In 2013, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) a grant of $51,330 to administer the SAH/Mellon Author Awards. The award is designed to provide financial relief to scholars who are publishing their first monograph on the history of the built environment, and who are responsible for paying for rights and permissions for images or for commissioning maps, charts or line drawings in their publications. Through this grant, SAH will provide awards to scholars to help defray the high costs of image licensing, reproduction, and creation of original drawings and maps for monographs on the history of the built environment. This grant is intended as a seed grant to assist authors to defray these costs and to secure other applicable grants. Awards will be made once in 2014 and once in 2015 for print (hardcover, soft cover) and digital publications (eBook, DVD). Awardees will be selected on the basis of the quality and demonstrated financial need for their project.
The SAH/Mellon Author Awards will provide authors publishing their first monograph with the financial resources they need to produce scholarly books in their most desirable form. The publication of a monograph continues to be the most valued demonstration of scholarly competence for career advancement and recognition in the humanities. Unfortunately, many authors today must provide both a fully realized text and the financial resources for its image program. The cost for image rights and licensing, especially for digital publications, can be prohibitively expensive.
The SAH/Mellon Author Awards jury comprises distinguished mid-career and senior scholars who are members of SAH and whose specializations cover a broad range of scholarship on the built environment. The jury has discretion over the number of awardees and the size of the grant to be awarded, but a typical grant would be $5,000-$6,000. The grants will be made directly to authors to defray the costs of image acquisitions.
Criteria
Applications to the SAH/Mellon Author Awards will be considered only for book-length, scholarly manuscripts on architectural history and the history of the built environment that are currently under contract with a publisher. Awards are made solely in support of image acquisition or creation, such as for reimbursement of costs for the reproduction and licensing of images in print and digital formats or the creation of original artwork such as drawings or maps. This award does not cover new photography.
Successful applicants will be first-time book authors who are under contract with a publisher for a manuscript on the history of the built environment.
Applications are judged within the following parameters: (1) support will be for scholars who are publishing their first monograph (2) funds are for reimbursement or anticipated expenses for rights and reproductions; and (3) books must be under contract with a publisher.
Additional criteria for making awards include: contribution or importance to the field; significance and clarity of argument in submitted abstract and text sample; effective use of illustrations; depth of research and completeness of bibliography; and clarity of writing. Excellence within these criteria is the guiding principal for determining awards; however, an author will not receive an award without demonstration of image-acquisition or creation costs.
Eligibility
Awards are open to authors of all nations; however, applications must be submitted in English.
Authors can be under contract with commercial or nonprofit publishers. Self-published books are not eligible.
Books covering all periods and areas in the history of architecture, landscape architecture, urbanism, and related subjects are eligible, except for those about art history and visual studies (see below). Excavation or other technical reports, articles, previously published works (including collections of previously published essays), or congress proceedings are not eligible.
The author will have received a PhD and must submit proof and date of PhD and current professional standing.
The author must be a current member of SAH.
A project that has been rejected for a grant may not be resubmitted.