Birgit Baldwin Fellowship in Scandinavian Studies
About the Award
The Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study (SASS) is pleased to offer the Birgit Baldwin Fellowship in Scandinavian Studies, a grant to encourage the research and writing of dissertations for the PhD in topics concerned with Scandinavian (Nordic) literature or film that can most effectively be pursued in the archives and libraries of the Nordic countries. The stipend is $30,000 payable in two installments for travel to and living expenses in the Nordic region during one academic year. The application deadline is 1 December of the preceding year.
Important Dates
Application Opens: September 15, 2023
Application Deadline: December 1, 2023
Candidates Notified: February 2024
Official Announcement: March 2024
Applicant Requirements
Applicants must be earning their degrees in North American universities and must be members in good standing of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, both during the year in which they submit applications and in the fellowship year. After completion of the fellowship year, the Birgit Baldwin Fellow will be invited to give a short report at the next annual meeting of SASS.
Application Procedure
Applicants should submit a dissertation proposal that includes research plans and evidence of competency (including linguistic competency) to carry them out, supported by letters from two scholars. The successful applicant will demonstrate the significance of the subject, the need to work in Scandinavia (the Nordic region), and the feasibility of accomplishing the objectives of the research plans. The fellowship committee encourages a realistic assessment from both applicants and referees of the applicants’ reading and oral/aural skills, taking into consideration that in many cases reading may be more important than oral facility to the efficient completion of the project at hand. Although the need for some further specialized language training will not disqualify anyone from consideration for this fellowship, applicants should not expect to spend significant amounts of time during the fellowship year on language acquisition.
About Birgit Baldwin
The Birgit Baldwin Fellowship was established in 2004 to honor the memory of Birgit Baldwin (1960–1988). The daughter of Professors Jenny Jochens and John W. Baldwin, Birgit was nearing completion of her PhD in Comparative Literature at Yale when she was fatally injured by a drunk driver in June 1988. Though majoring in French and German literature, Birgit also followed in her mother’s footsteps, avidly pursuing a scholarly interest in Scandinavian literature. She was a member of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study from 1980–1988.
At the annual meeting of SASS in May 1988, Birgit presented a paper titled “Irony, ‘that little, invisible personage’: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s ‘Ghosts,’” for which she was posthumously awarded the Aurora Borealis Prize. “Jammersminde Remembered: A New Look at the Status of History and Literature,” an article Birgit had begun in an undergraduate seminar at Yale in 1984, was published posthumously in the Summer 1990 issue of Scandinavian Studies.
