The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress invites qualified scholars to apply for the Jon B. Lovelace post-doctoral fellowship for advanced research based on the Alan Lomax Collection. The Lovelace Fellowship, established in 2015 for the study of the Alan Lomax Collection, pays tribute to the 60-year friendship between philanthropist Jon B. Lovelace and James H. Billington, who served as Librarian of Congress from 1987 - 2015. Under Billington's leadership and through the generous benefaction of Jon and Lillian Lovelace, the Alan Lomax Collection was acquired in 1999 by the American Folklife Center and the Association for Cultural Equity at Hunter College.
The Lomax Collection is a major collection of ethnographic field audio recordings, motion pictures, photographs, manuscripts, correspondence and other materials that represent Lomax's lifetime of work to document and analyze traditional music, dance, storytelling and other expressive genres that arise from cultural groups in many parts of the world, particularly the United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the Caribbean. Alan Lomax (1915 - 2002) was a great documenter of traditional culture during the 20th century.
The Jon B. Lovelace Fellowship supports scholarly research that contributes significantly to a better understanding of the work of Lomax and the cultural traditions he documented over the course of a vigorous and highly productive 70-year career. It provides an opportunity, for a period of up to eight months, for concentrated use of materials from the Alan Lomax Collection, Lomax Family Collections and other collections of the Library of Congress, through full-time residency at the Library. The fellowship program supports research projects in the disciplines of anthropology, ethnomusicology, ethnography, ethno-history, dance, folklore and folklife, history, literature, linguistics and movement analysis, with particular emphasis on the traditional music, dance and narrative of the United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the Caribbean, as well as methodologies for their documentation and analysis. We encourage interdisciplinary projects that combine disciplines in novel and productive ways.
Eligibility
Applicants may be of any nationality. A Ph.D. degree or equivalent terminal degree is preferred.
Tenure & Stipend
The Jon B. Lovelace Fellowship in Folklife Studies is for a period of up to eight months, at a stipend of $4,200 per month, for residential research at the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress will pay stipends monthly by means of electronic transfer to a U.S. bank account. Transportation arrangements, housing and health care insurance and costs are the responsibility of the Fellow. The Library will provide Fellows with information on housing and can provide Fellows with contacts for commercial providers of health care insurance. The Library is required to ensure that nonresident alien visitors maintain minimum levels of medical insurance, and will provide information about insurers that offer qualifying policies to nonresident aliens.
Applications
Applicants must submit:
• A completed application form, in English
• A curriculum vitae (maximum two pages; additional pages will be discarded)
• A single paragraph abstract
• A statement of proposed research (maximum three pages)
• An explanation of why the Library of Congress is the required venue for your research (maximum one paragraph)
• A bibliography of works you have consulted for your proposal (maximum three pages)
• Three references with completed reference forms from people who have read the research proposal. These references may not be from a staff member of the Library of Congress.
Successful proposals will clearly indicate the purpose and principal scholarly contribution of the project, and the benefit to the project of working in the Library of Congress using the Lomax materials and, if applicable, the Library's other collections.
Due Date
The next deadline for applications is Feb. 1, 2017. Application materials must be submitted by the deadline date via the Kluge Center's online application system.
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