Visiting Professorships, Fellowships
Research Residencies

The generous support of the Doris Quinn Foundation enables the New Netherland Institute to join with academic institutions, the New York State Library, and the New York State Archives in offering visiting professorships, fellowships, and research residencies. Since the grant's inception in early 2005, the first visiting professor completed his residence, as did the second fellow.

The Visiting Professorship consists of two semesters of teaching at two academic institutions. Visiting professors are invited by the New Netherland Institute in agreement with both participating institutions. The visiting professorship carries a stipend of $15,000 per semester, which is matched by the host institution. Courses are determined in consultation between the visiting professor and the appropriate department of the host institution.

The Fellowship consists of a nine-month dissertation program to facilitate research on New Netherland and the Dutch Colonial Atlantic World, part of which is spent working in the rich collections of the New Netherland Institute, the New York State Library, and the New York State Archives at Albany, and one semester in residence at the MacNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. The fellowship carries a stipend of $18,000. Doctoral candidates in any discipline who are in the research or writing stage of the dissertation are eligible, and any project dealing with the Dutch experience in North America in the Atlantic world before 1850 will be considered.

The first Visiting Professor was Jaap Jacobs, of Leiden University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1999 with his dissertation Een Zegenrijk Gewest: Nieuw-Nederland in de Zeventiende Eeuw  (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Prometheus/Bert Bakker, 1999). This volume is available in English translation as New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (Brill Academic Publishers).

During the fall 2006 semester Dr. Jacobs taught a lecture course entitled "The Dutch and the Atlantic World," and a seminar entitled "Dutch and English in Colonial New York" at the Department of History of Cornell University. He spent the spring 2007 semester at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies in the history department of the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught two courses, entitled, "The Early Modern Dutch Empire" and "Identity, Ethnicity, and Culture: When New York Was Dutch.".

The second Fellow was Noah Gelfand, a Ph.D. candidate at New York University. He spent the fall of 2006 at the New Netherland Institute in Albany, and the spring semester of 2007 at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies in the history department of the University of Pennsylvania. His work traces connections of Jewish commerce and community in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch-Atlantic world, focusing on Recife, Curacao, New York, Suriname, and Newport. His dissertation, which was defended in May 2008 and will be granted in September 2008, is entitled, "A People Within and Without: International Jewish Commerce and Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Dutch Atlantic World." He will be a Guest Professor at Sarah Lawrence College in the fall semester of 2008.

The first Fellow was Jeroen van den Hurk, of the Art History Department at the University of Delaware. He spent the fall of 2005 at the New Netherland Institute in Albany and the spring of 2006 at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies in the history department of the University of Pennsylvania. He completed the requirements for his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware in May 2006 with his dissertation entitled "Imagining New Netherland: Origins and Survival of Netherlandic Architecture in Old New York, 1614-1776."

The first Quinn Library Research Resident was Martha Dickinson Shattuck, recipient of the Research Residency in 2007. Dr. Shattuck is the editor for the New Netherland Project. She is currently editing and annotating the New Netherland Papers held in the Bontemantel Collection at the New York Public Library.  The papers cover a broad range of subjects that require considerable research for the annotation material. For this task, she used secondary and primary material held at the New York State Library.

The first Quinn Archives Research Resident is Andrea C. Mosterman, a Ph.D. candidate at Boston University, where she is preparing her dissertation, entitled "Sharing Spaces in a New World Environment: African-Dutch contributions to North American Culture, 1626-1826," and expects to complete the requirements for her degree in the spring of 2010. Her research concerns African and Dutch cultural exchanges and social interactions in the Hudson Valley that brought about new practices and traditions particular to the region. She will begin her Quinn Archives Research Residency at the New York State Archives and Library in the fall of 2008.