Communal Studies Prizes and Research Travel Grant

2024 Prize Winners

The undergraduate prize for $250 is awarded to Kate Newsome from the Department of Advanced Studies (Media and Communications) at the University of Sydney, Australia for “Signs from God: How the Bruderhof community defied the odds, and the sceptics, to prosper in Australia.”

The winner of the 2024 Research Travel Grant for $2,000 is Dr. Claudia Roesch, Research Associate and Lecturer from the Department of History, Sociology, Empirical Education Research at the University of Konstanz, Germany for “Utopian Engineering: Solving the 19th Century Slavery, Labor, and the Women’s Questions with Science.”

NEW DEADLINE

Send submissions as an email attachment to Dr. Silvia Rode at sarode@usi.edu.

    

UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE PRIZES

The Center for Communal Studies at the University of Southern Indiana annually invites submissions for its prize competition for the best undergraduate and graduate student papers on historic or contemporary communal groups, intentional communities and utopias. Submissions may come from any academic discipline and should be focused on a topic clearly related to communal groups or utopias.

Undergraduate Paper or Thesis

Author of the best undergraduate paper or thesis will receive $250. The annual deadline for submissions is April 10. Submissions should be sent as an email attachment to Dr. Silvia Rode sarode@usi.edu. Submissions may come from any academic discipline and should be focused on a topic clearly related to communal groups or utopias. The prize winner will be announced in April.

Graduate Paper or Thesis or Dissertation Chapter

Author of the best graduate paper or thesis or dissertation chapter will receive $500. The annual deadline for submissions is April 10. If sending a thesis or dissertation chapter, please include a short explanation of how the submission fits into the larger work. Submissions may come from any academic discipline and should be focused on a topic clearly related to communal groups or utopias. Submissions should not be longer than 35 pages and should be sent as an email attachment to Dr. Silvia Rode sarode@usi.edu. The prize winner will be announced in April.

The winner of the 2021 Research Travel Grant is Erik John Freeman of the University of Connecticut for his Ph.D. research on “The Mormon International: Communitarian Politics and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1830-1890.”

RESEARCH TRAVEL GRANT

The Center for Communal Studies at the University of Southern Indiana annually invites applications for a Research Travel Grant to fund research at the Communal Studies Collection at USI's David L. Rice Library. The Communal Studies Collection's rich archival materials hold information on over 600 historic and contemporary communal societies, utopias and intentional communities. A complete listing of communities can be found on the library website.

Strengths of the Collection include materials on the Harmonists and Owenites who settled nearby New Harmony, Indiana, but the breadth of the Collection covers American communalism more broadly. Applicants may be graduate students or established scholars in the United States or abroad from any discipline that involves the study of communalism.

The grant will fund research up to $2,000 to be used by 30 June of the subsequent year. (Fees may apply to grant winners from outside the United States.) All applications must include:

• Letter detailing the project and its significance to communal studies
• Proposed budget
• Vita

Send submissions as an email attachment to Dr. Silvia Rode sarode@usi.edu. Applications are due annually by April 10. The winner of the Research Travel Grant is announced in April.

COMMUNAL STUDIES COLLECTIONS PRIZES

WHAT: Two $250 prizes: one to assist a USI student (undergraduate or graduate) and one to assist a USI faculty or staff member in presenting a paper at a conference.

PURPOSE: To encourage research in the USI Rice Library Communal Studies Collection. Winners must use research materials from the Collection to present a paper at a conference within one year of receiving the prize.

WHO IS ELIGIBLE: All USI students (undergraduate or graduate), faculty (current, retired, full-time, part-time) and staff (full-time and part-time).

APPLICATION: Send a one-page application – including collections used, research completed, your name and whether you are faculty, staff or student – to Dr. Silvia Rode (sarode@usi.edu) as an email attachment.