Opportunities

Diasporican Archives Summer Research Fellowship

February 14, 2024

CENTRO Press and Lost and Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative jointly call for applications for the first DIASPORICAN ARCHIVES RESEARCH fellowship. We will award up to two fellowships of $3,000 each to two graduate students currently enrolled at the CUNY Graduate Center. The awardees will conduct research at CENTRO’s Archives with the purpose of editing a chapbook with original research and unpublished archival materials. We are especially interested in projects focusing on Afro-Puerto Rican authors, women, LGBTQ+ artists and activists, and any other figure or movement of the Puerto Rican diaspora that has not received sufficient attention or whose body of work has not been previously edited and published. Research will be conducted in the Summer of 2024 and the awardees will work together with our editorial teams to produce the chapbook in the Fall. The resulting chapbook will be published as part of CENTRO Press’ Diasporican Archives Chapbook Series and will also form part of Lost and Found’s catalog.

Application Deadline: Monday, April 15, 2024.

Goals: To incentivize publication of literary materials from CENTRO’s Archives with a rigorous academic framing; to keep the archive alive and dynamic; to make diasporic Puerto Rican literature easily available to students, teachers, professors, researchers, and readers everywhere.

Funding Amount: $3,000 (+ Publication costs, if applicable)

Duration of fellowship: Research stage: May, June, and August (the Archives will be closed in July); editing stage: September-December.

Eligibility: This fellowship is restricted to Masters and Doctoral students currently enrolled at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Conditions:

The proposed project should focus on literary materials held at CENTRO’s Archives. For this first iteration of the fellowship, we are looking specifically for students interested in researching materials from Afro-Puerto Rican authors, women, LGBTQ+ artists and activists, and any other figure or movement of the Puerto Rican diaspora that has not received sufficient attention or whose body of work has not been previously edited and published (or at least not in the last 20 years or so).

The awardees will have the support of an ad hoc group of advisors composed of members of both CENTRO and Lost and Found.

At the end of the summer, the awardees must submit a report with the findings of the research conducted with the support of the fellowship.

No later than one month after the end of the fellowship, the awardees must submit to the advisors and Editors a final version of the chapbook proposal. We will encourage the awardees to start working towards that proposal during the time of the fellowship in conjunction with the advisors.

CENTRO Press and Lost and Found do not commit to publishing the work if the quality of the research and final proposal do not meet the Presses’ standards. The joint Editorial team will carefully consider the chapbook proposal and evaluate the merits and viability of the project together with the awardees’ fellowship advisors.

Deliverables:

A chapbook proposal. CENTRO Press and Lost and Found commit to responding to the awardee within one month of submission, after which period, if the proposal is not accepted, the awardee can submit it to other presses.

If the chapbook proposal resulting from the summer research is accepted, a chapbook with the archival materials worked with during the time of the fellowship will be edited and published as part of CENTRO’s Diasporican Archives Chapbook series and will also be part of the Lost and Found Catalog.

Application Process: Click here to apply.

Applications will not be accepted by email. The application consists of: 1. a project description where the author or topic to be researched are specified and the intended publication project briefly sketched out, including a brief paragraph justifying the merits of the project; 2. a work plan for the time spent in person at the archive; 3. and a CV.

Applicants will be notified of the results around late April.

For any questions, you can write to the Editor at [email protected]