The Board of Directors of the American Handel Society invites applications for the 2006 J. Merrill Knapp Research Fellowship, an award of up to $2,000 to be granted to an advanced graduate student or a scholar in the early stages of his or her career. This fellowship may be used on its own or to augment other grants or fellowships, but may be held no more than twice. The fellowship is intended to support work in the area of Handel or other related research. The winner of the award is given the opportunity to present a paper at the biennial meeting of the American Handel Society.

In awarding the fellowship, preference will be given to advanced graduate students; to persons who have not previously held this fellowship; to students at North American universities and residents of North America; and to proposals on specifically Handelian topics.

Applicants should submit a curriculum vitae, a description of the project for which the fellowship will be used (not to exceed 750 words), a budget showing how and when the applicant plans to use the funds, and a description of other grants applied for or received for the same project. In addition, applicants should have two letters of recommendations sent directly to the address below.

Applicants for the 2005 Fellowship must be postmarked no later than March 15, 2006, and should be sent to:

Richard King
School of Music
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20912 

Tel: (301) 405-5523
Fax: (301) 314-9504 (fax, to the attention of Richard King)

Applications and letters of recommendation may also be sent via e-mail (if attachments, in both *.doc and *.rtf formats please) to rgking@umd.edu.

Applicants will be informed of the Board's decision by May 15, 2006.

The winners of the Fellowship since its establishment in 1989:
 

Year	Recipient	Affiliation	Supported Research
1989	David Ross Hurley	University of Chicago	To complete the recipient's dissertation: "Handel's Compositional Process: A Study of Selected Oratorios"
1990	Richard G. King	Stanford University	To study Handelian biographical archives in the Netherlands
1991	John Winemiller	University of Chicago	To complete archival research on Handel's self-borrowings from his abandoned opera, Titus (1731/32) and thereby complete his dissertation, "Aspects of neoclassicism in Handel's compositional aesthetic."
1993	Michael Corn	University of Illinois	-
1993	Channan Willner	City University of New York	To complete the recipient's dissertation on the analysis of Handel's music
1995	Mark Risinger	Harvard University	To study Handel autographs in London and Cambridge, England
1996	Barbara Durost	Claremont Graduate School	To study manuscript sources of William Croft's works in England and to search for concordances in major collections of single songs and anthologies in English libraries, and thereby shed light on Handel's activities during the same period
1998	Todd Gilman	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	To study sources and materials by the English composer and Handel contemporary, Augustine Arne, at the Britten-Pears Library in Aldeburth, England
1999	Kenneth McLeod	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	To study sources for Eccles' and Handel's Semele in London to assist with the completion of his project, "Masculine Anxiety in Handel's Semele"
2000	Stanley Pelkey	Gordon College	To explore the the formation of canonical repertoires in Georgian Britain and the influence that those canons, and especially the music of Handel, had on compositional practices in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
2001	Major Peter C. Giotta (Asst. Professor of English)	United States Military Academy (West Point)	'That Divine Poet': Milton, Handel, and Samson agonistes." Prof. Giotta will use the Fellowship for a research trip to England to explore how Handel's oratorio Samson affected the perception of Milton's poetry in the 18th century.
2002	Minji Kim	Brandeis University	To support travel to London for research on the topic "Handel's Israel in Egypt: a Three-Anthem Oratorio."
2003	Zachariah Victor	Yale University	To support work on "An Interdisciplinary Study of Vocal Genres and the Pastoral in the Music of Alessandro Scarlatti, 1693-1707," including connections between Handel and Scarlatti as cantata composers.
2004	Ilias Chrissochoidis	Stanford University	To support research on the political context of Handel's Esther in 1732.
2005	Nathan Link	Yale University	To support travel to Hamburg to study the Handel opera autographs at the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek. Mr. Link's dissertation project concerns, "the communicative framework of Handel's operas, examining both 'dramatic' representation (in which the story is imparted by means of the onstage singer-actors engaging in mimesis) and 'para-dramatic' expression (in which information is conveyed by other means)."