2015 NEH Summer Seminar
Victorians Today:
Encountering the Global Afterlives
of the British Empire
June 1-June 25, 2015
SUNY Potsdam
Seminar Leader:
Anna Maria Jones
Department of English
University of Central Florida
Applications Due by February 27th
to
Geoffrey Clark
Department of History, Satterlee Hall
SUNY Potsdam
44 Pierrepont Ave.
Potsdam, NY 13676
clarkgw@potsdam.edu
NEH Summer Seminar, SUNY Potsdam 2015
Victorians Today: Encountering the Global Afterlives of the British Empire
Seminar Leader:
Anna Maria Jones
Department of English
University of Central Florida
Seminar Description
To parody is not to destroy the past; in fact, to parody is both to enshrine the past
and to question it.
—Linda Hutcheon
John Kucich and Dianne F. Sadoff, in their 2000 essay collection, Victorian Afterlife, posit that “an
intense historiographical curiosity … drove the 1980s and 1990s revivalism and located the
Victorian age as historically central to late-century postmodern consciousness.” Yet, if a decade and
a half into the new millennium we are “post-postmodern,” the widespread curiosity about and
attachment to the Victorians seem, if anything, to have intensified rather than abated. In fact, in
2008, Marie-Luise Kohlke introducing the inaugural issue of the academic journal, Neo-Victorian
Studies, described the journal as a platform upon which to “materialise the ghost that has stuck with
us with such unexpected persistence for more than a century now.” Kohlke belongs to a growing
body of scholars, across multiple disciplines, who invoke metaphors of haunting—phantom traces,
uncanny revenants, ghostly afterimages—in order to describe the ubiquity of “all things Victorian”
in contemporary culture: public policies and institutions that owe their origins to nineteenth-century
reforms; repurposed Victorian technologies in Steampunk aesthetics; slickly marketed Victorianinspired fashions in everything from home décor and weddings to politicians; myriad adaptations
and appropriations of Victorian popular fiction that cross and re-cross national borders, linguistic
boundaries, and generic limits. If, in the heyday of imperialism, “the sun never set on the British
Empire,” the world today, seemingly, is possessed by the ghost(s) of that Empire. This seminar will
explore the afterlives of the Victorians in a series of “case studies” that focus on particularly
persistent manifestations of Victoriana: Charles Dickens and the “Dickensian”; Lewis Carroll’s
precocious little traveler, Alice; Sherlock Holmes and the tradition of the “Great Detective”; the
vogue for reanimating real individuals, such as Oscar Wilde, as fictional characters and pop cultural
icons; the adaptation of the iconography of fin-de-siècle Decadence in present-day representations of
queer identities.
Although a number of terms have arisen to describe the persistence of the Victorian in
contemporary culture—Victoriana, post-Victorian, retro-Victorian, etc.—the term neo-Victorian has
assumed prominence, attached now to a number of theoretical and critical studies. In addition to the
aforementioned journal, monographs and edited collections such as Kate Mitchell’s History and
Cultural Memory in Neo-Victorian Fiction (2010), Rosario Arias and Patricia Pullham’s Haunting and
Spectrality in Neo-Victorian Fiction (2010), Louisa Hadley’s Neo-Victorian Fiction and Historical Narrative
(2010), and Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn’s Neo-Victorianism (2010), to name a few, interrogate
not only the Victorians’ staying power, but what our relationship to our nineteenth-century past
reveals about the present and ourselves. Distinct challenges arise, however, in studying these
Victorian afterlives, which might be described as problems of perspective. In Victorians in the Rearview
Mirror (2007), for example, Simon Joyce notes that “we never really encounter ‘the Victorians’
themselves but instead a mediated image like the one we get when we glance into our rearview
mirrors while driving. The image usefully condenses the paradoxical sense of looking forward to see
what is behind us. … It also suggests something of the inevitable distortion that accompanies any
mirror image.” This seminar, therefore, will explore the different ways we construct “the Victorian,”
which we encounter so frequently in contemporary culture. What are we doing to the Victorians?
