In the summer of 2006 I spent seven weeks traveling in Italy and Spain
thanks to the generous funding provided by the Center for the Advanced
Study of Visual Arts and their Predoctoral Fellowship Program for Travel
Abroad for Historians of American Art.
Each year CASVA awards a small number of fellowships to students of
American Art so that this group of domestic scholars may have what may
be a relatively rare opportunity to travel abroad. As such, this particular
award is not intended to offer support for dissertation research, and
so is one of a few prestigious awards that are available to doctoral
students who have not yet finished their course work. At the time that
I applied for this fellowship I was in the midst of my second year in
the Art History department. I thought of fellowships as awards that
students applied for only once they had begun dissertation work and
had a reason to travel to archives, or as alternative sources of funding
when university-provided fellowships expired. For this reason I was
surprised when the chair of my department, Prof. Sarah Fraser, approached
me as a potential applicant for a CASVA. Aside from my graduate school
applications this was the first time that I had applied for a fellowship.
With such a lack of previous experience in composing applications, I
turned to my department faculty and colleagues for support. I attribute
most of my success in being awarded the fellowship to the time that
professors Lyle Massey and Hannah Feldman offered in commenting on drafts
of my essay and CV, and the model that my colleague Leslie Ureña provided
as an example of a successful application from the previous year. Negotiating
the application guidelines was the most opaque part of the application
process. Though it would have been easy to complete the requisite CV,
essay of intent, and schedule and budget for travel that this particular
CASVA fellowship required, doing so would not have been enough to win
the award. In addition to these basic requirements a successful application
had to have a focus and motivation. Saying that the application essentially
required a thesis statement probably sounds obvious, but according to
the application guidelines the only purpose of the award was to allow
me to travel abroad. For me this immediately inspired fantasies of traveling
to the capitals of Eastern Asia, to India, or to Argentina to spend
the summer learning to tango and speak Spanish. If anything, it seemed
that the award was specifically not to fulfill any work-related study
as the guidelines specified that the fellowship was not for dissertation
research. If I was not supposed to do work, then I surely was supposed
to go on vacation! Fortunately my colleague, Leslie Ureña, had been
awarded this CASVA the previous year and was able to provide invaluable
advice and her own application as a model of success. In the Art History
department all doctoral students are required to specialize in a minor
field. Leslie had used her research into her minor to structure her
application, and consequently her travels abroad allowed her to see
the monuments and paintings in which she had become something of an
expert. Though ultimately my travels did not take me to places as unfamiliar
as I might have initially imagined, I am certain that using the base
of knowledge that I was acquiring through my own studies in my minor
field of Italian Baroque art and architecture is the reason that I was
successful in winning the fellowship. Leslie’s own application was based
on a template that had been handed down through the years as one NU
Art Historian after another won this particular CASVA fellowship. When
I first looked at it I was shocked by the level of detail with which
she had crafted her itinerary. The essay was, as one might expect, a
logical progression of places and works with astute observations as
to their historical and locative relationships, but the itinerary and
budget included daily activities organized nearly to the hour with annotations
and interesting facts that showed the relevance of a few sites. This
included the departure and arrival times of trains and ferries, and
the names of hotels that she would stay in. It seemed that the only
information that she hadn’t provided were the menu options for each
of her meals! Additionally, her budget was planned nearly down to the
euro. The precision of her application gave it the presence of a theatrical
script. Not only did she seem highly competent both intellectually and
practically, but I have no doubt that in reviewing her application the
readers at CASVA could imagine themselves ferry hopping from site to
site. I suppose that the same would have been true for my own application
which was so inspired by Leslie’s example. Academically, my travels
have provided me with an understanding of baroque space that I would
not have been able to glean from reading books and looking at photographs.
It is unclear what role this will play in my major field studies, or
in my future as an Art Historian. Having won a fellowship like the CASVA
though has had concrete effects that have already begun to produce fruit.
With the confidence of having been awarded the CASVA I went ahead an
applied also for a generous grant for technology and a stipend from
NU. This grant provided me with a digital camera which I used to attempt
to recreate the sense of movement and juxtaposition of objects that
are generally not available in books. In the case of the CASVA, a fellowship
provided me with an opportunity I didn’t even know was available to
me as a second year student. At this point I feel that I am more likely
to seek out external sources of funding for projects—even for ones I
might not otherwise have imagined.
