The 2010 Newcombe Dissertation Fellows have been announced.
Please check back at a later date for details regarding the 2011 competition.
The Charlotte W. Newcombe
Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
APPLICATION INFORMATION
Basics | Components | Deadline | Tips
Applications must be filed using the online form provided at the link near the bottom of this page. A completed application comprises the online application form, three letters of recommendation, and a current transcript.
NOTE: In order to file an application, you must register as a user of the Woodrow Wilson Web site. There is no filing or registration fee.
When you register, you will provide basic contact information and choose a username and password. You will then receive an email to confirm your registration. Completing this user profile will enable you to save your unfinished application, so that you can return later to add or change entries and view a checklist of supporting documents received. We recommend bookmarking the link provided in your confirmation email so that you can easily return to your profile.
After registering, select “Apply for Fellowship,” then choose “Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship.” If you wish to sign off during the application process, be sure to hit the "Save" button at the bottom; this will save the information you have entered up to this point. When you have finished entering information and are certain that you will not wish to edit your application further, then click the "Submit Application" button. Once you click on this button you will be unable to make any changes to your application.
Components of the Application
- Included in the online application are these four required narrative components: an abstract, a full proposal, a selected bibliography, and a timetable for completion. Please see the tips at the bottom of this page for crucial information about formatting these narrative components.
- Abstract
The dissertation abstract, which should be no more than 200 words in length, summarizes your topic and its significance for the understanding of an important ethical or religious question.
- Proposal
The proposal should describe the proposed work, discuss its relevance to ethical or religious values, describe source materials and their availability, comment on any special preparation or skills you have for carrying out the work, and give a clear statement of the research methodology employed.
The proposal must be no longer than 2000 words (which is equivalent to roughly six pages in 12-point, double-spaced type). - Selected Bibliography
The bibliography should indicate the major theoretical and critical works that bear on your dissertation, and should be no longer than two pages in standard bibliographic format (i.e., with entries single-spaced and with two spaces between entries). Note that this is a selected bibliography, not a comprehensive bibliography nor a list of works cited; it is important to include the works that most clearly demonstrate your preparation to carry out the work you propose.
- Timetable
The timetable should detail your chapter outline, your progress to date, and your schedule for the coming year. It should be no longer than 350 words (equivalent to approximately one double-spaced page).
- To be submitted separately are your supporting materials—letters of recommendation and transcript.
- Three Letters of Recommendation
You must submit three letters of recommendation, one from your dissertation director and two from other faculty members familiar with your work. Be sure that each recommender has a copy of the recommender form, available here in PDF format.
Download the recommender form
If you are unable to open PDF documents, you may wish to download Adobe Reader (free software).
As the instructions provided on the form indicate, recommenders should submit their letters directly as email attachments to cwndocs@woodrow.org. Applicants should not forward recommenders’ letters.
CAUTION: In recent competitions, some recommenders have submitted generic letters, forwarded by services that retain and distribute such letters from participating faculty members. Such letters do not serve Newcombe applicants well. Identify recommenders who will take the time to write specifically about the quality of your work and its fit with the principles of the Newcombe competition. - Transcript*
One official transcript from the graduate school which will award the Ph.D. degree should be requested immediately. Send M.A. transcripts only if the M.A. institution differs from the Ph.D. institution. Do not send undergraduate transcripts.
Transcripts must be mailed in the sealed envelope that your university provides, and may be directed to:
The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
P.O. Box 5281, CWN Department
Princeton, NJ 08543
Do not send undergraduate transcripts. Send M.A. transcripts only if from a different institution
If you are also applying for a Woodrow Wilson Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in Women's Studies, you may submit one transcript to satisfy the requirements of both the Newcombe and Women’s Studies competitions. Send an email to the program staff indicating that you are applying for both fellowships so your documentation may be appropriately tracked.
*Note that transcripts and recommendation letters are the only documents that may be mailed to our office. All other materials must be submitted online.
Deadline
The deadline for all applications and application materials in the 2009 competition is November 15, 2009.
By early March 2010, all applicants will be advised whether or not their candidacy has advanced to the final selection round. Results of the competition are announced in early April.
