Graduate Fellowships and Funding Opportunities
This page describes accounts of how students are funded in their progress through the program. A more detailed description appears in the Student Handbook.
Here are competitive sources of external funding that would fund part or the whole of a student's graduate study (if you are applying to graduate school, then do consider applying for some of these awards as well):
From the US Department of Education:
Jacob K. Javits FellowshipsFrom the Sperry Fund:
The Beinecke Scholarship ProgramFrom the Soros Foundation:
Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New AmericansFrom the Social Science Research Council and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation:
SSRC-Mellon Mays Fellowship Program
(For Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) students currently enrolled (or about to enroll) in Ph.D. programs in Mellon-designated fields.)
Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships in Humanistic Studies
(Fellowships are intended for the first year of a Ph.D. program only, and cover stipend, tuition, and mandated fees.)
Here are internal and external fellowships and funding for which students currently at Duke commonly apply. Here is a timeline for those applying for final year funding.
The Graduate School administers these competitive awards:
Other competitive awards at Duke for which English department students are eligible include:Bass Advanced Instructorship in Arts and Sciences
For post-prelim students.
International Fellowship for Advanced Students
For dissertation research abroad.
Aleane Webb Dissertation Research Fellowship
Small grants for miscellaneous dissertation costs.
Katherine Stern Dissertation Fellowship
Dissertation writing year support.
Julian Price Endowed Dissertation Research Fellowship
Dissertation writing year support
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Fellowship
Dissertation writing year support
Center for International Studies
Awards for research and training
Franklin Seminar
Kenan Institute for Ethics
Library Internships
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/ACLS Early Career Fellowships
Departmental fellowships for the dissertation writing year, according to the terms of their endowment, are:
DeWitt Wallace Fellowship. Reserved for minority students in the English department.
Ashbel Brice Fellowship. Designated for a student in American literary studies.
John L. Lievsay Fellowship. Preference given to a student in Renaissance studies.
William Preston Few Fellowships. Two are available; field open.
Other fellowships and funding available for graduate students are listed by the Office of Research Support and on the Graduate School's Fellowships and Research Opportunities Links page. The most comprehensive database on graduate funding from external sources currently available is Cornell's Fellowships Database. Note that there are many prestigious sources of funding available for the research and writing of the dissertation, many geared to a specific topic or type of research: please be sure to apply for all those for which you are eligible.
Sources of postdoctoral funding: Consult the Office of Research Support Cornell's Fellowships Database, and the MLA Job List (note that you will need our departmental password in order to search the list: consult the Assistant to the DGS).
Nearly 100% of admitted students receive funding.
Students are typically supported by the standard support package provided to students in the English doctoral program. In some cases this package is supplemented or replaced by external fellowships such as Mellon or Javits (for which you would apply yourself, at the same time as your applications for graduate school) or by programs internal to Duke such as the The University Scholars Program, the James B. Duke Fellowships, or the Duke Endowment and Presidential Fellowships (for which we would nominate you before your arrival at Duke: for more details, see the Graduate School Bulletin). The standard package of support pays tuition and fees, and provides money for nine months of living expenses in the form of stipend and/or payment for teaching, for the first five years of the program. (Many sources of summer support are available to cover the remaining three months of expenses.) For more details on the kinds of teaching responsibilities students are given, and at what stages, see Pedagogy.
Other forms of financial support provided for specific purposes during the degree include:
Summer reading money:
Supplied by the department to students between second and third years after submission of the summer reading lists for the preliminary examination.
Reading group support:
Funding for book purchases and meetings supplied to reading and study groups formed by graduate students in the department.
Support for summer language study:
The department and Graduate School work together to provide full funding for study in the summer Languages for Reading Purposes program on campus. (For more details see the Student Handbook.) Competitive scholarships for intensive language study are also available through FLAS (which also runs programs during the academic year).
Conference travel:
Currently, up to $500 per year in expenses pre-prelim and $700 post-prelim may be claimed: funds come from the Graduate Studies office and the Graduate School.
MLA attendance for job candidates:
The MLA provides a $100 subsidy to job candidates who are current members of the MLA and have completed all requirements for the PhD apart from the dissertation. The Graduate Studies office supplies additional funds both to those giving papers and those only doing interviews.
Sources of summer funding include:
Summer language study fellowships, e.g. through FLAS
Summer reading money between second and third years
Graduate Summer Research Fellowships
Summer teaching assignments for fourth years and up
(See Student Handbook for more information)
Library internships
Employment through the Talent Identification Program
Employment through Duke Temporary Services
Still more sources of internal and external funding are available: the Office of Research Support and the Graduate School's Fellowships and Research Opportunities Links are both important resources for researching these. For full details of the support provided to current graduate students, see the Student Handbook. Please bear in mind that stipend amounts and teaching salaries are adjusted each term to keep pace with the cost of living in Durham.