ASA Fellowships

Wilma Dykeman "Faces of Appalachia" Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship

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The Dykeman Fellowship provides $3,000 to support research related to gender, race, and/or ethnicity in Appalachia in years when funding is available from the fellowship’s endowment.

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About the Award
The fellowship honors Wilma Dykeman Stokely, whose nonfiction and novels chronicle the people and land of East Tennessee. Founded in 2008 with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Appalachian Studies Association (ASA), this fellowship is designed to provide funding in the amount of $3,000 to one person annually (when funding is available) to support research related to the goals of the endowment — promoting scholarship on gender (including gender identities and sexualities), race, and/or ethnicity in Appalachia.

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ASA members who have recently earned a doctoral degree from an accredited institution (up to seven years prior to the announcement of the fellowship competition) are eligible to apply for this fellowship. Fellowship applicants must have been members of ASA for one year prior to applying and must maintain membership through the course of the fellowship period. No person may receive the fellowship more than one time.

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Nominations

• Applicants should email their proposals, including the following parts, to Mary Thomas (mthomas@marshall.edu) by December 31.

  • Current curriculum vitae

  • Contact information

  • Proposal of no more than 1500 words

  • Names and contact info for two references

• The curriculum vitae should highlight research activities related to gender, race, and/or ethnicity in Appalachia that are relevant to the topic to be pursued. The proposal should outline the scholarship they intend to pursue with the support of the fellowship money. The research may be a continuation of prior research or the beginning of a new project. The references provided should be people familiar with the applicant’s qualifications to do the proposed research.

 

Fellowship funding may be used for salary support, travel expenses for travel to research collections, to conduct other activities related to research (e.g., to collect oral histories,) or for expenses such as purchasing relevant books or copying costs. Because the fellowship is designed to promote research activity, expenses such as subventions to publishers or costs of illustrations for a publication are excluded.

The fellowship will be paid to the recipient in two checks—one at the outset of the project and one at the completion. The recipient will also receive a 1099 form, as the fellowship funds are taxable in accord with IRS regulations.

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The fellowship recipient will be announced at the awards ceremony at the ASA annual conference. Recipients are expected to submit their work to be presented (at own expense) at the annual ASA meeting immediately following the granting of the award, even if the work funded by the fellowship is not yet complete. For example, the person receiving the award for the 2018-19 academic year will present their work at the March 2019 conference. The recipient is also expected to provide an article summarizing the project for the Fall ASA newsletter, Appalink, following word limits and other guidelines provided by the editor.

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All publications or other products supported in full or in part by this fellowship must acknowledge that the publication or product was supported by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the ASA, with the understanding that neither the NEH nor the ASA is responsible for the views or content of such publications or products.

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Fellowship proposals will be reviewed by a committee of three members of the ASA, chosen annually by the ASA Steering Committee and consisting of ASA members who have earned doctorates from accredited institutions. Award selection committee members will serve three-year terms, with initial staggered terms and one member chosen each year thereafter. Selection committee members may not apply for the fellowship until at least one calendar year after they have served on the committee. Former fellowship recipients are encouraged to serve on the selection committee following their fellowship period.

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Chair
Althea Webb, Althea_Webb@berea.edu