Deadline:

The Tabb Center will accept applications for our public humanities fellowship in the fall of 2024, with an application date of October 22, 2024. One fellow will be selected.

This one-year fellowship includes a stipend of up to $20,000, with an additional $5,000 available for programming or related expenses, and may potentially be renewed for a second year.

Public Humanities Fellows are non-institutionally affiliated organizers, artists, cultural workers, public historians, and knowledge-creators who research with and creatively interpret materials from the Sheridan Libraries’ rare book, manuscript, and archival collections. The fellow will create new perspectives on the archival and library collections, identifying and highlighting new connections between them and presenting them to the university community and broader Baltimore public in socially significant ways.

Fellows are expected to produce a deliverable based on research conducted within our collections. This could include interpreting materials through podcasts, audio tours, soundscapes, or oral histories, site-specific installations, virtual reality projects, interactive performances, community workshops, public talks, concerts, or other events.

Candidates will submit a timeline and budget as part of their application, including a start and end date. This fellowship may be, for example, a full-time 3-month fellowship, a part-time 12-month fellowship, or any other permutation. The spring semester (Feb to May) is an ideal time to access special collections materials, though these materials are available throughout the year.

Timeline:

  • October 22, 2024: Applications due
  • November 5, 2024: Fellow selected by committee
  • No later than November 20, 2024: Orientation at JHU Homewood campus
  • Fellows will begin their fellowship at an agreed-upon date
  • September 15, 2025: Fellow deliverable(s) must be completed

Apply Here

2024/25 Focus on Audio:

  • While not required, we are particularly interested in and welcome proposals that include an audio component, such as podcasts, audio tours, soundscapes, or oral histories. Prior experience with audio is not required. Training and support will be available as needed.

Stipend and Copyright:

  • The fellowship offers an hourly wage of $35 per hour up to a total of $20,000 in a 12-month period. (For example, a full-time 3-month fellowship, a part-time 12-month fellowship, or any other permutation.) Candidates will submit a timeline and budget as part of their application. The stipend will be paid in monthly installments over duration the of the project. This fellowship does not offer travel compensation, health insurance, or housing subsidy.
  • The Fellow owns all right, title, and interest in the work, including all copyright rights. The Fellow must credit the Winston Tabb Special Collections Research Center on the work itself as well as all future outreach materials related to the work, including websites, printed materials, videos, etc.

Requirements:

  • Fellows should live or work in Baltimore.
  • This fellowship is intended for independent artists, curators, and organizers. It is not open to faculty, students, or current JHU fellows.
  • The selected fellows should be willing to work with a videographer who will create a video that documents their research and experience to share with a public audience via the Tabb Center website.
  • Fellows are expected to provide at least one presentation about their project to local audiences during the course of their fellowship.

Eligible Repositories:

Questions? 

For questions about locating JHU collections and researching at the university, reach out to our Special Collections staff at specialcollections@lists.jhu.edu

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Past Recipients

Learn more about the past recipients of the public humanities fellowship and their projects by visiting this page.

Example collections at the Sheridan Libraries  and University Museums

Additional archival materials can be found by searching ArchivesSpace; rare books and periodicals can be found in Catalyst.

Featured Collections

A selection of manuscript and archive collections at the Sheridan Libraries and University Museums.

Rare Book Collection

The rare book collection (at the Eisenhower, Garrett, and Peabody Libraries) contains more than 400,000 volumes and is strongest in the humanities and social sciences. It includes medieval and Renaissance manuscript books, the Machen collection of incunabula (books printed before 1501), and fine printed books.

William Worthy Papers

William Worthy (July 7, 1921 – May 4, 2014) was an African-American journalist, civil rights activist, and frequent critic of the United States. The collection includes the following topics and genres: correspondence, biographical information, writings, newspaper clippings, advocacy, teaching, travel (specifically Cuba, the USSR, China and Iran), notes, files, and printed matter.

Housing Our Story: Towards Archival Justice for Black Baltimore oral history collection

This collection consists of twenty-two oral history interviews conducted in 2018 as part of a project titled Housing Our Story: Towards Archival Justice for Black Baltimore.

John Clark Mayden Photograph Collection

This collection contains 100 large black-and-white photographic prints made from film negatives by the Baltimore photographer John Clark Mayden, showing scenes of everyday life in Black Baltimore. Please contact special collections to request the collection.

Historic Collection at the George Peabody Library

More than 300,000 volumes largely from the 18th and 19th centuries. Notable collection strengths are archaeology, British art and architecture, British and American history, biography, English and American literature, Romance languages and literature, Greek and Latin classics, history of science, geography, and exploration and travel.

The Baltimore Civil Rights History Project

The Baltimore Civil Rights History Project was primarily a project to record the oral histories of participants in the Baltimore civil rights movement. The project was overseen by Francois Furstenberg when he was a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University. The collection primarily features oral histories, recorded in 1999 and 2000, conducted with Baltimore civil rights movement participants.

Baltimore Queer Oral History Collection

A growing collection of LGBTQ oral history recordings and transcripts with a focus on queer of color histories.

The Roland Park Company papers

Document the development of local neighborhoods Roland Park, Guilford, Homeland, and Northwood, as well as other communities in the United States.

Michael Makarovich oral histories

This collection consists of oral history interviews and printed materials collected primarily in the 1990s by Michael Makarovich, who researched the evolution of gay bars in Baltimore, Maryland.