Archives and Special Collections invites scholars and researchers at any career stage to apply for travel support for short visits to work in the department’s collections.
Grants of up to $1,500.00 USD will be awarded on a competitive basis to offset travel expenses for archival research. Applicants are selected by the Head of Archives & Special Collections and archivist(s) for collections relevant to the applicant’s project. Priority will be given to those who have a demonstrated research need that utilizes materials available in Archives and Special Collections.
Recipients agree to consult the collections of Archives and Special Collections for the purpose outlined in the project proposal and to describe the value of the research experience in relation to the project.
Application Requirements and Payment
Applicants should submit the following materials with their application:
- brief description (no more than two pages) of the project
- preliminary list of collections to be consulted
- resume or curriculum vitae
Fellows must be in residence for at least three full research days (or an appropriate number of half-days equaling three full research days).
We will not be able to fund awards for researchers who do not meet this requirement. Fellowship funds are paid following completion of the requirements of the fellowship. A minimum period of eight weeks is necessary to process and deliver the award check.
Deadline
Applications are accepted and reviewed annually. The deadline for submission is January 30 for research visits between March and February. Applicants will receive written notification, if their proposal is approved, within six weeks of the deadline.
Particular consideration will be given to applicants who utilize any of the following collections:
Connecticut Citizen’s Action Group
Formed in 1971 by Ralph Nader and directed by former Connecticut congressman Toby Moffett, the Connecticut Citizen’s Action Group (CCAG) organized around consumer, environmental, and public-policy issues affecting the state. This collection documents its development as one of the earliest statewide citizen-advocacy organizations in the country. Records include correspondence, minutes, reports, subject files, and campaign materials on topics such as utility regulation, taxation, health care, transportation, and environmental protection. Audiotapes, press releases, and newsletters record CCAG’s communication strategies and legislative testimony. Materials trace its network of local chapters and its collaborations with groups like the League of Women Voters and the AFL-CIO. The records provide a detailed view of Connecticut’s grassroots politics, public-interest lobbying, and organizing practices from the 1970s through the 1990s.
North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) Archive of Latin Americana
Founded in 1966 in New York City, the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) grew out of New Left, civil rights, and antiwar movements that sought to document and critique U.S. political and economic intervention in the Western Hemisphere. NACLA combined research and journalism to analyze corporate investment, military aid, and foreign policy from a perspective of solidarity with Latin American social movements. The collection at the University of Connecticut comprises NACLA’s original subject files and documentary holdings from the 1960s through the 1980s, including pamphlets, serials, reports, and flyers gathered across Latin America and the Caribbean. These materials record political organizations, labor and student activism, human-rights campaigns, and revolutionary movements during the Cold War, reflecting the critical and internationalist orientation that shaped NACLA’s work.
University of Connecticut, Black Experience in the Arts Collection
This collection documents the long-running course and public program “The Black Experience in the Arts,” developed at the University of Connecticut by the Center for Black Studies and the Department of Music beginning in 1970. The series brought to campus a wide range of artists, writers, and musicians, including Louise Meriwether, Jayne Cortez, Ed Bullins, and Babatunde Olatunji, whose lectures and performances explored Black aesthetics, literature, and performance. Audio recordings, photographs, and related documentation record more than a decade of programming. These materials capture campus engagement with the Black Arts Movement, cultural expression in the post-civil-rights era, and the intellectual history of Black studies at UConn. The collection provides primary evidence of artistic dialogue and pedagogy during a formative period for African American arts in higher education.
The Vivien Kellems Papers document the business and political activities of Connecticut industrialist and tax resistance activist Vivien Kellems (1896–1975). Kellems founded and served as president of the Kellems Cable Grips Company and became known for her outspoken challenges to federal tax-withholding law and her advocacy of women’s economic independence. The papers include business records, correspondence, speeches, photographs, news clippings, campaign files, and legal materials. They record her several runs for political office, including bids for the U.S. Senate and the governorship of Connecticut, as well as her long-running dispute with the Internal Revenue Service.
Handicapped Homemakers Project Records
A five-year research and demonstration project, officially titled “Work Simplification in the Area of Child Care for Physically Handicapped Women,” was conducted at the University of Connecticut School of Home Economics between 1955 and 1960. Sponsored by the “Team Approach” Committee on Research Demonstrations and Workshops Concerning Physically Handicapped Women, the project studied ways to increase the capacities of physically disabled mothers through ergonomic and vocational methods. The records include reports, workshop materials, bibliographies, slides, photographs, and field-interview data from more than one hundred participants across Connecticut. They also document Dean Elizabeth E. May’s leadership and her comparative research on disability programs in Europe. The collection illuminates mid-century intersections of disability, gender, domestic labor, and social science research in applied home economics.
