The department offers multiple funding opportunities, including full tuition and a stipend for incoming Ph.D. students, summer funds to support research activities, and opportunities for teaching.  Unfortunately, the department does not have the ability to offer MA students full financial support.  Additional information can be found below. 

Incoming PhD Students

Policy on Additional Jobs / Internships for Fellows/TAs

Dodge Assistantships

Summer/ Winter Teaching Opportunities

Work-study

Dissertation Support

 

Incoming PhD Students

Students admitted into the Ph.D. program are generally offered five years of funding through a combination of fellowships and teaching assistantships, which are contingent on maintaining good academic standing within the department. Additional opportunities for funding are offered annually through both the department and the graduate school in order to support conference travel, summer research, and dissertation completion. Our doctoral students have been successful in securing outside competitive funding for their dissertation travel, research, and writing.

Policy on Additional Jobs / Internships for Fellows/TAs

Fellowships and TAships are intended to provide the means for students to dedicate themselves full time to their course of study. As a result, they may not be combined with any additional fellowship or job that requires a full time commitment. Students may hold part time internships or lectureships up to a total of 15-20 hours a week. The department may consider exceptions on a case-by-case basis. To do so the student should submit a letter to the GPD explaining the nature of the position and the reasons for the exception. The GPD will then consult first with the adviser and then with the departments executive committee.

Dodge Assistantships

The Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University offers Dodge Graduate Assistantships to doctoral candidates admitted to the Department of Art History who are committed to research on unofficial art of the former Soviet Union. Established in 2002 with a generous endowment from the Avenir Foundation in honor of Norton T. and Nancy Dodge, this assistantship program provides full tuition, fees, and health benefits, as well as an annual stipend for living expenses, to graduate students (known as Dodge Fellows). Travel funds for research and language study abroad, as well as for participation in conferences, are also available to Dodge Fellows by formal application.

Dodge Fellows are eligible for five years of assistantship funding. During the course of the first three years, students work 15 hours a week in the Zimmerli’s Russian and Soviet curatorial offices; the subsequent two years support dissertation research and writing without any work obligation.

Work at the Zimmerli Art Museum is supervised by Dr. Jane A. Sharp, Professor of Art History and Research Curator for the Dodge Collection, and Dr. Julia Tulovsky, Curator for Russian and Soviet Nonconformist Art, with the assistance of other museum staff. The fellows perform a variety of tasks such as curatorial assistance in exhibition and catalogue production as well as administration and collection management. During the third year Dodge Fellows are given the opportunity to curate their own exhibition from the Zimmerli’s Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection.

More information on the Dodge can be found here.

Summer/ Winter Teaching Opportunities

Each year, the department can offer a few students the opportunity to teach stand-alone courses as a part time lecturer (PTL) over summer and winter sessions.  Information about how to apply is circulated typically in the fall semester.

Work-study

Student loans and Federal work-study programs are administered by the University. Part-time positions in the department offices, the Visual Resources Collection, the Art Library, the Zimmerli Art Museum, and as a curatorial assistant to the Women Artists’ Series at Douglass College are available to students who qualify for the Federal Work-Study program. For the location of the offices for the various financial aid programs, please consult http://studentaid.rutgers.edu/

Student loans and Federal work-study programs are administered by the University. Consult the Graduate School Catalog for the location of the offices for the various financial aid programs.

Summer Research and Travel

There is an annual competition for funds to support students who take advantage of special study opportunities away from campus or who wish to conduct predissertation explorations of research sites or to do other kinds of preliminary dissertation-related work. Special study opportunities include specialized workshops, summer courses in advanced methods, language courses that are not available locally, or other forms of specialized training entailing fees and/or travel expenses.

Predissertation awards are intended for students at the beginning of their doctoral research who would materially benefit from an opportunity to explore research sites, arrange for access to archives or collections, or otherwise conduct pilot or sample studies. The program is particularly targeted at students whose preliminary work will contribute to their subsequent ability to write successful proposals for external fellowships or research grants to fund the primary research or the writing of the dissertation.

These grants are generously supported by the Mary Bartlet Cowdrey Fund and the Mitnick-Jacobs Fund. A call for applications will go out early in the spring.  The Mitnick-Jacobs fund will be used to support students with a topic in American Art. This fund was established by alumna Barbara Mitnick and in memory of her father Syndey Leon Jacobs.  The Cowdrey fund is open to all students.

Dissertation Support

Doctoral students who are beyond their funding packages are encouraged to apply for external grants and fellowships to support their dissertation research. Our students have been highly successful at obtaining grants from a wide range of well-known foundations. The services offered at Gradfund  have been invaluable in helping students locate and secure lesser-known fellowship opportunities.  

In addition, students have been successful in securing up to two additional years of funding through TAships in the English department, designated for teaching the university's required Expository Writing courses.  The department issues a call for applications in the beginning of every spring semester.

Finally, the unviersity offers two competitive dissertation completion fellowships, both of which require nomination through the department.  These are intended for students who are entering the final year of their degree.  They may be held as a seventh year of support but recipients will not be eligible for any future funding in the form of a TA, GA, Fellowship, or tuition remission.  More information is below.

  1. Mellon Dissertation Fellowships are awarded on the basis of academic excellence and probability of completion; Fellowships include a stipend, health insurance, and dissertation tuition. Students in participating departments who are nearing the completion of their Ph.D. program are eligible to apply. Students who accept the Fellowship are expected to defend their dissertation and meet all Graduate School requirements in order to receive their degree by no later than October of the year following the grant period.  Mellon Dissertation Fellows cannot accept any other fellowship, stipend, or employment during the fellowship year.  The call for Mellon applications generally goes out in the fall.
  2. The University & Louis Bevier Fellowship is awarded through the School of Graduate Studies and is available for dissertation research to advanced students. The call for Bevier fellowships generally goes out in the early spring semester.