Rare Book School Awards 20 Mellon Fellowships in Critical Bibliography
Fellowship program seeks to reinvigorate bibliographical studies within the humanities
Charlottesville, VA, May 18, 2015 – Rare Book School (RBS) at the University of Virginia has
selected a third cohort of 20 early-career academics as RBS-Mellon Fellows in critical
bibliography. The fellows will participate in a three-year program, the Andrew W. Mellon
Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography, whose aim is to reinvigorate bibliographical
studies within the humanities.
The 20 RBS-Mellon Fellows were chosen from a highly competitive field of applicants,
representing many of the outstanding institutions of higher learning in the United States. These
gifted scholars come from a broad spectrum of departments, including archaeology, art history,
Classics, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, English, French & Italian, history, and
religious studies. Eight of the fellowship recipients are assistant professors; two hold
postdoctoral positions; and ten are doctoral candidates.
Meredith M. Quinn is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the cultural and intellectual history of the early modern Middle East.
Her dissertation, “Books and their Readers in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul,” examines the circulation of early modern Ottoman manuscripts. In order to establish the readership of various kinds of books, she draws upon statistical and network analysis of archival sources, close readings of narrative and biographical texts, and, most importantly, the material evidence of manuscripts themselves.
RBS-Mellon Fellows will receive advanced, intensive training in the analysis of textual artifacts.
Led by a distinguished faculty drawn from the bibliographical community and professionals in
allied fields, fellows will attend annual research-oriented seminars at Rare Book School and at
major special collections libraries nationwide. Fellows will receive stipends to support researchrelated
travel to special collections, and additional funds to host academic symposia at their
home institutions.
“During the past two years, Rare Book School’s Mellon Fellows have been extraordinarily active,
integrating bibliographical and book-historical methods into their research and teaching, while
also sharing their new understandings with colleagues via innovative academic symposia,” said
RBS Director Michael F. Suarez, S.J. “We remain deeply grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation for all it has done to make their achievements possible. Our third and final Mellonsupported
cohort likewise shows great promise, and we much look forward to their
contributions.”
More information about the 2015–17 RBS-Mellon Fellows, and about the Andrew W. Mellon
Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography, is available at:
http://www.rarebookschool.org/fellowships/mellon.
About Rare Book School (RBS)
Rare Book School provides continuing-education opportunities for students from all disciplines and skill
levels to study the history of written, printed, and born-digital materials with leading scholars and
professionals in the fields of bibliography, librarianship, book history, manuscript studies, and the digital
humanities. Founded at Columbia University in 1983, RBS moved to its present home at the University of
Virginia in 1992. RBS is a not-for-profit educational organization affiliated with the University of Virginia.
More information about RBS is available on its website: http://www.rarebookschool.org.
For further information, contact:
Jeremy Dibbell, Director of Communications & Outreach
jeremy.dibbell@virginia.edu
(434) 243-7077
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| 2015-17_rbs-mellon_fellows_biographical_information.pdf | 100 KB |