marie Hopper, Gelett Burgess, Sinclair Lewis, and Xavier Martinez.

The Fellowship is intended to support qualified researchers regardless of academic degree.

The fellowship is offered in the amount of $2500, to support a month of study. Awards may be used to defray travel expenses, living expenses, or research costs. It is assumed that the recipient of the award will be in residence for whatever term is set by the awarding institution.

The Fellowship is intended to support qualified researchers regardless of academic degree. Indication of qualification of the applicant to undertake the proposed work will help the review committee evaluate the proposal. All awards are made by The Bancroft Library Fellowship Committee. All applications and awards will be made within the framework of existing fellowship programs.

The applicant is expected conduct the research project within one year of notification. All recipients will be asked to write a brief report on their research for The Bancroft Library and the Aeroflex Foundation.

To apply for a Donald Sidney-Fryer Fellowship, please see the  How to apply  section of this page.

No award given

Erik Russ Davis,  Clark Ashton Smith and the California Weird

Ian Fetters,  Icy Portents of Doom: Clark Ashton Smith’s Hyperborean Cycle and the Polar Mythos