fields of the future fellowship
Bard Graduate Center (BGC) is pleased to continue the Fields of the Future fellowship and mentorship program for Spring 2027 (February 15 - June 15, 2027) in partnership with Sylvester Manor, a historic district of national significance on the New York and National Registers of Historic Places. Located on land that has been home for millennia to the Indigenous Manhansett People, Sylvester Manor is the most intact remnant of a former slaveholding plantation north of Virginia. The 236-acre site passed through eleven generations of Sylvester descendants, from 1652 until 2014, when heirs gifted it to the nonprofit Sylvester Manor organization. Over the past 374 years, Sylvester Manor has been a provisioning plantation, an Enlightenment-era farm, and a pioneering food industrialist’s summer estate. Today, it includes the 1737 Manor House, a restored nineteenth-century windmill, an Afro-Indigenous Burial Ground, and a working farm, with educational and cultural arts programs open to all. Sylvester Manor’s collections contain artifacts that reflect all eras of the estate and that represent the occupation of this land by the Sylvester family, ancestors, descendants, as well as individuals who worked on the property.
For the Spring 2027 fellowship, the Fields of the Future fellow will research aspects of Sylvester Manor’s extensive and diverse collection of decorative art objects—ceramics, silver, textiles, and more—that reflect the Manor’s complex place in the wider Atlantic world. This work will culminate in a presentation at a convening of the Manor’s research partners in early June 2027. The fellow will be supported by BGC & Sylvester Manor research staff, with opportunities to utilize collections at Bard Graduate Center, Sylvester Manor, and elsewhere in New York City, as needed. Learn more about BGC’s research collections at www.bgc.bard.edu/library. The Fields of the Future fellowship aims to help promote diversity and inclusion in the advanced study of the material world. It reflects our commitment to explore and expand the sources, techniques, voices, and questions of interdisciplinary humanities scholarship from different perspectives.