Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities application descriptions

Fellowship Program.
The Warren Center invites applications from scholars interested in participating in a faculty seminar as a visiting fellow during the academic year 2003-2004. The seminar, whose theme for the year will be “Medicine, Health and Society” consists of an interdisciplinary group of eight Vanderbilt faculty members. Larry Churchill (medical ethics) and Matthew Ramsey (history) will co-direct the program.

The study of medicine, health, and society is one of the most dynamic and rapidly growing areas of interdisciplinary research and teaching today. The year-long seminar at the Warren Center will explore how various societies--including our own--have understood, experienced, and responded to disease. Health-related beliefs and practices are deeply embedded in particular societies and cultures; this observation applies with as much force to modern Western biomedicine as to premodern and non-Western medical systems. Such an approach is inherently comparative; the humanities broadly conceived can elucidate the variety of experiences of health and illness, hygiene and medicine, across time and space. The work of the Visiting Fellow need not necessarily be comparative; the seminar as a whole will consist of scholars with a wide range of research interests.

The visiting fellow will meet with seminar participants weekly and will have ample time to pursue her or his own research project. We will provide a stipend of one-half annual salary; the maximum stipend paid will be $38,000. Members of the Fellows Program are provided with spacious offices in the Center’s building.

the Center’s application form;
your curriculum vitae;
your project description;
your financial statement.

Please do not staple any submitted materials.

Project Description.
Your project description should not exceed four double-spaced pages. Your project proposal must be related to the Fellows Program theme. You may wish to discuss how your current research will fit into the interdisciplinary academic program at the Center.

Letters of Recommendation.
It is your responsibility to have three letters of recommendation sent to us by the application deadline. Your referees should comment not only upon your project, but also on how your work would contribute to the faculty seminar on “Medicine, Health and Society.”

Application Deadline.
Applications and letters of recommendation must be postmarked no later than January 15, 2003. Faxes cannot be accepted.

Questions?
Please feel free to call the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at (615) 343-6060 or e-mail rpw.center@vanderbilt.edu if you have questions pertaining to our program. You may speak with the Center’s executive director, Mona Frederick (mona.frederick@vanderbilt.edu). Larry Churchill (larry.churchill@vanderbilt.edu) and Matthew Ramsey (matthew.ramsey@vanderbilt.edu) are also available to answer questions about the program.

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