Applications & Funding

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2013-2014 Application Forms for Fellowships & HC Sponsorship and Funding

Download 2013-14 College A&S / HC Dissertation Fellowships Application

Download 2014 (spring semester) HC Faculty Fellowships Application

(Note: announcements of the 2013-2014 HC Dissertation Fellows and the 2014 HC Faculty Fellows will be made in the final meeting of the Advisory Board on Wednesday, May 8th. Awardees will be notified in writing immediately thereafter.)

Spring 2014 Jeannette K. Watson Visiting Distinguished Professorship

Resuming in 2012,  the Humanities Center Faculty Advisory Board will appoint the Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in the College of Arts & Sciences. The professorship was originally made possible by the generosity of the late Jeannette K. Watson, and is designed to bring a scholar or writer of national distinction to campus for a longer period of time during a semester, or to conduct several visits of shorter intervals, in order to contribute to an ongoing research project, conduct a seminar, or participate in a number of related events. Please contact the SU Humanities Center for more information on nomination and selection procedures for this program. Departments and Interdiscplinary units of participating HC programs are especially encouraged to apply.

Download Application for Spring 2014, Deadline: March 15

Download Spring 2013 Proposal/Activity Example

Download Spring 2012 Proposal/Activity Example

2013-2014 Watson Visiting Collaborator, in conjunction with the CNY Humanities Center Corridor

Beginning in 2010, as an expansion of purpose and scope of the Watson Professorship, the Visiting Collaborator program was implemented to work in conjunction with the Mellon CNY Humanities Corridor to bring nationally prominent scholars, artists, and writers to work collaboratively with research clusters and faculty working groups at Syracuse University. This program is designed to supplement the research activities in the following areas that are funded by the Mellon initiative. Please contact Gregg Lambert, Principle Investigator and Project Director, for more information or to propose a Visiting Collaborator in conjunction with a Corridor Working Group.

Download Application for 2013-2014, Deadline: Ongoing 

Download 2011-2012 Proposal/Activity Example

2013 Syracuse Symposium: "Listening"

Download the form for proposing an activity or event for 2013 Syracuse Symposium: "Listening." Deadline: March 8, 2013. 

Download the form for proposing a Syracuse Symposium Seminar for Fall 2013. (Note: Up to four seminars will be selected that address the theme: "Listening." Syracuse Symposium Seminars are designated as HUM selected topics and as "meets with" the officially approved course in the faculty member's home department or division. As a condition, a certain number of seats must be reserved for students from the College or another division participating in the Humanities Center, and may be by approval of faculty. Instructors receive a stipend for course-related activity and reservation of the Humanities Seminar Room, 304 Tolley.) 

2014 Sponsorships and Faculty Support

Download the form for proposing an HC co-sponsored event or faculty support grant for 2014 (note: a limited number of faculty support grants are available for co-sponsoring a faculty organized or departmental activity co-sponsored by the Humanities Center. If approved by the Director, awards do not usually exceed $500 in partial support of the activity and HC must be acknowledged in printed publicity or advertising as a condition).

Applying for External Funding

The Humanities Center's Role

Planning and Mission:
The SU Humanities Center’s mission is to prioritize public engagement in the humanities, understood broadly, and to facilitate interdisciplinary scholarship in and across traditional and new fields of inquiry. Support for the Center comes from various sources, including the Mellon CNY Humanities Corridor, which links humanities faculties from the region’s AAU universities (Cornell University, University of Rochester, and SU).  Consequently, from the very beginning, the hallmark of the Center is “connectivity,” creating links between multiple perspectives and communities, developing interdisciplinary collaborations across units, and supporting transdisciplinary initiatives that have no natural disciplinary home.  Connectivity also refers to the digital arena, the fact that the Humanities Center is being designed from its inception to achieve its programmatic and research goals by reaching out to communities (on and off campus, regionally, nationally, internationally, across disciplines) electronically and virtually.  The Humanities Center will also foster an environment that generates questions and new ideas about how to innovate and transform current humanistic inquiry and practice.  This focus may include collaborations with disciplines with different methods and approaches; experimenting with the formats through which humanistic research is typically made, taught, and disseminated (i.e., the academic conference, the referred journal, using technology in the classroom); bringing together local, regional, national, and international viewpoints on a given problem; and offering opportunities to support and train scholars in emergent areas integral to interdisciplinary humanistic inquiry, theory, and practice (i.e., internal and external non-teaching fellowships, workshops on grant writing, new media, etc.).

Grant Seeking and Grant Writing: Resources for Faculty
Procuring external sources of funding plays a role in the Humanities Center’s success in two important ways.  First, by augmenting internal resources with external funds, the Humanities Center can expand and, at the same time, increase the visibility of its research initiatives.  Second, and equally important, the Humanities Center plans to offer faculty resources and support for developing successful proposals at all levels.  These include:

  • Offering regular workshops on grant seeking and grant writing targeted to specific academic fields in or related to the interdisciplinary humanities
  • Helping to build collaborations and establishing ‘expert lists’ for proposals
  • Amassing an online database of RFPs and grant resources
  • Offering sponsorship for proposals
  • Providing physical space, including meeting and reception space, for funded efforts
  • Assisting in relationship development with SU foundation relations, OSP, and other universities for multi-institutional proposals
  • Help with grant writing (and specific proposal components i.e., evaluation plan)
  • Networking and bringing together donors with relevant project initiatives
  • Developing collaborative and individual research initiatives


Client-Based Model of Grants Support:
The ethos of the Humanities Center is connectivity—the intellectual interchange that extends beyond university walls, creates links between multiple perspectives and communities, develops interdisciplinary collaborations across units, and supports transdisciplinary initiatives that have no natural disciplinary home.  From this ethos of connectivity, the Humanities Center works hard to develop lasting relationships with multiple clients: working collaboratively with faculty to offer grant seeking resources and facilitating collaborations across disciplines and with members of the Syracuse University and broader CNY community; and establishing academic-community partnerships with various engaged communities in CNY and beyond.  Seeking external funding plays a role in the Humanities Center in multiple ways: it augments internal resources to strengthen research initiatives, and it expands the communities linked to the Humanities Center by offering support for developing successful proposals and projects.  Ultimately, in a challenging fiscal climate for all academic research, the impetus is upon us to proactively seek funding resources outside the university and to build vibrant collaborative partnerships to do so.