The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University is now accepting applications from artists in all artistic disciplines for two opportunities, the Princeton Arts Fellowship and the Hodder Fellowship. Details and link to the online applications are posted at arts.princeton.edu/fellowships. Both applications are due by September 9.
Princeton Arts Fellowships are awarded to early career composers, conductors, musicians, choreographers, visual artists, filmmakers, poets, novelists, playwrights, designers, directors and performance artists who would find it beneficial to spend time teaching and working in an artistically vibrant university community. Fellows spend two consecutive academic years (September 1-July 1) at Princeton and formal teaching is expected.
The normal work assignment will be to teach one course each semester subject to approval by the Dean of the Faculty, however fellows may be asked to take on an artistic assignment in lieu of a class, such as directing a play or creating a dance with students. Prior teaching experience is not required. Although the teaching load is light, the expectation is that fellows will be full and active members of the Princeton community, committed to frequent and engaged interactions with students during the academic year.
A $93,000 stipend is provided for each of the two years. As academic appointees, fellows are eligible for benefits during the two fellowship years; they may not hold concurrent teaching positions at other institutions for the duration of the fellowship. Fellows also have access to research funds. Typically, two new Princeton Arts Fellows are selected each year.
Open to artists demonstrating “much more than ordinary intellectual and literary gifts,” the Hodder Fellowship is awarded to artists “more for promise than for performance,” enabling them to pursue an independent project for one academic year. Potential Hodder Fellows are composers, choreographers, performance artists, visual artists, writers, translators, or other kinds of artists or humanists. Given the strength of the applicant pool, most successful fellows have published a first book or have similar achievements in their own fields; the Hodder is designed to provide fellows with the “studious leisure” to undertake significant new work. No teaching is required.
A $93,000 stipend is provided for this 10-month appointment as a visiting fellow. Fellows are eligible for benefits during the length of the fellowship and have access to research funds.
Typically, five Hodder Fellows are selected in each cycle.
The Hodder Fellowship dates back to the 1940s and was historically awarded only to literary artists. Earlier recipients include the poet John Berryman (1950) and the critic R.P. Blackmur (1944), as well as novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi (2005) and Anthony Doerr (2003), whose novel All the Light We Cannot See won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Today, the Hodder is open to artists in all disciplines, and recent fellows have included playwrights, choreographers, filmmakers, and visual artists as well as writers, such as Natalie Diaz, Mark Thomas Gibson, Jamil Kochai, Mario Moore, Jiehae Park, Martyna Majok, Okwui Okpokwasili, Will Rawls, and Leslie Cuyjet.
The Princeton Arts Fellowship was launched in 2013. Among the 28 fellows to date are Gi (Ginny) Huo, Raja Feather Kelly, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, yuniya edi kwon, Michael J. Love, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez, Erika L. Sánchez, Danez Smith, Kamara Thomas, and Maysoon Zayid.