Funding

The Department of Art History guarantees five years of funding for all newly admitted graduate students, which includes free tuition, an annual stipend of $22,007 (2022–23 rate), and health insurance. These funds are made available through a combination of teaching assistantships, research assistantships and University fellowships. Though not guaranteed, the department often funds students beyond five years with grants to cover health insurance costs and tuition, or with teaching and research assistantships depending on the department’s curricular needs.  

Outstanding incoming students may be nominated by the department for competitive fellowships such as the CLA Graduate Fellowship (CLAGF) or the Diversity of Views and Experiences (DOVE) Fellowship. These awards cover tuition and include a generous stipend.

In addition to multi-year funding packages, the department offers generous support to fund research and conference travel for graduate students. Travel funding (for which students are invited to apply each semester) is provided by the College of Liberal Arts, the Graduate School, departmental funds, and endowments. In the 2018–19 academic year, the department awarded $3,650 in endowed funds and $17,730 in university funds to graduate students for travel.  

Advanced doctoral students are eligible to apply for several university- or college-sponsored fellowships including:

Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF)

The purpose of the DDF program is to give outstanding final-year PhD candidates who are making timely progress toward the degree—typically those who will be entering their final year of graduate study—an opportunity to complete the dissertation within the upcoming academic year by devoting full-time effort to the research and writing of the dissertation. Students will receive a stipend of $25,000 plus tuition for up to 14 thesis credits each semester. The award also covers subsidized health insurance.

Foreign Language and Areas Studies (FLAS) Fellowships

The Institute for Global studies offers FLAS fellowships to graduate students for the study of less commonly taught foreign languages (including Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, modern Greek, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Urdu, and Vietnamese). These fellowships can be used for the summer or for the academic year. Only US citizens are eligible. The department may nominate up to four students.

Harold Leonard Memorial Fellowship In Film Study

The purpose of the Leonard Fellowship in Film Study is to provide stipend support for an academic year of well-defined research or study in which film history, criticism, theory, or aesthetics is the major focus of the research. Students may propose a program of research, such as that which would lead to a dissertation or course of study in which the major focus will be film. The film study program does not support film production projects. It offers a $25,000 stipend, plus tuition and subsidized health insurance for the academic year. This fellowship does not require a nomination from the applicant's department.

Hella Mears Fellowship

The Hella Mears Graduate Fellowship fund demonstrates Hella Mears's support and commitment to the Center for German & European Studies and fostering graduate student research on a wide variety of German and European topics. Since the fellowship's inception, fellowships have been awarded to advanced graduate students in a number of liberal arts disciplines. Fellowships are also offered for outstanding incoming students at time of recruitment.

Other Dissertation Fellowships

There are a number of other dissertation fellowships offered through the Graduate School. Learn more about fellowships and grants.