As promised in our June 2020 Statement on Anti-Racism, the Board of Directors of Middle East Medievalists (MEM) is pleased to announce the first round of applications for our new fellowship to support graduate students of color in medieval studies to attend the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). This round is restricted to graduate students of color who are formally participating in the 2021 meeting and need help paying the registration fee.
In order to be considered in this round, please send a paragraph containing the following information to the MEM secretary (Zayde.Antrim@trincoll.edu): your graduate program/institutional affiliation; a description of the nature of your participation in the annual meeting (including paper and panel/roundtable information as approved by the MESA program committee); and any other sources of funding available to you. We will begin reviewing applications on May 1 and will meet as much of the need as possible. If applications received by May 1 exceed the amount that we have available to disburse ($1,500), we will choose randomly from the pool. Our plan is to send funds directly to recipients in advance of MESA’s participant registration deadline. If funds are left over after this round, and if the MESA annual meeting takes place in person, we will announce another call for applications in the early fall to offset the costs of attending.