CUNY Graduate Center/Morgan Library & Museum Summer Fellowships

Application Deadline:  Friday, March 31, 2023, 5pm

The Early Research Initiative invites applications for two Morgan Library & Museum graduate fellowships (Summer 2023). These $4,000 fellowships will be offered to Graduate Center Ph.D. students from any program with primary research interests related to the collections at the Morgan Library & Museum. The primary responsibilities of the award winners will be to collaborate with curators, librarians, and catalogers from the Morgan in order to gain experience in creating and organizing collections or exhibition planning, research, and design, processing uncatalogued collections, and improving public access to documents and related materials.

Applicants are invited to take one of the following approaches:

(1) Apply to conduct the specific project detailed below. This year the Morgan offers CUNY Fellowships in the following area:

Crafting the Ballets Russes: Music, Dance, Design, and the Robert Owen Lehman Collection (Department of Music Manuscripts and Printed Music)

From the Ballets Russes’ stunning first season in 1909, dance took a surprise leading role in ushering in modernism and moving beyond the juggernaut that Wagner’s legacy represented. The Robert Owen Lehman Collection, held on deposit at the Morgan, holds autograph manuscripts for many iconic Ballets Russes scores including Stravinsky’s Firebird, Petrouchka, and Les Noces, Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, and other major dance works beyond the Ballets Russes including Ravel’s Bolero and La Valse. This project seeks a candidate to research these works for the exhibition that opens summer 2024. The exhibition addresses the creative process and the sketches, drafts, and working copies of composer, choreographer, and designer, capturing the ways they imagined, conceived, and collaborated to kindle works of astonishing originality and ongoing influence. Particular focus is placed on two figures whose legacies have been neglected until recently: performer and impresario Ida Rubinstein, and dancer and choreographer Bronislava Nijinska. The candidate will work closely with the curator researching primary sources, working with text for the exhibition didactics and catalog, planning programming, and so on. The candidate should read music and have broad familiarity with Western music history, though expertise in this specific era is not required.

(2) Apply to conduct a research project of your own choosing that requires the use of primary source material (manuscripts, rare books, music, archives, and other works of art) in the Morgan’s collections.

It is required that fellowship recipients be in residence for 120 hours over the summer 2023 at the Morgan. Fellows will be required to work on site for the duration of the fellowship. In addition, recipients will be required to give a brief public presentation on their work at the Graduate Center and write a blog post (for Tales from the Reading Room, one of the Morgan’s blog series) about their experiences at the end of the relevant period before the end of the Fall 2023 semester. Additional opportunities for presentations or social media contributions to the Morgan’s accounts are also possible.

To apply please send a letter of interest describing your research interests and related experience with specific reference to one of the projects described below, a c.v., a current Graduate Center transcript (Students may submit the unofficial student copy that can be printed from CUNYFirst), and a letter of support from your primary advisor.

Instructions for submitting your application:

1) Please combine the above materials (except for the letter of recommendation) into a SINGLE file (either as a pdf document or a word document).

Use the following format when naming your document: Last Name, First Name, Program

 

2) Email your file directly to fellowshipapps@gc.cuny.edu

Please use your graduate center email address when sending the file.

 

Instructions for Faculty Recommenders

• Prepare your reference letter as a regular word or pdf document.
• Please use the following format when naming your document: Student Last Name, First Name
• Email your file directly to fellowshipapps@gc.cuny.edu

 

Application Deadline: 03/31/2023