Academic Fellowship
Supporting Scholarship
Note: The Wollstonecraft Project will not be offering an academic fellowship in the 2024-25 academic cycle.
Through the Wollstonecraft Fellowship, a promising scholar will be awarded a $20,000 research grant, additional funds to employ a part-time research assistant, and an AAI affiliation for a year to write an academic article or conduct research for a book in this area. Such a scholar would have completed graduate studies (or otherwise demonstrated scholarly prowess) but may not have access to the usual sources of academic funding because he or she has chosen to step out of full time academia or professional work for a time to raise his or her family, or perhaps he or she is seeking to return after having been away for a time.
The Wollstonecraft Fellow will be expected to produce a serious paper worthy of academic publication; a book proposal that includes a substantial outline; or if book research had begun before the fellowship, at least two chapters. The fellowship may take place remotely, with bi-monthly phone (or in person) meetings with the Wollstonecraft Project director, and the opportunity and expectation that the fellow will present his or her work in an AAI Scholars Workshop once or twice during the course of the academic year.
Read about our fellows below.
““Into this error men have, probably, been led by viewing education in a false light; not considering it as the first step to form a being advancing gradually towards perfection; but only as a preparation for life.”
Wollstonecraft Fellow (2023/2024 Cycle)
Leah Libresco Sargeant graduated from Yale University in 2011, and has worked as a data analyst, a curriculum developer, and a journalist. She is the author of Arriving at Amen and Building the Benedict Option. She is raising two daughters with her husband, Alexi, in Hyattsville, Maryland. She runs Other Feminisms, a Substack community focused on advocating for women in a world that treats us as defective men. She has spoken at universities across the country and at events around the world.
During her time as a Wollstonecraft Fellow, Leah will complete the manuscript for The Dignity of Dependence, her forthcoming book for Notre Dame University Press. Her work will explore the ways that our culture is shaped by the false anthropology of autonomy and how it shortchanges men, women, and children.
Wollstonecraft Fellow (2022/2023 Cycle)
Ivana Greco received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, and practised law for a decade, specializing in employee benefit and healthcare advising and litigation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she left private practice to prioritize care of her three children.
During her tenure as a Wollstonecraft Fellow, Ivana will draft chapters for a book exploring the myriad ways homemaking parents are integral to American society, business, and government. The book will investigate how politicians, employers, and other key institutions can better support caregiving families.
Wollstonecraft Fellows (2021/2022 Cycle)
Drs. Elizabeth Bloch and Emily Heyne, seeking to integrate the life of the mind with the practical life of mothering, are working to compile and edit a collaborative book which will explore the relationship of motherhood and literature.
Fellow contributors are both literary scholars and mothers who will reflect upon how great works of literature--ranging from the Iliad and Paradise Lost to My Antonia and Brideshead Revisited--have shaped their approach to and understanding of motherhood, as well as how their experience of motherhood has, in turn, influenced their interpretation of particular works of poetry and fiction.
Elizabeth Bloch, Ph.D.
Elizabeth Bloch received her Ph.D. in English literature from the Catholic University of America. Her research interests include Renaissance pastoral, lyric poetry, and the classical traditions of English literature. She lives in Irving, TX, where she teaches as an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas.
Emily Heyne, Ph.D.
Emily Heyne received her Ph.D. in Literature from the Institute of Philosophic Studies at the University of Dallas. Her research interests include Melville, G.M. Hopkins, and genre theory. She lives in Irving, TX, where she serves as a contributing author at Mighty is Her Call, a Catholic Mothers' Ministry.