Yale-TCD Alumni Bursary - Research in Children's Literature, 2016  

The School of English is now accepting applications for the Yale-TCD Alumni Bursary for Research in Children's Literature, 2016.  This bursary is designed to encourage and facilitate collaborative research on the children’s collections in TCD and Yale. Approximately €3,500 will be made available to facilitate travel to work on the Betsy Beinecke Shirley Collection of American Children's Literature at Yale University in 2016/17. This covers costs for a four-week stay (approximately) in the USA.

Eligibility: Applicants must be students in the School of English and be engaged in an independent research project  - e.g. a final year undergraduate dissertation, Masters or PhD thesis -  within the School, and must obtain course coordinator or supervisor's approval to travel.

The Betsy Beinecke Shirley Collection of American Children's Literature encompasses 10,552 monograph items (printed books and other items, such as kerchiefs and games) along with 664 periodical titles (consisting of thousands of individual issues) and 53 archival boxes of manuscripts and letters. In the words of the woman who gathered the collection, “My underlying scheme is to present historically the books American children read – from the beginning to the present day. These books were not always the ones intended for them – but somehow they knew better and from their nursery library came the genesis of the American spirit.”
Found in the collection are books from the colonial period, reading and learning manuals, etiquette books, children's literature classics, fairy tales, poetry (including Mother Goose rhymes), American editions of British or European classics, books about American history or great American figures, letters and manuscripts by writers of children's literature, or written by young people or to them, chapbooks, juvenile journalism, games, book dummies, and original artwork by American illustrators. The Beinecke Library continues to add items that complement the original collection.

Yale University is located just north of New York City, approximately 90 minutes by train. http://www.yale.edu The award allows an independent researcher access to the collection at the Beinecke Library. The bursary should cover the costs of  return travel between Dublin and Yale, and accommodation and subsistence for an estimated four-week stay. Please note it is expected that the successful candidate will travel to Yale between June 2016 and March 2017, at a time that also suits the curator of the collection.

For more details, please see the application form.
Please send the completed application form to whytepa@tcd.ie

Deadline: 31st March, 2016 (Week 11 of Hilary Term)