October 2, 2012

Rare Book School Receives Mellon Foundation Grant

Charlottesville, VA, October 1, 2012 — Rare Book School (RBS) at the University of Virginia has been awarded an $896,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a new three-year fellowship program, The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography, whose aim is to reinvigorate bibliographical studies within the humanities.

The Mellon Fellowship program will enable a select group of doctoral candidates, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty in the humanities to receive advanced, intensive training in the analysis of textual artifacts. Led by a distinguished faculty drawn from the bibliographical community and professionals in allied fields, fellows will attend annual research-oriented seminars at Rare Book School and at major special collections libraries nationwide. Fellows will receive stipends to support research-related travel to special collections, and additional funds to host academic symposia at their home institutions.
“This grant will enable our School to deepen and extend its service to the bibliographical community by helping scholars incorporate bibliographical and book-historical methods into their own research and teaching,” said RBS Director Michael F. Suarez, S.J. “I am humbled by the trust that the Foundation has placed in our organization - and deeply gratified by its ratification of our core mission of bibliographical education.”

“I expect that these fellowships will sow the seeds for some of the most exciting work from the next generation of humanistic scholars,” commented Michael Winship, Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. “This Mellon Foundation grant is wonderful news! It will ensure that graduate students and early career academics have an opportunity to be exposed to the theories and methodologies of bibliographical practice.”

Twenty Mellon Fellowships will be awarded in the spring of 2013. The deadline for application to the program is December 1, 2012. More information about the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography is available at: http://www.rarebookschool.org/fellowships/mellon.

About Rare Book School (RBS)
Rare Book School provides continuing-education opportunities for students from all disciplines and levels to study the history of written, printed, and born-digital materials with leading scholars and professionals in the fields of bibliography, librarianship, book history, manuscript studies, and the digital humanities. Founded in 1983, RBS moved to its present home at the University of Virginia in 1992. RBS is a not-for-profit educational organization affiliated with the University of Virginia. More information about RBS is
available on its website: http://www.rarebookschool.org.