The SAH/Mellon Author Awards are designed to provide financial relief to scholars who are publishing their first monograph on the history of the built environment, and who are responsible for paying for rights and permissions for images or for commissioning maps, charts or line drawings in their publications.

Applications for the SAH/Mellon Author Awards will be considered only for book-length, scholarly manuscripts on architectural history and the history of the built environment that are currently under contract with a publisher. Awards are made solely in support of image acquisition or creation, such as for reimbursement of costs for the reproduction and licensing of images in print and digital formats or the creation of original artwork such as drawings or maps. This award does not cover new photography.

Successful applicants will be first-time book authors who are under contract with a publisher for a manuscript on the history of the built environment.

Applications are judged on two primary measures:

  1. the quality of the project
  2. the need for financial assistance on the part of the author.

Additional criteria for making awards include:

  1. support will be for emerging scholars who have recently (within the last six years) been awarded a PhD, assistant professors in the tenure track, postdoctoral scholars, early-career independent scholars and/or early career scholars who are publishing a first book;
  2. funds are to be used for reimbursement of anticipated expenses for rights and reproductions as well as commissioning special charts, maps and other types of didactic illustrations (not photographs);
  3. books must be under contract with a publisher;
  4. SAH will award grants to authors for manuscripts only on architectural history and the history of the built environment;
  5. as this is an international award program, authors from anywhere in the world may apply. All applicants must be members of SAH.

Eligibility:

  • Awards are open to authors of all nations; however, applications must be submitted in English.
  • Authors can be under contract with commercial or nonprofit publishers. Self-published books are not eligible.
  • Books covering all periods and areas in the history of architecture, landscape architecture, urbanism, and related subjects are eligible, except for those about art history and visual studies. Excavation or other technical reports, articles, previously published works (including collections of previously published essays), or congress proceedings are not eligible.
  • The author will have received a PhD and must submit proof and date of PhD and current professional standing.
  • The author must be a current member of SAH.
  • A project that has been rejected for an SAH/Mellon Author Awards grant may not be resubmitted.

APPLICATION COMPONENTS

Applicants must submit the Author’s Form1 and Publisher’s Form2 along with additional materials listed in the Application Checklist3. The author is responsible for requesting information from the publisher and ensuring that the publisher submits the Publisher’s Form and reader’s reports to SAH.

SUBMISSION PROCESS

The author is responsible for submitting the primary material for the application, including the Author’s Form, a complete list of images, sources, rights requested and obtained, and costs per image, and materials from the manuscript itself. The author is also responsible for requesting and confirming submission of several components of the application from the publisher, including the Publisher’s Form and two or more reader's reports.

The author ensures all materials listed in the checklist below are sent as separate email attachments to Chris Higgins at chiggins[at]sah.org (receipt provided).

Applications submitted solely by publishers or for production support will not be accepted. Publishers may submit an application for production costs for the same title to the Millard Meiss Publication Fund4.

  • 1. http://www.sah.org/docs/default-source/fellowship-and-awards/author%27s-form.pdf?sfvrsn=10
  • 2. http://www.sah.org/docs/default-source/fellowship-and-awards/publisher%27s-form.pdf?sfvrsn=10
  • 3. http://www.sah.org/docs/default-source/fellowship-and-awards/sah-mellon-application-checklist.pdf?sfvrsn=2
  • 4. http://www.collegeart.org/meiss/