The Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies invites applications each academic year for the Harry Starr Fellowship in Judaica. Applicants may come from any discipline in the humanities or social sciences associated with studies in Judaica; junior faculty are especially encouraged to apply. PhDs are required.
The Harry Starr Fellowships were established by a bequest from the estate of Harry Starr, A.B. 1921, LL.B. 1924, who had a broad vision of academic Jewish studies and of their place in university programs in the humanities and the social sciences.
The Starr Fellowship covers travel expenses and a stipend for a group of scholars from around the world to gather at Harvard to engage in full-time research in a designated subject area in Judaica. By drawing together scholars from a variety of universities and a variety of disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, the Starr Fellows not only share their research with each other but also with members of the Harvard community.
Deadline: Jan. 5, 2024
2024-2025 Theme: Ancient Jews in and against Empires
The 2024-2025 application cycle will be available to scholars working on topics related to Ancient Jews in and against Empires. The story of Ancient Judaism has been traditionally told as a tale of Jewish survival in resistance to a series of foreign empires. Recent studies of Rabbinics and late antique Judaism have increasingly revealed a more complicated dynamic of Jewish life under Roman, Christian, Sassanian, and early Islamic empires, reflecting the specificity of different imperial cultures and not readily reduced to any simple dichotomy of assimilation and resistance. So too for Second Temple Judaism: in conversation with new research on the Hellenistic Near East within Classics, scholars have been attending anew to Ptolemaic and Seleucid imperial cultures.
Eligibility: Scholars from around the world, recent Ph.D. recipients, junior faculty
Stipend Amount: $40,000 for the spring semester or $70,000 for the full academic year