What are the Victorians doing for (or to) us? And, if, as John McGowan argues, we have “inherit[ed]
the very proclivity to characterize eras, to read the events and fashions of a particular historical
moment, as indices of an era’s ‘spirit’” from the Victorians, then what might be “the limitations of
[our] intellectual paradigms” in undertaking the study of neo-Victorianism?
In fact, the tendency to see England as central point from which all Victorian (and now neoVictorian) culture emanates is one of these limitations. In a 2013 essay, “The Victorians Now,” Mark
Llewellyn and Ann Heilmann remark pointedly that “neo-Victorian critics have largely awaited the
appearance of the cosmopolitan and international on our own literary and critical shores.” Llewellyn
and Heilmann, among others, such as Elizabeth Ho in her monograph Neo-Victorianism and the
Memory of Empire (2012), have called for more global perspectives, yet, as comparatist Walter Mignola
points out, these Eurocentric sensibilities are one of our inheritances from the Victorians.
Comparative studies itself, Mignola notes, is “an invention of nineteenth-century Europe at the
height of its consolidation as Western civilization and as world imperial power.” In addition to these
ingrained biases, however, there are other more material impediments to a transnational study of
neo-Victorianism. To truly understand the impact of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes or
Lewis Carroll’s Alice beyond England’s shores, for example, one would need to track the translation
and adaptation of their respective texts not only in multiple national and linguistic traditions (e.g.
Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Indonesian, Spanish, Polish, to name only a few) but in multiple media
platforms (print periodicals, novels both popular and “literary,” film, theater, graphic novels, art,
video games, amateur fan-produced fiction and art, etc.). Yet, the scholars who study these
multifarious traditions, media, and sociocultural phenomena are trained, hired, and published in their
discrete disciplines. Whereas popular adaptations of Victorian texts are translated, both officially and
unofficially, and disseminated in high volume and at breakneck pace, scholarly works have much less
extensive and rapid networks to support their transnational circulation. This seminar will use
contemporary debates in comparison studies as a way of thinking about the methodological
challenges and ethical stakes of studying the global afterlives of the British Empire across multiple
disciplines.
Although most of the discussions in this four-week seminar will start with neo-Victorian
literary and graphic texts as their foundations, we will take a multifaceted approach—with attention
to historical contexts, material conditions, and sociocultural phenomena—and attempt to forge
interdisciplinary connections. Our conversations will, therefore, benefit from multiple perspectives.
Scholars in all fields of the humanities and social sciences are strongly encouraged to apply.
Seminar Schedule
While the readings for the seminar are for the most part finalized, the following schedule may
change somewhat to address seminar participants’ particular interests or to meet unexpected
exigencies. Recommended texts are listed to offer some suggestions for background reading for
those who may want further contextualization for our sessions but also to suggest further avenues of
exploration for those who are interested. A detailed list of required and recommended readings
follows the seminar schedule.
Session 1 (Tuesday, June 2): Neo-Victorianism
In this first session, we will examine the persistence of the Victorian past in contemporary culture;
using the critical readings as launching points, we will begin to formulate some answers to important
questions: why are the Victorians so persistently still with us? What function do they perform at the
present time? How might we define the “neo-Victorian”? What assumptions are we making about
“the Victorian” in adding the suffix “neo” to it? What ethical issues might arise in our “repurposing”
of the nineteenth century?
Joyce, “Introduction,” Ch 1–4 in Victorians in the Rearview Mirror
Bailin, “The New Victorians” in Krueger
Green-Lewis, “At Home in the Nineteenth Century” in Kucich and Sadoff
McGowan, “Modernity and Culture” in Kucich and Sadoff
Recommended:
Hutcheon, “Historiographic Metafiction”
Kohlke, “Introduction”
Llewellyn, “What is Neo-Victorian Studies?”
