Award Background
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) a one-year grant of $51,330 to administer the SAH/Mellon Author Awards. The award is a temporary measure to provide financial relief to early-career scholars who are publishing monographs on architectural history and the history of the built environment, and who are responsible for paying for rights and permissions for images in their publications. Through this grant SAH will provide awards to emerging scholars (those with PhDs earned during the past six years) to help defray the high costs of image licensing and reproduction for monographs on the history of the built environment. Awards will be made once in 2013 for print (hardcover, soft cover) and digital publications (ebook, DVD). Awardees will be selected on the basis of the quality and demonstrated financial need for their project. SAH anticipates awarding approximately ten SAH/Mellon Author Awards in 2013.
A similar award (Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award) for emerging scholars publishing monographs on art history and visual studies is being administered by the College Art Association (CAA) www.collegeart.org/meissmellon. Both the CAA and SAH awards will provide leading authors in the early stages of their careers with the financial resources to acquire images for scholarly publications.
The SAH/Mellon Author Awards will provide authors with the financial resources they need to produce scholarly books in their most desirable form. The publication of a monograph continues to be the most highly valued demonstration of scholarly competence for career advancement and recognition in the humanities. Unfortunately, many authors today must provide both a fully realized text and the financial resources for its image program. The cost for image rights and licensing, especially for digital publications, can be prohibitively expensive.
The SAH/Mellon Author Awards will be administered similarly to the guidelines, jury processes, and award procedures currently in place for CAA’s Millard Meiss Publication Fund grant. The SAH/Mellon Author Awards jury comprises distinguished mid-career or senior scholars who are members of SAH and whose specializations cover a broad range of scholarship on the built environment. The jury has discretion over the number of awardees and the size of the grant to be awarded to each. The grants will be made directly to authors to defray the costs of image acquisitions.
Deadline
The single deadline for submission is June 1, 2013. Successful applicants are emerging scholars who are under contract with a publisher for a manuscript on architectural history and the history of the built environment. For further information, please review the Application Guidelines and the Application Process, Schedule, and Checklist.
Questions? Please contact Beth Eifrig, SAH Assistant Director of Programs, beifrig@sah.org or 312.573.1365.