Kellogg Fellowship

Description

The Kellogg Fellowship provides highly motivated students engaging in areas of humanistic study with research support for senior work related to their major program of study. The fellowship may be used for travel and research expenses incurred during the summer and academic semesters.

Application Deadline

Application materials must be submitted by March 1, 2025. Faculty support statements are due by March 7. Students will be notified by mid-April.

Applications should be completed to the best of your ability with the understanding that projects or timelines may need to be adjusted when you begin the work. 

Eligibility

Middlebury juniors and junior and senior Febs who meet their departmental requirements for independent senior work and will pursue that work during the following summer and/or academic year (one or more semesters) are eligible to apply.

Proposed projects must “engage in philosophical inquiry in the humanities and areas of humanistic study, broadly defined, including but not limited to philosophy, religion, classics, history, history of art and architecture, film and media culture studies, languages, American studies, and English and American literature.”

How to Apply

Complete the online application by the deadline. You should be discussing your application with your faculty advisor(s) prior to submitting the application. 

Key Online Application Components

• Information about your project including, a project title, your primary advisor, the course number, dates, travel destinations, funding amount requested, and a preliminary budget listing research activities, materials and expected costs (optional budget template).
• Names of two faculty who are providing statements of support: (1) your project advisor and (2) a Middlebury faculty member who has taught you or supervised you in a research capacity. Name of the department chair who is confirming the project meets the requirements for senior work in your major
• A project description, which includes research questions and how the project engages in humanistic inquiry (1500 words or less)
• An explanation of your preparation for the proposed project (e.g. courses, past research, specific skills) (750 words or less)
• An explanation of how the work will provide an important capstone experience for your undergraduate career (750 words or less)
• Preliminary research plan, including a list of activities and materials involved in the research and anticipated costs (file upload)
• Advising transcript and current resume (file upload)

Faculty and Chair Statements

Faculty requests for statements of support will be sent through the online application. For the department chair, they will need to certify that this project fulfills the major requirements for senior work. Faculty will receive an email request and can submit through the online portal.

Applicants should notify faculty well in advance and discuss their application with them, so that requested support statements statements or confirmation of a department/program’s senior work requirements can be submitted by the March 7 deadline.

The two support statements are needed. The statement from the faculty advisor for the project (less than 500 words) should explain how the student’s academic work has prepared them for this project and the merits of both the student and project as a capstone experience. The second support statement should be from a faculty member who has taught the student or supervised them in a research context and discuss applicant’s academic strengths and preparedness for independent senior work. The department/program chair’s confirmation need only be a sentence or two.

Selection of Kellogg Fellows

A selection committee composed of the associate dean for fellowships and research and faculty members drawn from different disciplines will review applications and select fellows.

Award

Kellogg fellows will receive $5,000 to support research expenses (e.g. travel, conference or workshop participation, and equipment required for the project) incurred during the summer and/or academic semesters. Research support will begin during the summer and extend through one or two semesters, depending on the fellow’s senior work plan. The funds will be dispersed at the beginning of the summer. We expect project expenses will vary but the total award amount will be $5000. 

Faculty Advisors to Kellogg fellows receive $1,000 in support of their own research.

Fellow Requirements

Fellows must enroll in the appropriate senior work courses for their major during their senior year (typically 500 and/or 700 level courses). Work produced with the support of the Kellogg fellowship will be submitted for the fellows’ senior work. Fellows must give at least one presentation about their work at a campus event (e.g. department presentations, spring student symposium) and are encouraged to also present their work at relevant professional and undergraduate conferences. Fellows enrolled in the spring semester are expected to present at the Spring Student Symposium.

Notes: Kellogg fellows are expected to use their fellowship monies to support conference travel and senior work-related expenses incurred during their senior year, rather than the SRPS and Academic Travel Fund (ATF). Fellows remain eligible to apply for relevant departmental funds for additional funding, if available in their department. A portion of the award may be taxable income depending on the amount of documented research expenses.

2025-26 Kellogg Fellows

Communications story about this year’s fellows.

