Two excellent fellowship opportunities for legal history graduate students are available from the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation. The first is a modest amount for research expenses. The second is designed to fund a year for dissertation writing.
The Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies encourages original and significant research about women that crosses disciplinary, regional, or cultural boundaries. Previous Fellows have explored such topics as transnational religious education for Muslim women, the complex gender dynamics of voluntary marriage migration, women’s role in African-American adult literacy, women’s sports, militarism and the education of American women, and the relationship between family commitments and women’s work mobility.
Deadline: October 9, 2007. Fellows receive $3,000 to be used for expenses connected with the dissertation. More information and application instructions are here.
The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships are designed to encourage significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner. In addition to topics in religious studies or in ethics (philosophical or religious), dissertations appropriate to the Newcombe Fellowship competition might explore the ethical implications of foreign policy, the values influencing political decisions, the moral codes of other cultures, and religious or ethical issues reflected in history or literature.
Deadline: November 5, 2007. 28 Fellows will receive $23,000 for 12 months of full-time dissertation writing; in addition, their graduate schools will be asked to waive tuition and/or remit some portion of their fees. More information and application instructions are here.
A number of legal historians have written their dissertations with the assistance of a Newcombe (including me -- before my work took a more serious Cold War turn, and I was exploring the way Topeka, Kansas came to terms with its role in Brown v. Bd of Ed). This is a great source for legal history work that engages ethics, values and religion. Be sure to address the way your dissertation addresses these issues in your application.
