20th-Century US Foundations:

Fellowship Opportunity & Spring 2025 Course Offering

The Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at the CUNY Graduate Center is offering up to eight $1,250 fellowships for participants in a spring 2025 course on 20th-Century American Foundations developed in collaboration with the doctoral program in history and the Rockefeller Archive Center [RAC].

The course focuses on the institutions and initiatives that grantmaking foundations funded in the U.S. and around the world, from science, agriculture, the arts, education and public health to human rights and social justice movements.  It examines how they worked, their underlying theories of change, and their broader roles in society.

The course is designed to teach students to do historically-based research for institutional decision making, using archival materials from the Rockefeller Archive Center. Students fulfilling course and seminar requirements, and those who are particularly interested in public and applied history are encouraged to apply.

The Archive Center’s collections include the written and visual records of the Rockefeller, Ford, Russell Sage, Henry Luce, William and Flora Hewlett, Near East and Markle Foundations, and the Commonwealth and Rockefeller Brothers Funds (among other materials).

Many of these collections have never been used, providing unique opportunities for original research.  They also afford a window onto transnational trends, the colonial devolution and national and international policymaking.

Presentations by Archive Center staff and other practitioners about public history careers are also included in the course. Selected students may have an opportunity to work with RAC staff to disseminate their findings to the public through digital publishing and/or other RAC projects, based on their research.

The Rockefeller Archive Center is generously funding the fellowships to cover travel to RAC in Pocantico Hills, NY, and related research costs.

Information on the Archive Center’s holdings and finding aids is available at https://rockarch.org/. Prospective students must consult the Archive Center’s online finding aids and contact their archival staff before applying to ensure that the collections are sufficiently rich for the topic that they plan to study.

Course Requirements

The course requirement is a 10 to15-page paper (30 pages for students doing seminar papers) based on original research in RAC’s collections, plus weekly reading assignments keyed to the students’ topics and discussions about their research.

Applications

• Deadline:  November 8, 2024(@12:59 pm)
• Eligibility:  First- and second-year Doctoral students (below Level 3) and M.A. students
• Application submission requirements:
  1. Cover sheet, including your name, discipline, whether you are in a doctoral or master’s program, your level within these programs and any relevant nonprofit, foundation or public history experience you may have
  2. Description of research topic and how it relates to your general research interests (1 page)
  3. Brief description of why you are interested in the course and the fellowship in terms of your own career goals.
  4. Resumé or CV
  5. Writing sample

Please arrange your documents in the order above in a single .PDF file and forward via email to Associate Director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, Barbara Leopold, at bleopold@gc.cuny.edu.  Questions about the fellowships may be addressed to Barbara Leopold.

Awards will be announced on or before December 1, 2024.

Class participation is generally limited to the fellowship recipients. Other students who wish to enroll should contact Professor Kathleen McCarthy at Kmccarthy@gc.cuny.edu. Permission is required to register.

**If any interested student requires a few extra days, she/he/they should contact Barbara Leopold (bleopold@gc.cuny.edu) by the 8th to provide a very brief statement of their interest and proposed research topic.**