Thomas, “The Legacy of Victorian Spectacle” in Krueger
Session 2 (Thursday, June 4): Case Study 1: Dickens(ian) World
In this first “case study” we will examine contemporary afterlives of one of Victorian England’s
most iconic figures, Charles Dickens. We will focus on Lloyd Jones’s Man Booker Prize shortlisted
novel Mr. Pip (2006), which asks readers to think about what happens to a canonical British novel—
a classic coming-of-age story like Dickens’s Great Expectations (1861)—when it travels beyond
England’s shores. How do readers in distant locales, where London is the exotic Imaginary, interact
with and find meaning in Dickens’s novel? With Marty Gould and Rebecca N. Mitchell’s analysis of
Dickens World theme park, we will ask what counts as a “Dickensian” adaptation?
L. Jones, Mr. Pip
Gikandi, “The Embarrassment of Victorianism” in Kucich and Sadoff
Gould and Mitchell, “Understanding the Literary Theme Park”
Recommended:
Dickens, Great Expectations (at least be familiar with basic plot points)
Llewellyn and Heilmann, “The Victorians Now”
Regis and Wynne, “Miss Havisham’s Dress”
Session 3 (Tuesday, June 9): Comparison
It would be impossible to understand the extent of neo-Victorianism today without considering it in
its transnational and global contexts. Yet there are considerable challenges to transnational
scholarship. To think through these challenges, we will examine key issues and current debates
around the notion of comparison. In this session we will read some current discussions of the theory
and practice of comparison. We will think about the methodological and even ethical problems that
arise in pursuing the global afterlives of British Victorian literature, particularly as we ourselves are
(often) the inheritors of Victorian scholarly methodologies and intellectual investments.
Apter, “Introduction,” “Untranslatables: A World-System” in Against World Literature
Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” in Felski and Friedman
Mignolo, “On Comparison” in Felski and Friedman
Radhakrishnan, “Why Compare?” in Felski and Friedman
Walkowitz, “Close Reading in an Age of Global Writing”
Recommended:
Handler, “The Uses of Incommensurability in Anthropology” in Felski and Friedman
Brettell, “Anthropology, Migration, and Comparative Consciousness” in Felski and
Friedman
Gordon, “A Meditation on Comparison in Historical Scholarship” in Felski and Friedman
Session 4 (Thursday, June 11): Case Study 2: The Alice Industry
Our second case study considers the persistence of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865, 1871),
with particular attention to its life and afterlives as an image-text, beginning with John Tenniel’s
iconic illustrations for Carroll’s first edition. We will read two graphic novels that riff on the Alice
books—British graphic novelist Bryan Talbot’s Alice in Sunderland (2007) and Japanese manga writer
and artist team Ikumi Katagiri and Ai Ninomiya’s Are You Alice? (2010– ). We will ask what happens
to Alice when she is “translated” across national, linguistic, and temporal distances.
Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (no need to read cover-to-cover, but be familiar with
the Tenniel illustrations)
Katagiri and Ninomiya, Are You Alice?, vol. 1
Natsume, “Pictotexts and Panels”
Talbot, Alice in Sunderland
Recommended:
Bivona, “Alice the Child-Imperialist”
Groensteen, “Challenges to International Comics Studies”
Israel, “Asking Alice” in Kucich and Sadoff
Sell, “Manga Translation and Interculture”
Somers, “Arisu in Harajuku”
Session 5 (Tuesday, June 16): Case Study 3: The Great Detective
Since the 1890s, Sherlock Holmes has been a runaway success, spawning countless adaptations,
appropriations, parodies, and pastiches. Starting with Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans (2000),
this third case study will look at the tradition of the “Great Detective” in contemporary re-visions of
the eccentric genius Holmes, with or without his loyal sidekick Dr. Watson. We will pay particular
attention to the ways that ideals of masculinity are bound up in fantasies of (and anxieties about)
national identity and colonial mastery. But, we will also explore how fan culture appropriates and
adapts the tradition.
Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans
Poore, “Sherlock Holmes and the Leap of Faith”
Polasek, “Surveying the Post-Millenial Sherlock Holmes”
Recommended:
Doyle, “Scandal in Bohemia,” “Boscombe Valley Mystery,” “Speckled Band,” “Final
Problem” (or other novels and/or stories)
Gatiss and Moffatt, Sherlock, “Study in Pink,” “The Great Game,” “Scandal in Belgravia,”
“The Reichenbach Fall” (or other episodes)
Siddiqi, “The Cesspool of Empire”
Session 6 (Thursday, June 18): The Great Detective, Transnationally
This session is a continuation of our exploration of the Sherlock Holmes tradition as it is taken up
and transformed in new international contexts, with Tibetan novelist Jamyang Norbu’s Holmesian
pastiche, The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes (1999). Norbu’s novel—narrated by Bengali spy Huree
Chunder Mookerjee, from Rudyard Kipling’s Kim (1901)—accounts for Holmes’s “missing years”
between his ostensible death in Doyle’s “The Final Problem” (1893) and his return from the dead in
“The Empty House” (1903).
Norbu, The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes
Recommended
Okabe, “From Sherlock Holmes to ‘Heisei’ Holmes”
Ping, “Sherlock Holmes in China”
Jedamski, “The Vanishing Act of Sherlock Holmes”
Session 7 (Tuesday, June 23): Case Study 4: Biography and Biofiction
Our fourth case study builds off of our examination of the Great Detective tradition, with Gyles
Brandreth’s mashup of murder mystery and literary biography, Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading
Gaol (2013), in which Wilde features as the Sherlockian sleuth, solving murders at the site of his own
imprisonment following his conviction for “gross indecency.” Although the novel does not aspire to
the status of “literary fiction,” it raises important questions about how the stuff of history becomes a
marketable commodity—that is, how real people and events become the possessions of
contemporary fiction writers and consumers. We will also consider the development more generally
of Oscar Wilde as a heroic figure, a “gay martyr,” in contemporary queer culture.
Brandreth, Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol
Kaplan, “Biographilia”
Waldrep, “The Uses and Misuses of Oscar Wilde” in Kucich and Sadoff
Wilde (aka C.3.3.), Ballad of Reading Gaol
Recommended:
Crowell, “Oscar Wilde’s Tomb”
Elfenbein, “On the Trials of Oscar Wilde”
Matz, “Wilde Americana” in Krueger
Session 8 (Thursday, June 25): Case Study 5: Queer Iconography
Decadent artist and illustrator Aubrey Beardsley was heavily influenced by Japonisme, by way of
French Aestheticism and the art of American expatriate James McNeill Whistler. Oscar Wilde, too,
looked to a richly transnational and transmedial tradition for inspirations for his play Salomé (1891,
1894), so their collaboration on Salomé already engages many of the issues of translation and cultural
appropriation that shape neo-Victorianism today. As Beardsley’s images continue to circulate
globally, his influence on Japanese graphic artists is particularly striking. In this final case study, we
will explore what we might call repatriated Japonisme in Osamu Tezuka’s manga thriller, MW (1976–
78). We will examine how the iconography of British fin-de-siècle Decadence is redeployed in latetwentieth-century representations of queerness.
Wilde and Beardsley, Salomé
Tezuka, MW
James, After Beardsley
Recommended:
Kano, “Visuality and Gender”
Zatlin, “Wilde, Beardsley, and the Making of Salomé”
Seminar Reading List
Books:
With the exception of one novel, Jamyang Norbu’s The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes, all the required
books are available in print or online in Google Books. Norbu’s novel, while out of print, is available in
used paperback copies and in Kindle digital format. Participants are encouraged to read ahead.
Brandreth, Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol. New York: Touchstone, 2013.
C. 3. 3. [Oscar Wilde]. Ballad of Reading Gaol. London: Leonard Smithers, 1898.
(http://www.archive.org/details/readinggballadof00wildrich )
Carroll, Lewis. Excerpts from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Illus. John Tenniel. 1865. New
York: Macmillan, 1909. (http://google.com/books?id=BJ6u9sIgmfUC )
Felski, Rita and Susan Stanford Friedman, eds. Comparison: Theories, Approaches, Uses.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2013.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. When We Were Orphans. New York: Vintage, 2000.
