Patrick Henry History Fellowship

The Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience invites applications for its full-time residential fellowship, which supports outstanding work on American history by both scholars and non-academics.

The Center’s Patrick Henry History Fellowship includes a $45,000 stipend, health benefits, faculty privileges, a book allowance, and a nine-month residency (during the academic year) in a historic 18th-century house in Chestertown, Md.

Applicants should have a significant project currently in progress — a book, film, oral history archive, podcast series, museum exhibition, or similar work. The project should address the history and/or legacy – broadly defined – of the U.S. founding era and/or the nation’s founding ideas. It might focus directly on early America, or on the myriad ways the questions that preoccupied the nation’s founding generation have shaped America’s later history. Work that contributes to ongoing national conversations about America’s past and present, with the potential to reach a wide public, is particularly sought.

We encourage a broad reading of such terms as “founders” and “founding ideas.” Past fellowship topics have ranged as broadly as the early history of the slave trade, American religious minorities, and the LGBTQ rights movement.

Read About Past Patrick Henry Fellows

Applications for the 2024-2025 Patrick Henry Fellowship are now closed. Next year's application will open in September 2024.

More information about application 

Email applications to: applications_starrcenter@washcoll.edu

Questions may be emailed to Chrissy Sinatra, Assistant Director for Communications and Outreach, at csinatra2@washcoll.edu.

 Support for the Starr Center Fellowships at Washington College comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Starr Foundation, the Hodson Trust, the Barksdale-Dabney-Patrick Henry Family Foundation, and other donors and friends. The Patrick Henry Fellowship is cosponsored by the Rose O’Neill Literary House.