I Tatti Fellowships (post doctoral)

Deadline: October 15, 2006


Villa I Tatti in Florence offers up to fifteen fellowships each academic
year for advanced research in any aspect of the Italian Renaissance. Each
Fellow is offered a place to study, use of the Biblioteca and Fototeca
Berenson, lunches on weekdays, and various other privileges, the most
important of which is the opportunity to meet scholars from a variety of
countries working in related fields. The Fellowship is open to scholars of
any nationality. On the average, over more than forty years of operation,
about half the Fellows have been American and half from Europe and the rest
of the world, though the proportion changes in any given year.

The Fellowship is post-doctoral. With the ongoing redefinition of doctoral
programs in Europe this has become more complex, but in general applicants
must have completed all the requirements of the Ph.D., the D. Phil., the
dottorato di ricerca, or an equivalent doctorate at the time of application,
including submission and examination of the thesis. Doctoral candidates who
are preparing a defense after the October 15 deadline are thus not eligible.
The diploma di perfezionamento from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa is
recognized as equivalent to a doctorate but not, in general, any other
diploma di specializzazione.

However, the selection committee may decide to consider applications from
candidates who have achieved scholarly recognition with the British M.A. or
the Italian laurea as their final degree, if they are not enrolled in a
doctoral program and do not intend to pursue a doctorate as part of their
career path. Such exceptions will presumably be rare and will become rarer
with time. The intent of the Fellowship remains firmly post-doctoral.

On the other hand, the Fellowship is meant only for scholars who are still
in the earlier stages of their career, which may be defined, by an
approximate rule of thumb, as the first decade after the doctorate.

Fellows are selected by an international committee of senior scholars in
Italian Renaissance studies, representing such fields as literature,
history, fine arts, music, philosophy, the history of science and the
history of ideas. The committee meets in Cambridge, Massachusetts and makes
its selections in mid-winter; applicants are generally informed of its
decisions by the end of February.

The selection committee looks for demonstrable scholarly excellence and
promise, requires a project of intellectual importance suited to the
resources of I Tatti and Florence, and endeavors to assess the candidate's
ability to contribute in a collegial way to the intellectual life of the
other Fellows. Fellows are required to devote full time to their projects
and may not have other obligations such as teaching positions, even
part-time ones, during their fellowship year.

Projects do not have to be devoted to Florentine subjects, and often are
not; but they must be on the Italian Renaissance and it must be possible for
the greater part of the project to be accomplished in Florence. One of the
goals of I Tatti is to establish an intellectual community in which a
fruitful interchange of ideas can take place. Fellows are thus expected to
spend at least two or three days a week at the Villa and to be in residence
close by. Preference is given to scholars embarking on a new research
project rather than to those who are continuing to work on the subject of
their dissertations; applicants should thus describe both past and future
work in their application.

The fiscal year for fellowships, as for all Harvard appointments, runs from
July 1 to June 30. The full academic year begins in early September, and all
Fellows are expected to be in residence from then until the following June,
and to participate actively in the life of the center for the full period of
their fellowship.

Stipends will be awarded according to individual needs, and a projected
budget is requested from successful candidates at a later stage. Stipends
generally do not exceed the $50,000 - $55,000 range.

Renewals or repeats of an I Tatti Fellowship are not granted.

Applications and the supporting material should arrive on or before October
15.



If you are submitting a hard copy application, your application and
supporting materials should be sent to both the Cambridge and Florence
address given below.  Your application should include:

1. A completed fellowship application form (click here to obtain a pdf
form).

2. A compact curriculum vitae that does not exceed five pages, including
bibliography.

3. A statement of the project to be developed at I Tatti, which should be
about five double-spaced pages of normal typeface and in any case cannot
exceed 1500 words. Please give a word count at the beginning.  The opening
paragraph of the statement should be a concise abstract of the project.  A
focused bibliography of one page (in addition to the 1500 words) should be
added at the end.  The statement can be in English, Italian, French or
German.

4. A photocopy of the doctoral degree or certificate; an official transcript
is not necessary.

5. Three confidential letters of recommendation from scholars who know your
work well; these should not be included with the application but be sent in
one of the following ways to arrive no later than October 15:

    * hard copies on official letterhead, mailed to both of the addresses
below
    * signed letter scanned and sent by email to [log in to unmask]
    * signed letter sent by fax to +39 055 3906894

  If you are submitting an online application, your application and
supporting materials will be sent automatically to the Cambridge and
Florence office; please do not send a hardcopy in the mail. Please click
here to submit an online application whereby you will then receive
instructions on how to attach items #2-4 (listed above).  Under separate
cover, three confidential letters of recommendation from scholars who know
your work well - please follow guideline #5 (listed above).

For those who applied the previous year, please submit a new application
form, curriculum vitae, project description, and one new letter of
recommendation.


Fellowship Application Office

Villa I Tatti
Via di Vincigliata 26
50135 Firenze, Italy
(Tel: 39 055 603 251)


Fellowship Application Office

Villa I Tatti
Harvard University
124 Mt. Auburn Street
Cambridge, MA 02138-5795, USA
(Tel: 617 496-8724)