Jones, Lloyd. Mr. Pip. New York: Dial, 2008.
Joyce, Simon. The Victorians in the Rearview Mirror. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 2007.
Katagiri, Ikumi and Ai Ninomiya, Are You Alice? vol. 1. New York: Yen, 2013.
Krueger, Christine L., ed. Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time. Athens, OH: Ohio
UP, 2002.
John Kucich and Dianne F. Sadoff, eds. Victorian Afterlife: Postmodern Culture Rewrites the
Nineteenth Century. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2000. 157–85.
Norbu, Jamyang. The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes. New York: Bloomsbury, 1999. (out of
print—available used or in Kindle format)
Talbot, Bryan. Alice in Sunderland. Milwaukie, OR: Darkhorse, 2007.
Tezuka, Osamu. MW. New York: Vertical, 2010.
Wilde, Oscar. Salomé: A Tragedy in One Act. Illus. Aubrey Beardsley. 1894.
http://google.com/books?id=jjmyQno2l54C
Other Required Texts:
Unless otherwise noted, all required texts will be available in PDF format for participants at least
one month ahead of the seminar.
Apter, Emily. “Introduction” & “Untranslatables: A World-System.” Against World Literature:
On the Politics of Untranslatability. New York: Verso, 2013. 1–27, 31–44.
Gould, Marty and Rebecca N. Mitchell. “Understanding the Literary Theme Park: Dickens
World as Adaptation.” Neo-Victorian Studies 3.2 (2010: 145–71.
James, Chris. After Beardsley. (short film available on YouTube in three parts)
Part I (opening credits): http://youtu.be/pWpkTWC62VA
Part II: http://youtu.be/slV0m3dYCXo
Part III: http://youtu.be/oLo7VT-pKoQ
Kaplan, “Biographilia.” Victoriana: Histories, Fiction, Criticism. New York: Columbia UP, 2007.
37–84.
Natsume, Fusanosuke. “Pictotext and Panels: Commonalities and Differences in Manga,
Comics and BD.” Trans. Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto. Comics Worlds and the World of
Comics: Towards Scholarship on a Global Scale. Ed. Jaqueline Berndt. Kyoto: Kyoto Seika
UP, 2010. 40–54.
Polasek, Ashley D. “Surveying the Post-Millennial Sherlock Holmes: A Case for the Great
Detective as a Man of Our Times.” Adaptation 6.3 (2013): 384–93.
Poore, Benjamin. “Sherlock Holmes and the Leap of Faith: The Forces of Fandom and
Convergence in Adaptations of Holmes and Watson Stories.” Adaptation 6.2 (2012):
158–71.
Walkowitz, Rebecca. “Close Reading in an Age of Global Writing.” Modern Language Quarterly
74.2 (2013): 171–95.
Recommended Texts:
Unless otherwise noted, all recommended readings will be available in PDF format for seminar
participants. All recommended readings will be made available at the same time as the required
readings.
Crowell, Ellen. “Oscar Wilde’s Tomb: Silence and the Aesthetics of Queer Memorial.”
BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco
Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. Web.
http://www.branchcollective.org/
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations (available online or in print in numerous different
editions; here is a free illustrated edition:
https://books.google.com/books?id=fhUXAAAAYAAJ )
Doyle, Arthur Conan. “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Adventure I.—A Scandal in
Bohemia.” Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly 2 (1891): 61–75.
———. “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Adventure IV.—The Boscombe Valley Mystery.”
Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly 2 (1891): 401–416.
———. “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Adventure VIII.—The Adventure of the
Speckled Band.” Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly 3 (1892): 142–57.
———. “The Death of Sherlock Holmes—The Adventure of the Final Problem.” Strand
Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly 6 (1893): 558–70.
