In 2016, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) a grant of $60,800 to administer the SAH/Mellon Author Awards. These awards are 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 pay for these costs and to secure other applicable grants. Awards will be made once in 2016 and once in 2017 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.

Criteria

• Applications for 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.

Eligibility

• 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.