Tips
Current contact information:
Please be sure to provide a phone number and email address where program staff can contact you if for any reason your application is incomplete, or if there are questions about your eligibility.
Long-term/alternative contact information:
You will learn in March if you have reached finalist status, and will be contacted by mid-April if you have been selected for the Fellowship. Particularly if you expect to be outside the United States in spring 2010, please be sure to provide alternative contact information for someone in the U.S. (relative, spouse/partner, etc.) who will be able to help us get in touch with you.
Writing a compelling proposal:
Eligible proposals have ethical or religious values as a central concern. Selection committees will look for proposals that illuminate religious or ethical questions of broad significance and elucidate the ways in which these values do or should inform choices and give meaning to people's lives. Dissertations may consider any period of time, but should be concerned with continuing problems and questions of human life. Connections should be made between specific topics and wider religious or ethical questions. Critical editions, biographies, studies that are primarily statistical, collaborations, and annotated texts are not acceptable. A look at the dissertation topics of recent Fellows may serve to clarify the nature of the Newcombe program.
Formatting your documents:
The plain-text software used in this application does not support some of the formatting options and automatic features commonly used in word processing programs.
- Character formats and special characters: The software that processes your online application produces only plain text output—no italics, underlining, boldfacing, or special characters/diacritical marks will appear in the copy of your materials that the committees receive.
- To indicate italics or underlining (e.g., for a book title), place a single underscore before
and after the text you are indicating.
Example:
not As You Like It or As You Like It
but _As You Like It_
- To boldface or create a subheading, use upper-case letters.
Example:
not Section II: Methodology or Section II: Methodology
but SECTION II: METHODOLOGY
- Do not use diacritical marks and special characters; transliterate if necessary.
Example:
not façade but facade
not ācārya but acarya or acharya
Any diacritical marks or special characters will be reproduced in your materials as question marks:
fa?ade, ?c?rya
- To indicate italics or underlining (e.g., for a book title), place a single underscore before
and after the text you are indicating.
- Line spacing and paragraph spacing: Prepare the narrative components of your application (abstract, proposal, bibliography, timetable, statement of commitment) in a word processing program, then paste your text into the areas provided on the online application. When you paste in text, your paragraph formatting and line spacing will disappear (for instance, double-spaced text will look single-spaced). Do NOT attempt to recreate paragraph formatting or line spacing within the memo field of the application after you paste in your text.
- To put appropriate space between paragraphs in your original document, hit "Return" twice at the end of each paragraph—do not use soft returns (shift+enter) and do not use "space before/space after" to create space between paragraphs. These formatting codes are not picked up by the plain-text software that processes applications.
- To indent a paragraph, hit the space bar several times—do not use tabs or special paragraph formats (e.g., hanging indents). Again, these will not be picked up by the plain-text application software.
- To put appropriate space between paragraphs in your original document, hit "Return" twice at the end of each paragraph—do not use soft returns (shift+enter) and do not use "space before/space after" to create space between paragraphs. These formatting codes are not picked up by the plain-text software that processes applications.
- Footnotes: Automated footnotes, such as those created by using the "Insert/Reference/Footnote" command in Microsoft Word, are not recognized by the plain-text software used in this application, and will be lost. to insert a footnote, simply type the note number in square brackets at the end of a sentence, like this:
...as Butler and others have suggested.[1]
Then, at the end of your proposal, simply enter several hard returns and place your notes there as numbered endnotes. While endnotes are not counted against the length of your proposal, they should not be used for lengthy narrative additions that do not fit within the allocated word count. - Pasting in text from a Web site or email: HTML coding of the kind used on Web pages and in some emails may not be recognized by the application software. Therefore, if you wish to copy and paste text from a Web site or email into a memo field on the application, it is strongly recommended that you first “wash” that text by copying it into Notepad or another plain-text program, removing any code, and then copying the cleaned-up text into the memo field.
- Spellcheck and proofread: Even if you have spellchecked your document before pasting text into the application, a final proofreading once your text has been pasted in—ensuring that the full text has been transferred as you intended—is strongly recommended.