Elfenbein, Andrew. “On the Trials of Oscar Wilde: Myths and Realities.” BRANCH: Britain,
Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of
Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. Web. http://www.branchcollective.org/
Gatiss, Mark and Steven Moffatt. Sherlock (2010– ). (available in Netflix, Amazon, iTunes
streaming platforms)
Groensteen, Thierry. “Challenges to International Comics Studies in the Context of
Globalization.” Comics Worlds and the World of Comics: Towards Scholarship on a Global
Scale. Ed. Jaqueline Berndt. Kyoto: Kyoto Seika UP, 2010. 19–30.
Hutcheon, Linda. “Historiographic Metafiction: Parody and the Intertextuality of History.”
Intertextuality and Contemporary American Fiction. Ed. Patrick O’Donnell and Robert
Con Davis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. 3–32.
Jedamski, Doris. “The Vanishing Act of Sherlock Holmes in Indonesia’s National
Awakening.” Chewing Over the West: Occidental Narratives in Non-Western Readings
(Cross/Cultures). Ed. Doris Jedamski. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009. 349–79.
Kano, Ayako. “Visuality and Gender in Modern Japanese Theater: Looking at Salome.”
Japan Forum 11.1 (1999): 43–55.
Kohlke, Marie-Luise. “Introduction: Speculations in and on the Neo-Victorian Encounter.”
Neo-Victorian Studies 1.1 (2008): 1–18.
Llewellyn, Mark. “What is Neo-Victorian Studies?” Neo-Victorian Studies 1.1 (2008): 164–85.
Lewellyn, Mark and Ann Heilmann. “The Victorians Now: Global Reflections on NeoVictorianism.” Critical Quarterly 55.1 (2013): 24–42.
Okabe, Tsugumi. “From Sherlock Holmes to ‘Heisei’ Holmes: Counter Orientalism and
Post Modern Parody in Gosho Ayoma’s Detective Conan Series.” International Journal of
Comic Art 15.1 (2013): 230–50.
Ping, Zhang. “Sherlock Holmes in China.” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 13.2 (2005):
106–14.
Regis, Amber K. and Deborah Wynne. “Miss Havisham’s Dress: Materialising Dickens in
Film Adaptations of Great Expectations.” Neo-Victorian Studies 5.2 (2012): 35–58.
Sell, Cathy. “Manga Translation and Interculture.” Mechademia 6 (2011): 93–108.
Siddiqi, Yumna. “The Cesspool of Empire: Sherlock Holmes and the Return of the
Repressed.” Victorian Literature and Culture 34 (2007): 233–47.
Somers, Sean [Emily]. “Arisu in Harajuku.” Alice beyond Wonderland: Essays for the Twenty-First
Century. Ed. Christopher Hollingsworth. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2009. 199–216.
Zatlin, Linda Gertner. “Wilde, Beardsley, and the Making of Salomé.” Journal of Victorian
Culture 5.2 (2000): 341–57.
APPLICATION
SUNY Potsdam NEH Faculty Development Program
Summer Seminar for Faculty
Our summer seminar is offered for faculty of SUNY Potsdam and for the faculties of
the Associated Colleges of the St. Lawrence Valley. The seminars provide college teachers
with opportunities to enrich their knowledge of the subjects that they teach and study by
working with distinguished scholars, by studying with other teachers and scholars, and by
undertaking individual projects of their own design.
There are up to eight participants selected for each seminar. Through research,
reflection, and discussion with the seminar director and with colleagues in a seminar
atmosphere, participants have an opportunity to deepen their understanding of their field
and improve their ability to convey that understanding to others. Participants are expected
to take part fully in the work of the seminar and to complete all seminar projects.
Although writing may be encouraged by seminar directors, lengthy papers typical
of graduate courses are not required. Seminar topics are broad enough to accommodate a
wide range of interests. The topics allow participants to address significant questions,
explore major texts, and extend their thinking beyond disciplinary concerns.
Individual Projects
In addition to the common work of the seminar, participants pursue individual
study of their own choosing. Prospective applicants will receive detailed information about
the seminar before applying. Particular seminars will vary in their research emphases,
some focusing more on individual reading or research projects, others concentrating more
on the common work of the seminar. The work to be undertaken beyond the common
agenda of the seminar may be a research project or a curriculum project.
