Eligibility and Participant Selection

The Reformation of the Book: 1450-1650

Eligibility and Participant Selection

Note: Our foreign-based hosts require advance payment for lodging and, in the case of our visit to Oxford, partial board. Participants will be unable to make alternative arrangements. In order to participate in this program, individuals will need to return a signed form that grants permission to The Ohio State University to deduct these expenses from the seminar stipend. Participants will receive a check for the remainder prior to departure. Our arrangement with St. Edmund Hall obligates all seminar members to reside in college. Room and board will include breakfasts and about twenty dinners during our four weeks at Oxford. Accommodation will be in the form of single rooms. Subject to the availability of rooms, a few participants may be able to reserve a room for themselves and a partner. St. Edmund Hall is unable to provide accommodation for children, including adult children. We regret that no exceptions are possible.

This program is designed to meet the needs of teacher-scholars of the literary, political, or cultural history of the Renaissance and Reformation, and to specialists in art history, women’s studies, religious studies, bibliography, print culture, library science (including rare book librarians), historians of mass communication, historians of literacy, and more. Those eligible to apply include citizens of USA who are engaged in teaching at the college or university level and independent scholars who have received the terminal degree in their field (usually the Ph.D.), in addition to non-US citizens who have taught and lived in the USA for at least three years prior to the participant application deadline of March 2, 2009.

The selection committee will consist of the co-directors and colleagues at TheOhio State University. In accordance with NEH guidelines, this committee will favor applicants who are best prepared to contribute to seminar discussion and make significant progress on an individual program of research and writing. Among equally qualified candidates, preference will go to those without prior NEH seminar or institute experience or those without experience during the previous three years. The committee will strive to produce a varied group that accords with nondiscrimination statutes and is diversified in gender, academic discipline, and geographical location. We require literacy in no language other than English, but knowledge of Latin and/or Western European vernacular languages would represent a plus.