Mellon Fellowship

Students entering the Ph.D. program in Japanese Literature or the Joint Program in Japanese and Comparative Literature in Fall 2012 or Fall 2013 will be considered for a Mellon Fellowship.  This fellowship, offered by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, in conjunction with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Washington University, will provide exceptional students an additional stipend of $25,000 distributed over a five-year period.  This stipend will be awarded in addition to the standard financial aid package awarded to all admitted Ph.D. students.  For more information on this financial aid package, please see below.

Ph.D. Programs in Japanese Literature

The Japanese Program at Washington University in St. Louis inaugurated a new Ph.D. program in Japanese literature, commencing Fall 2011. This program provides a solid foundation in Japanese literature together with the requisite expertise in a research concentration, producing scholars who are well versed in Japanese literary and cultural traditions, prepared to enter the academic arena as researchers and teachers. Doctoral students will select a complementary minor field in a second East-Asian literary tradition or another area of Japanese Studies, as appropriate.  This Ph.D. program is offered in addition to our program in Japanese and Comparative Literature—a combined program that offers a geographically and chronologically broader perspective on literary and cultural achievements and includes careful grounding in theoretical discourse.  Ph.D. students may also select from among several certificate options, including Translation Studies, Film and Media Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies.

Japanese section faculty possesses wide-ranging expertise in literature and its various historical, social, and cultural contexts. Research strengths encompass poetry and poetics, the history of reading, literary modernization, personal narrative, literary journalism, women’s writing, gender issues, and the theory and practice of translation.

Our Financial Commitment
All students admitted to the Ph.D. program can expect five years of financial aid, provided they maintain a successful coursework record. Entering students typically receive a University fellowship, which carries full tuition remission and a competitive level of financial aid. Doctoral candidates in their final year of dissertation writing (usually the fifth or sixth year of doctoral study) will be eligible for a Graduate School Dissertation Fellowship. In the intervening years, qualified graduate students will be eligible for a combination of Teaching and Research Assistantships and University fellowships, all of which carry full tuition remission. Doctoral students can also apply for additional summer support for research and examination preparation.

For more information about our Ph.D. programs, please consult our webpage:

http://japanese.artsci.wustl.edu/graduate  or contact Rebecca Copeland, copeland@wustl.edu.

Mellon-Sawyer Seminar

Funding for the Mellon Scholarship has been made possible through our recently-established Mellon-Sawyer Seminar—’Japan Embodied: New Approaches to Japanese Studies.’ Now in its second year, the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar examines the way the body has been discussed, experienced, and imagined in Japanese culture. For more information on the seminar, please see: http://eastasian.artsci.wustl.edu/mellon