Eligibility
To be eligible applicants must be members of the faculty of SUNY Potsdam or
faculty of one of the Associated Colleges. Faculty members who have participated in
previous SUNY Potsdam NEH Seminars are eligible to apply, but preference will be given
to those who have not previously participated.
Selection Criteria
The selection committee will review applications and select participants on the basis
of (1) applicant’s qualifications to do the work of the seminar and make a contribution to it;
(2) the conception and organization of the applicant’s proposed study project in relation to
the seminar topic; (3) the potential value of that project to other members of the seminar.
Stipend and Conditions of Award
Individuals selected to participate in the four-week seminar will receive a stipend of
$2500 and an allowance of up to $500 for purchase of library books and travel related to the
seminar project.
Participants are required to attend all seminar sessions and to engage fully in the
work of the seminar. During the tenure of the seminar they may not undertake other
professional duties that will interfere with their participation in the seminar (in particular,
they may not be teaching Summer School in tandem with participating in the seminar).
Immediately following the completion of the seminar, participants will be asked to
submit an evaluation. In addition, ten months following the seminar, participants will
provide an evaluation of the impact the seminar had on their profession development with
particulars about papers given, scholarship published, and curricula projects implemented
as a result of participation in the seminar.
Applications may be submitted by ordinary post to the NEH Program Chair,
Professor Geoffrey Clark, Dept. of History, Satterlee Hall, SUNY Potsdam, 44 Pierrepont
Ave., Potsdam, NY 13676. Alternatively, applications may be submitted electronically to the
NEH Chair by email at clarkgw@potsdam.edu. If submitting electronically, please include
all application materials in the proper order in ONE Word file and include your last
name in the file name.
APPLICATION MATERIALS
Please assemble your application by drafting the following documents:
1. Application Cover Sheet
Applicant's Title and Name
Home Address
Work Address
Telephones, Home and Work
Major Field of Applicant
2. Description of Objectives
Applicants must write an essay describing their objectives in applying to the seminar.
Close attention should be given to the preparation of the description of objectives
because it will be considered carefully by the committee members as they make their
selections. This essay should include any relevant personal and academic information. The
essay should address reasons for applying to the seminar; the applicant's interest, both
academic and personal, in the subject of the seminar, qualifications to do the work of the
seminar and to make a contribution to it; what the applicant wants to accomplish in the
seminar; and the relation of the seminar to the applicant's professional responsibilities. The
descriptive material provided about the seminar should be read carefully because the
committee may request that particular information be given in the description of objectives.
The application essay should be NO MORE THAN three to four double-spaced
pages. Be sure to address the following questions in relation to the proposed project:
a. The specific study, research, or curricular project, including the basic ideas, problems,
and questions that are of interest, with a specific concrete plan of investigation and a
statement of its rationale.
b. If the proposed project is part of a long-term undertaking, the present state of the larger
undertaking and how the summer project fits in.
c. The relation of the study to the applicant's immediate and long-range objectives as a
teacher and scholar.
d. Other information relevant to the proposed project.
3. Professional History
An application must include the professional history form (included below). A C.V.
may be attached but will not be accepted in lieu of the professional history.
Professional History Form
1. Applicant’s Name and Institutional Affiliation (include department).
2. Applicant’s Field of Specialization
3. Full Time _______
Part Time _______
4. Number of Years Teaching __________
5. Education (list institutions, dates of attendance, major field and graduate degrees
6. Graduate Work in field of seminar
7. Teaching/Research interests in field of seminar
8. Sabbatical Leaves or other released time for research or study (specify when, where,
and for what purpose)
9. Employment History (give institutions, dates, major responsibilities)
10. Courses Taught during the last two years
11. Academic Awards and Grants (mention any special awards or professional
distinctions)
12. Previous SUNY Potsdam NEH Seminars
13. Most significant Publications and Professional Activities (This list should be
selective and not all inclusive.)