As part of their funding for Higher Education and Scholarship in the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation‘s Sawyer Seminars provide support for comparative research on the historical and cultural sources of contemporary developments. The seminars have brought together faculty, foreign visitors, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from a variety of fields mainly, but not exclusively, in the humanities and social sciences, for intensive study of subjects chosen by the participants. Foundation support aims to engage productive scholars in comparative inquiry that would (in ordinary university circumstances) be difficult to pursue, while at the same time avoiding the institutionalization of such work in new centers, departments, or programs. Sawyer Seminars are, in effect, temporary research centers.
Each seminar normally meets for one year. Faculty participants have largely come from the humanities and social sciences, although faculty members from professional schools have also been key participants in a number of seminars. Seminar leaders are encouraged also to invite participants from nearby institutions. As the Foundation reviews proposals, preference is given to those that include concrete plans for engaging participants with diverse affiliations.
Sawyer Seminar awards provide support for one postdoctoral fellow to be recruited through a national (or international) competition, and for the dissertation research of two graduate students. It is expected that the graduate students will be active participants in the seminars, and the seminars’ contributions to graduate education in the humanities and social sciences will be carefully considered even though they are not intended to be organized as official credit-bearing courses.
There is no requirement that they produce a written product.
Selection and Award Process
Institutions are invited to submit proposals for a Sawyer Seminar. It is expected that university administrators and others will communicate the Foundation’s invitation and the particulars of the program broadly to the faculty. Institutions are to decide through an internal process which proposals they will submit to the Foundation for consideration.
Proposals should describe: (1) the originality and significance of the central questions to be addressed; (2) the cases to be compared (e.g., nations, regions, social aggregates, time periods) and the rationale for the comparisons that are selected; (3) the thematic “threads” that will run through the seminar; (4) the institution’s resources and suitability for the proposed seminar; and (5) the procedures to be used in selecting graduate and postdoctoral fellows. Additionally, proposals should include a budget and a well-developed preliminary plan for the seminar that outlines the specific topics to be addressed in each session and provides the names and qualifications of the scholars who would ideally participate.
After they are submitted to the Foundation, proposals are reviewed by an advisory committee of distinguished scholars. In a typical year, approximately two-thirds of proposals are recommended for funding. The panel has the option of recommending that proposals not funded but adjudged to be promising be resubmitted in a subsequent year. The seminars recommended by the committee are put before the Foundation’s Board of Trustees for its approval.
Following approval by the Foundation’s Trustees, funds are disbursed to the host institution. Past experience suggests that it can take a year or more to organize the seminars.
Budget
Maximum awards are determined with each competition and are included in the letter of invitation. It is expected that each seminar’s budget will provide for a postdoctoral fellowship to be awarded for the year the seminar meets, and two dissertation fellowships for graduate students to be awarded for the seminar year or the year that follows. The amount for postdoctoral fellowship awards and dissertation fellowship stipends should follow institutional practices. Travel and living expenses for short stays by visiting scholars and the costs of coordinating the seminar, including those incurred for speakers and their travel, may be included. The grants may not, however, be used for the costs of release time for regular faculty participants, or for indirect costs.
A few examples of past seminars:
• Tufts University, “Comparative Global Humanities,” Lisa Lowe, Kris Manjapra, and Kamran Rastegar
• University of California at Irvine, “Documenting War,” Carol Burke and Cècile Whiting
• University of California at Santa Cruz, “Non-Citizenship,” Catherine Ramirez, Juan Poblete, Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, and Sylvanna Falcón
• University of Illinois at Chicago, “Geographies of Justice: A Scholarly and Public Dialogue Series about the Contested Terrain and Meaning of Freedom in the 21st Century World,” Barbara Ransby
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 