DEADLINE EXTENDED: Ella Doria Undergraduate Research Fellowship Opens for Submissions

Deadline *EXTENDED*: 4:00pm; Tuesday, April 4, 2023

The Department of Anthropology is pleased to announce the Ella Deloria Undergraduate Research Fellowships: departmentally funded ethnographic research fellowships for Columbia Anthropology majors pursuing fieldwork during the summer between their junior and senior years.  Offered since 2010, the fellowships are intended for research in preparation for writing a senior thesis or in connection with an independent study project.  Awards will be made based on the quality of an applicant's proposal as well as an applicant's preparation for the proposed research.  Award resources permit fellowships of up to $1000 to approximately ten Anthropology juniors. A PDF with the full requirements can be found here.

While the Ella Deloria Undergraduate Research Fellowship program is designed to support research among Columbia Anthropology majors, it is intended as well as a way of honoring the memory of Ella Cara Deloria (1889-1971), member of a prominent Sioux family, a graduate of Columbia University (B.A. in education, 1914), one of the first truly bilingual, bicultural figures in American anthropology, and an extraordinary scholar, teacher, and spirit who pursued her own work and commitments under notoriously adverse conditions.  At one point, she lived out of a car while collecting material for Franz Boas.  Her publications include the definitive linguistic works Dakota Texts (1932) and Dakota Grammar (1941); the ethnographic classic on Dakota culture, Speaking of Indians (1944); and the virtually avant-garde Waterlily (begun in the 1940s), a novel/ethnography which pushed the boundaries of academic writing:  an "unself-conscious and never precious or quaint pairing of scholarship and fiction" (Kirkus Reviews).  It is to Ella Deloria's spirit that the Department of Anthropology's undergraduate research fellowship program is dedicated.

HOW TO APPLY

Applicants should submit a proposal articulating the following:

1) The purpose of the project and your understanding of its anthropological significance (What makes this project so compelling?)

2) The particular skills, experience, and studies the applicant brings to the project (How have you prepared for this project and what literature do you draw on?)

3) A detailed description of exactly how the project will be carried out (What sorts of questions will be asked? What is the project's specific focus? Where is the project site and what is its timing?).  The proposal should include a project title as well as a brief budget. 

The complete proposal should be no longer, than four double-spaced pages. One copy of the proposal should be submitted by email to Marilyn Astwood at [email protected].                      

Questions concerning this research fellowship may be addressed to the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Anthropology:

Professor Naor Ben-Yehoyada, [email protected] (Fall)

Professor Maria José de Abreu, [email protected] (Spring)