Events + Media

2017-18 Arcus/Places Prize Guidelines now Open

Application Guidelines for the Arcus/Places prize

(image: film still from KIKI by Sara Jordenö, participant in the CED Diversity Program Queer Urbanisms, Spring, 2017)

The biennial Arcus/Places Prize is a unique collaboration between the Diversity Platforms Committee of the College of Environmental Design (CED) at UC Berkeley, and the journal Places. The Prize was established in 2014 to support innovative public scholarship on the relationship between gender, sexuality and the built environment. The award is funded by CED's Arcus Endowment, launched in 2000 with a generous gift from the Arcus Foundation in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The article of the inaugural Arcus/Places Scholar, Professor Alice T. Friedman (Grace Slack McNeil Professor of the History of American Art and Director of the McNeil Program for Studies in American Art at Wellesley College) explored the rise of a lesbian culture across the decades in 20th-century Paris. See Queer Old Things, published in 2015.

Award Details:

The winner of the Arcus/Places Prize will receive an honorarium of $7,500 to produce a major work of public scholarship for Places and present a related lecture to be given in the College of Environmental Design. The travel expenses, accommodation, and meals associated with the Scholar’s campus visit will be funded in addition to the honorarium.

The Scholar will have a period of 8 months (maximum) from the awarding of the prize to complete the lecture portion of their obligation. The publication of the completed article will be subject to the final approval of Places editors. Being named the 2017-18 Arcus/Places Scholar does not guarantee publication. Ideally the article will be published within one year of the announcement of the award winner.

Application Criteria:

  • Applicants must be mid-career or senior scholars.
  • The selected applicant will be invited to the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley for up to 7 days, to allow time to give their lecture, meet in person with Places editorial staff, and conduct a roundtable discussion with CED students about the content and research methods of their article.

Application Requirements:

  • An up-to-date CV, including a bibliography of recent publications
  • A sample of published writing
  • An abstract of the proposed article, 500 words in length
  • A cover letter outlining the applicant’s qualifications, and the significance of the proposed topic.

Application Deadline:

Applications must be submitted by 5pm on August 15, 2017. Applications should be submitted by email to arcus.research@gmail.com with the subject line: Arcus_Places_Scholar. Writing samples that exceed the file size of gmail (or other email) attachments should be submitted by a file sharing system referencing the same email address.

Selection Process:

Applications will be reviewed and the winner selected by the members of the Diversity Platforms Committee at the College of Environmental Design. The Editor of Places will serve on the DPC for the selection process.

Applicants will be notified of the results of the process in August 2017.