The papers of William S. Murray (1873–1936) document his work as Chief Engineer of the New Haven Railroad during the first main-line electrification project in the United States. The records cover the period from roughly 1900 to 1935 and include correspondence, technical reports, design drawings, publications, and scrapbooks. Murray’s collaboration with Westinghouse Electric Company engineers led to the adoption of a high-voltage (11,000-volt) overhead-wire system connecting Connecticut to New York City after state legislation banned steam locomotives from entering Manhattan. The collection provides a detailed view of early twentieth-century electrical and transportation engineering, railroad management, and regional infrastructure development.
Connecticut Poet Laureate emerita Marilyn Nelson is recognized for her poetry and translations addressing African American history, spirituality, and language. Her papers include drafts, correspondence, teaching files, and documentation of her literary career from the 1960s through the early 2000s. Materials trace the composition and publication of works such as Carver: A Life in Poems, The Fields of Praise, and her translations from Danish poets. The collection also records Nelson’s academic appointments at the University of Connecticut and the United States Air Force Academy, her involvement with literary organizations, and her mentorship of younger writers. Together these papers document a sustained engagement with poetry as craft and civic practice.
Archives & Special Collections holds a diverse collection of experimental artists’ books that challenge the conventional meaning of the word ‘book.’ Over the years, the collection has grown to include work by contemporary international artists as well as artist collectives. A rich variety of book structures, construction techniques, printing methods and themes are represented in the collection, making it a valuable resource for studying the interplay of creative processes and illustration methods with new or innovative storytelling practices.
American Montessori Society Records
In the late 1950s, Nancy McCormick Rambusch, trained in Montessori education in London, began efforts to revive the method in the United States. Teaching first from her New York apartment, she soon founded Whitby School in Greenwich, Connecticut, which became the center of the American Montessori revival. Rambusch argued that Montessori principles should be adapted to mid-twentieth-century American culture and extended beyond private schools. In 1960 she established the American Montessori Society and served as its first president. The records span the 1950s to the present and include administrative files, correspondence, publications, and research materials documenting the organization’s growth and influence on teacher education and public-school reform.
Illustrator and author Nonny Hogrogian (1932–2024) was the daughter of Armenian immigrants who fled the genocide of the early twentieth century, Hogrogian drew deeply on Armenian folktales and visual traditions in her art. The collection includes original drawings, sketches, proofs, correspondence, and production materials for works including Always Room for One More (1966), One Fine Day (1972), and The Contest (1977). It also contains materials from her collaborations with poet David Kherdian and from their small press, Two Rivers Press. Together these papers record Hogrogian’s artistic process, her engagement with multicultural storytelling, and the publishing context of children’s books from the 1960s through the 1990s.
The Michael Rumaker Papers document the life and work of novelist, short-story writer, and memoirist Michael Rumaker (1932–2019). After early studies at Rider College, Rumaker attended Black Mountain College, where he worked with Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan and became part of the postwar avant-garde literary community. The collection (1925–2010) contains manuscripts, correspondence, notebooks, journals, photographs, and audio recordings. It includes drafts of The Companion, My First Saturnalia, and Robert Duncan in San Francisco, as well as teaching materials from the New School for Social Research and City College of New York. Rumaker’s papers document his creative process, his reflections on sexuality and identity, and his connections to the Beat Generation and early gay-liberation writing. They complement UConn’s related holdings of Black Mountain College writers and the alternative press. This collection also complements a small but important collection, the Merrill Gillespie Papers, which features correspondence between Rumaker and Gillespie, his former partner, throughout their lives but largely during their time at Black Mountain College.
According to George Butterick, who began reading and collecting Michael Rumaker’s literary papers at the University of Connecticut in 1974, “Rumaker has proceeded from writing about disengaged youth in a generation willing to declare its difference, to being a celebrant of total life and human joy. Actively participating in his own destiny, he has left a glowing trail of work to document the struggle toward identity. He represents, in his later writings, one extension of the Beat revolution: the embracing of sexual diversity. Governing all his work is an indefatigable spirit that gives the creative life reward.”
Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company Records
The Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company was established in 1838 in Manchester, Connecticut, by six Cheney brothers, who incorporated under the family name in 1843. Benefiting from protective tariffs, expanding national markets, and innovations such as waste-silk spinning and Grant’s reel, the company became the largest and most profitable silk producer in the United States by the late nineteenth century. At its height around World War I, Cheney Brothers employed over 4,700 workers — about one-quarter of Manchester’s population — and developed a self-contained industrial community that included housing, schools, churches, recreational facilities, and utilities. The company’s welfare-capitalist model and early adoption of Frederick Taylor’s principles of scientific management made it a national exemplar of modern industrial organization. The records document the company’s rise and decline through the Great Depression and its 1937 bankruptcy, and include correspondence, financial and production records, photographs, blueprints, and publications. The collection provides extensive primary material for studying labor relations, industrial management, immigration, gender, and the transformation of textile manufacturing in New England.