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 McNeil 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.

            Applications for 2010-2011 are due by March 1, 2010

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 third Fellow is Virginie Adane, a Ph.D. candidate at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, France. She spent the 2008-2009 Academic year at NYU as a Fulbright and Georges Lurcy Fellow. She will spend the fall of 2009 at the New Netherland Institute in Albany, and the spring semester of 2010 at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies in the history department of the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation will be entitled "Women in a multicultural colonial society - New Netherland, New York (ca.1630-ca.1730)" and is supervised by Professor François Weil in Paris. Her work is focused on the role and place of women in the colony of New Netherland, then New York, over the first century of its existence. By working on Court, Church and private papers, she hopes to confront the actual social practices and interactions between men and women to the evolution of law in the colonial society.

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, entitled, "A People Within and Without: International Jewish Commerce and Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Dutch Atlantic World," was granted in September 2008. He was a Guest Professor at Sarah Lawrence College in the fall semester of 2008. The recipient of a post-doctoral fellowship at New York University, he is now helping to process and developing a finding aid for the Sylvestor Manor archive at Fales Library.

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 third Quinn Library Research Resident is Kim Todt.  She is a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University in Early American History.  Her research will examine and analyze the commercial networking which crossed the temporal and historiographical divide between the Dutch and the British colonies of New Netherland and colonial New York.  Her study will utilize family correspondence and accounts to reconstruct merchants' motives and rationalizations for their actions in commercial decisions and trading ventures.  Her dissertation, "'Let Us Comprehend the Mysteries of Commerce': The Transformation of Mercantilism in New Netherland and Colonial New York from 1630 through 1790" will merge the account of merchants' experiences with the broader explanatory context of the economic forces impinging upon men and women in the Atlantic community. Her Library Research Residency will be completed in the spring of 2010.

The second Quinn Library Research Resident is Andrea Mosterman, recipient of the First Quinn Archives Research Residency in the fall of 2008. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History Department of Boston University, where she specializes in Colonial American and Atlantic History. She began her graduate studies at BU after she finished an M.A. in the American Studies program of the University of Amsterdam. Her dissertation, “Sharing Spaces in a New World Environment: African-Dutch Contributions to North American Culture, 1626-1826,” examines the origins and development of African-Dutch practices and traditions in New York and New Jersey during that period. After she completes the Quinn-Library Research Residency in the fall of 2009, she will focus on writing her dissertation, which she plans to complete in the spring of 2011. In the meantime, she teaches courses in Colonial-American and African-American History at Boston University and Trinity College.

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 second Quinn Archives Research Resident is Stephen Th. Staggs. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department of Western Michigan University, where he specializes in Colonial North American and Early Modern European History. His dissertation, "Through the eyes of Faith: Indian-Dutch Relations in the Americas during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," examines the cross-cultural encounters between Indians and Dutch in North America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This research project will help him to shape responses to larger questions, such as the extent to which Protestant conceptualizations of the New World and its inhabitants affected the interactions between the Dutch and the Indians in the Americas during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. After he completes the Quinn-Library Research Residency in the fall of 2009, he will focus on presenting his dissertation proposal and writing his dissertation, which he plans to complete in the spring of 2012. In the spring of 2010, he will begin teaching World History at Western Michigan University.

The first Quinn Archives Research Resident was 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 2011. 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.