Charlotte Roberts ’26, who is majoring in both gender, sexuality, and feminist studies and English, will work on a project titled “To Be At Risk: Telling the Colrain Story and Learning from a History of Resistance” focused on a wartime tax resistance action that occurred in Colrain, Massachusetts near where she grew up. The case received national attention after the IRS seized the home of a local couple, spurring an occupation of the property by peace activists for 18 months. Roberts plans to continue writing a book about the case started in 2016 by her grandparents. “Taking up the draft of ‘To Be at Risk’ from my grandparents to tell the story of the Colrain action is the perfect capstone experience to my undergraduate career,” writes Roberts. “It sits at the intersection of theory, creative writing, and social justice—topics in which I have been invested throughout my time at Middlebury.” She will be working on the project with advisor Spring Ulmer, visiting assistant professor of English. 

Hannah Elefante ’26, who is majoring in history and Italian, will conduct research for a project titled “I Partigiani a Firenze: The Florentine Resistance in World War II.” The project will focus on how the resistance movement in Florence used propaganda, underground publications, and radio broadcasts to spread ideas, recruit new members, and challenge the Fascist regime. She is interested in two primary questions: how partisans in Florence engaged with local and national media to communicate their message during World War II; and to what extent the Florentine partisans’ relationship with the media changed between 1943 and 1945 during the German Occupation of Florence. “Engaging with these questions will direct me towards fascinating and intriguing primary sources that will reflect the changing relationship between the partisans and the media during World War II,” said Elefante, who will work with advisor Rebecca Bennette, professor of history.

Greta Costello ’25, a history of art and museum studies major with a minor in French, will explore the moral imagery of the Dutch manuscript “The Hours of Catherine of Cleves” in conjunction with the “Egmont Breviary”—a prayer book created around the same time (1440) for Catherine of Cleves’s husband. She plans to use a comparative visual approach of the two illuminated manuscripts to gauge societal expectations of ‘pious’ women of the time. “I am looking forward to using the financial support of the Kellogg Fellowship as a way to access collections of medieval manuscript illuminations in Europe and the United States, and hopefully see one of the two manuscripts at the Morgan Library in New York,” she said. Costello will be working with advisor Eliza Garrison, professor of history of art and architecture.

Sajia Yaqouby ’25.5, a history of art major with a minor in gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, will work on a project titled “Visualizing Poetry: A Comparative Study of 19th-Century Kashmiri Manuscripts of Hafiz’s Divan.” She plans to conduct a comparative analysis of three Kashmiri copies of the Divan written by Hafiz—a 14th-century Persian poet—housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution. “Through analyzing several similar manuscripts, I hope to gain insights into the aesthetics, advancements, and cultural exchanges that characterized 19th-century Kashmir,” writes Yaqouby. “My project will engage with broader questions of cultural transmission and adaptation.” Yaqouby will work with advisor Cynthia Packert, Christian A. Johnson Professor of History of Art.

Elliote Muir, ’26, an environmental studies major with a minor in Spanish, will use the award to continue working on a project titled “Carrying the Flag: Tracing the Modernization of the Explorers Club Through Adventures of Past and Present.” Her plan includes writing a book proposal on the evolution of the Explorers Club—an adventurer’s society dedicated to field research, scientific exploration, and resource conservation—by highlighting the work and life of a present-day explorer who embodies the club’s current values, while also tracing the club’s evolution over the past 120 years. “I am eager to talk to club officials and members to understand how this change has come around and where they hope it will go, and to incorporate these insights into my work,” said Muir, who will work with advisor Daniel Brayton, Julian W. Abernethy Professor of Literature.

Madeleine Kaptein ’25.5, who is majoring in comparative literature with a minor in history of art, is working on a project titled “Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and F.W Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922): Horror and Historical Anxieties in Innovative Art.” She will travel to England and Germany to conduct research based on historical archives, observational study of physical settings, and by visiting museums to better understand both works through historical, literary and visual analysis. “My project aims to dissect the core similarities and differences between the Vampire-centered Dracula text and the Nosferatu silent film; in particular I hope to identify details that embed them within the historical periods and locations in which they were created,” writes Kaptein, who will work with advisor Roman Graf, professor of German and comparative literature.