Description
This Fellowship honors Eileen Southern, the pioneering historian of African-American music, whose book Music of Black Americans: A History (1971) and journal The Black Perspective in Music, which she edited with her husband Joseph Southern, helped to ground and propel the study of black music history. She received, among many other honors, the National Humanities Medal and our society’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Eileen Southern Fellowship is awarded competitively to scholars at any phase of their careers in support of research on music of the African diaspora in the Americas. The fellowship may support research expenses for archival or ethnographic research, including but not limited to travel expenses, lodging, books, and media resources.
The award is offered once annually. The maximum award is $1,000.
A one-page budget and final report are to be submitted by the recipient to the Executive Director of the Society no more than one year after the award is presented.
Eligibility
Applicants must be members in good standing of the Society for American Music.
Application Requirements
In addition to the application form, applicants must provide the following materials:
- A current full CV
- A narrative of no more than five pages (double-spaced) that describes the scope of the project and the need for funding
- A one-page budget for the project
Deadline
October 15
Past Fellows
| Year | Winners |
|---|---|
| 2026 | Gibb Schreffler, Recovering the African American Heritage of Sea Shanties |
| 2025 | Elea Proctor, "Black Women and the Minstrel Tradition" |
| 2024 | Max Jefferson, "An Ark for the Cult-Nats: Afro-Surreal Expressionism and Black Nationalist Music, 1965-1977" |
| 2023 | Maya Brown-Boateng, “Following the Sounds of the Banjo: Critical Organology, Material Culture, and Banjo Histories” |
| 2022 | Kristen M. Turner and Ayana O. Smith “’A House of Many Mansions’: Undine Smith Moore’s Pedagogical Agenda” |
| 2020 | Michael Levine, “Media Piracy and Cultural Exchange in Cuba’s Offline Internet” |
| 2019 | Samantha Ege, “Composing the Black Chicago Renaissance” |
| 2018 | Henry Stoll, "The Strains of Haitian Independence, 1804-1820: Music at the Beginning and End of Empire" |