Fellowships & Awards
Each year, the Melville Society offers the Walter E. Bezanson Archive Fellowship, the Hennig Cohen Prize, and Conference Travel Grants.
The Hennig Cohen Prize
Since 1998, the Melville Society has honored the memory of Professor Hennig Cohen with an annual award for the best article, book chapter, or essay in a book about Herman Melville. In addition to his founding roles in the American Studies Association, American Quarterly, and the Melville Society, the late Hennig Cohen (1919-96) was a dedicated teacher, scholar, and modern editor of Herman Melville's works.
Learn more
The 2022 Hennig Cohen Prize has been awarded to Justina Torrance for her essay, “Melville’s Milton: Of the Devil’s Party and Knows It," published in A New Companion to Herman Melville, edited by Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge (Blackwell).
Conference Travel Grants
We are happy to announce travel awards for the Melville Society's 14th International Conference, Oceanic Melville!
We will award at least five travel grants to help defray travel costs, lodging, and other expenses for conference participants with limited travel funding, in order to enable them to present their work. Grant recipients will receive $300 stipends and have their conference registration fees waived. Additional grants are possible if our fundraising efforts are successful.
These awards have been designed to support graduate students, contingent faculty, independent scholars, and other conference participants for whom travel to the conference would present financial hardship. We will prioritize early-career scholars and people who would most benefit from participation in or collaboration with the Melville Society at this point in their professional lives. We will also prioritize people who have not won Melville Society travel awards in the past, though all applications will be considered.
To apply please send the following materials to the awards committee (melvillesocietytravelawards@gmail.com) by March 1st, 2025: (1) a statement or cover letter of up to 500 words that outlines the reasons that attending our conference would be especially beneficial at this point in your career, (2) the abstract of your accepted conference paper or an equivalent document for a roundtable, workshop, etc., and (3) your current CV.
Walter E. Bezanson Archive Fellowship
The Melville Society, under the auspices of the Melville Society Cultural Project in New Bedford, offers an annual Walter E. Bezanson Fellowship to help a scholar undertake research on Herman Melville at the Society’s Archive in the Research Library of the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts. International scholars at the dissertation stage are especially encouraged to apply.
