Would you be interested in having a college student intern work with you at your organization, with the Geneseo Center for Local and Municipal History picking up the tab?

 

If so, I would like to invite you to participate in the Gardiner Foundation Semiquincentennial Summer Fellowship Program. We are soliciting applications from government-appointed historians across New York State. This exciting program will place college student fellows in your office in the summer of 2023 or 2024 to work with you on public-facing projects commemorating the 250th anniversary of American Independence. We would love to be of assistance!

 

Funded by the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, this program will offer fellowships to fifty students from seven colleges and universities (Canisius College, Cornell University, Brooklyn College (CUNY), SUNY Geneseo, SUNY New Paltz, SUNY Potsdam, and Stony Brook University). If you are selected, we will pay you $500 dollars for your work with a Gardiner Foundation Semiquincentennial Summer Fellow. The Geneseo Center for Local and Municipal History at SUNY Geneseo will pay the student fellows. Faculty mentors from the participant colleges and universities and the program director will visit each student fellow during the summer to provide advice and support. Each student will be available to work approximately 150 hours over the course of the summer of 2023 or 2024.

 

The Geneseo Center for Local and Municipal History, this project’s headquarters, shares with local historians a simple but important goal: to present history to as large an audience as possible. The program will benefit local historians by providing them with the energy, commitment and expertise of the program’s faculty mentors and their talented student fellows. I hope we can all work together to contemplate the layered meanings of the revolution and American independence in myth, memory, and history as we approach its 250th anniversary.

 

Among the questions you might consider for this ambitious program are:

 

• How have New Yorkers defined “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” over the 250 years since American Independence?
• What have New Yorkers meant when they asserted their belief that “all men are created equal” and how have those meanings changed over time?
• How have New Yorkers remembered the American Revolution, and its conflicting legacies, since 1776?

 

More broadly, we feel reflection on the meaning of independence will encourage salutary community conversations about these broader questions: 

 

• How did we get here? What historical forces have made our community the way it is?
• What are the historical sources of the challenges we face as members of communities? 
• How can we confront those challenges effectively, and what have we tried before?
• What obligations do we have as members of our communities to those who came before us? 
• How well have we lived up to the highest ideals of the American Revolution?

 

We believe a community-wide reflection on the meaning of independence will help increase civic engagement, produce a more historically informed public, and help contribute to a deeper understanding of the American Revolution and its ambivalent legacy as the 250th anniversary of Independence approaches. We are excited to work with you and have our student fellows assist you.

If you are interested in applying, please fill out the following form online,

 

Gardiner Foundation Semiquincentennial Summer Fellowship—Historian’s Application

 

 or you may print out the attached form and mail it to:

 

                                    Michael Oberg

                                    Center for Local and Municipal History

                                    Department of History

                                    SUNY Geneseo

                                    Geneseo, NY, 14454

If you have any questions or concerns, you can reach me at (585)245-5730 or by email to localhistory@geneseo.edu.