Charles Warren Center Fellowship
Harvard University
USD 60k-69k / year
Posted on Dec 2, 2025
Position
Details
| Title | Charles Warren Center Fellowship |
|---|---|
| School | Faculty of Arts and Sciences |
| Department/Area | Charles Warren Center |
| Position Description | The 2026-27 Warren Center Faculty Fellowship will be on the theme of Commemorative Acts led by Tiya Miles (History) and Robin Bernstein (African and African American Studies and Women, Gender, & Sexuality). The Warren Center, Harvard’s research center for United States history, invites applications for a seminar on Commemorative Acts. Commemorations will abound in 2026 as the United States recognizes the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the beginning of the American Revolution. This timing provides a rich occasion and context for examining commemoration as a national endeavor. Who is remembering what, and how? What is being erased, and why? What are the stakes of commemoration in the present? This Warren Center seminar aims to inspire new questions, highlight key issues, structure constructive dialogue across diverse viewpoints, and support wide-ranging works-in-progress at a consequential moment for national memory and history. Our faculty seminar will convene scholars of the past, including academic historians and/or public historians, performance historians, and American Studies scholars whose work explores the making and meaning of public commemorations, or what we are calling “commemorative acts.” We define commemorations as events, rituals, processes, material objects, and built environments through which a group endeavors to remember, and often honor, people, happenings, or values of the past. We will seek participants working at different scales, including some large-scale projects that consider the unit of the nation as well as narrower projects that focus on individual commemorations, especially ones that shed light on the nation as an entity. Commemorative acts, often spurred by the experience or perception of loss, employ memorialization and public performance to reanimate, sustain, retain, transmit, or invent history. Commemorative acts work on the level of denotation and connotation, knowledge and affect, community and culture. These acts involve looking and listening, often live and in groups of people in public. They function through both facts and narratives – the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Ephemeral or enduring, commemorative acts can be singular events such as the installation or removal of a statue, or ongoing events, as in a permanently-installed memorial. Fundamentally, commemorations are crafted and staged engagements with history. Therefore, while this seminar welcomes all history-based methodologies, we highlight performance history. The field of performance studies offers well-developed critical tools with which to analyze key elements of commemorations, including physical space and place, audienceship, live bodies in motion, the persistence and erasure of memory, mourning and absence, silence, ritual, time and temporality, tourism, and repetition with difference. Signaling boundaries through narrative, imagery, space, and performance, commemorative acts leave some people out even as they call others in, defining a “we” and a “they.” For this reason, race, gender, and other categories of historical analysis are crucial to the intellectual work of this seminar. The co-conveners, both scholars of African American studies, will foreground issues that are prominent in this field, including the vicissitudes and difficulties of archives, family history and genealogy, and democracy. Because the Civil War is central to many current debates about monuments and historical memory, we expect that this war, along with slavery, abolition, and Reconstruction, will be vital to our discussions. Uniting diverse viewpoints and historical methods at a key semiquincentennial, this seminar asks: why do commemorations matter? What do they do? How do they function in the modern nation/state? What is at stake in the creation and dissolution of commemorations? And finally, how can Harvard contribute to national conversations about acts that commemorate a past and chart a future? Fellows will present their work in a seminar led by Tiya Miles (History) and Robin Bernstein (African and African American Studies and Women, Gender, & Sexuality). Applicants may not be degree candidates and should have a Ph.D. or equivalent. Fellows have library privileges and an office for the 9-month academic year. The Center encourages applications consistent with the seminar theme and qualified applicants who can contribute, through their research and service, to the excellence of the community. Stipends: individually determined according to fellow needs and Center resources, up to a maximum of $66,000. Note that recent average stipends have been in the range of $50,000. Application deadline: January 7, 2026 Letters of recommendation deadline: January 9, 2026 For more information, see http://warrencenter.fas.harvard.edu/. |
| Basic Qualifications | Applicants may not be degree candidates and should have a Ph.D. or equivalent. Fellows have library privileges and an office for the 9-month academic year. The Center encourages applications consistent with the seminar theme and qualified applicants who can contribute, through their research and service, to the excellence of the community. Stipends: individually determined according to fellow needs and Center resources, up to a maximum of $66,000. Note that recent average stipends have been in the range of $50,000. |
| Additional Qualifications | |
| Special Instructions | PROJECT TITLE AND STATEMENT: Upload a three page project statement(double-spaced)) into the “Statement of Research” document slot. Do not attach lengthy materials compiled for other grant applications. RECOMMENDATION LETTERS: Three letters of reference are required. Instructions will follow as you complete the electronic application. Deadline for recommendation letters is January 9, 2026. |
| Contact Information | Monnikue McCall Executive Director Charles Warren Center Emerson Hall, 4th Floor Cambridge, MA 02138 617-495-3591 |
| Contact Email | momccall@fas.harvard.edu |
| Salary Range | $60,000 to $69,000 |
| Minimum Number of References Required | 3 |
| Maximum Number of References Allowed | |
| Keywords |
EEO/Non-Discrimination Commitment Statement
Harvard University is committed to equal opportunity and non-discrimination. We seek talent from all parts of society and the world, and we strive to ensure everyone at Harvard thrives. Our differences help our community advance Harvard’s academic purposes.
Harvard has an equal employment opportunity policy that outlines our commitment to prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, religion, disability, or any other characteristic protected by law or identified in the university’s non-discrimination policy. Harvard’s equal employment opportunity policy and non-discrimination policy help all community members participate fully in work and campus life free from harassment and discrimination.
Supplemental Questions
Required fields are indicated with an asterisk (*).
- * Stipends: Individually determined according to fellow needs and Center resources, up to a maximum of $66,000. Note that recent average stipends have been in the range of $50,000.
(Open Ended Question)
- * Amount requested from Warren Center:
(Open Ended Question)
- * If this application is not for the academic year, please indicate for which semester you are applying (fall or spring). If applying for one semester only, note that the maximum possible grant is half of the annual amount (i.e. $31,500). Warren Center stipends are individually determined, up to a maximum of $63,000. Because the Center cannot always offer the amount requested, we urge applicants to apply also for funding from agencies or foundations such as the NEH or the ACLS. We realize many applicants will not have definite financial information at the time of application. However, please complete this section as fully as you can, indicating possible sabbatical leave, any funding applications pending, from which agencies, and for how much. In estimating expenses, applicants should take into consideration the high cost of living, especially for housing, in the Cambridge area.
(Open Ended Question)
Applicant Documents
Required Documents
- Curriculum Vitae
- Statement of Research
- Cover Letter