The University of Rochester Humanities Center invites applications for External Fellowships. External fellowships are awarded to two scholars who hold tenure-track positions at other institutions. Faculty at the rank of Assistant, Associate or Professor may apply.

Applicants’ proposals must address the theme of "Communities." The theme permits a focus on the multiple meanings and varieties of community across time and place, as well as on the forces that have challenged or disrupted communal affiliations. Projects may investigate "imagined" and "interpretive" communities as well as social institutions. Some of the many possibilities include the role of communities in the formation of ethnic, gender, class, racial, religious, national, and cosmopolitan identities; artists' colonies; utopian experiments; book clubs; community music-making; professional and scientific networks; community ties in rural and urban settings; communal ideals and narratives of decline; and the sense of community as source and goal of political activism.

Applicants may be in any field of humanistic study, including anthropology, art and art history, classics, English, history, modern languages and cultures, music, philosophy, or religion.

Fellows will participate in the bi-weekly Humanities Center seminar and in the Center’s other workshops, conferences, and programs. They are expected to be in residence in Rochester and to play an active role in the Center’s community of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. Fellows will present the results of their research at least once during their tenure at the Center.