Center for Dewey Studies Essay Award
2025-2026 Awardees
- Stephen Houchins, "The Value of a Document: A Systematic Survey of John Dewey's Philosophy of Language"
- Jessica Soester, "The Growing of Freedom, and the Participatory Methodology of Gardening: An Account of John Dewey’s Conception of 'Freedom-ing'"
- Michael Timm, "Dewey and Merleau-Ponty on the Imagination"
About the Award
The Center for Dewey Studies Essay Award award will fund research on John Dewey’s life, work, and legacy. All undergraduate and graduate students at Southern Illinois University Carbondale who will be enrolled during both Fall and Spring of this academic year are eligible to apply.
The amount of awards will be granted based on the number of qualified submissions. Under the current funding, we intend to distribute $5,000 in total awards each year.
Recipients will be encouraged to do research at the Center for Dewey Studies and the Morris Library Special Collections Research Center and will participate in regular research group meetings in the Center for Dewey Studies throughout the year.
Recipients will submit an essay draft based on their research to the Center for Dewey Studies. They will work with Center staff to prepare a collection of their drafts, to be posted on the Center’s website and archived in the OpenSIUC digital archive, by the end of the Spring term after receiving their award. Graduate student awardees will also be encouraged to submit their essay for publication in a major journal within one (1) year of receiving the award and will receive mentoring in the publication process.
To apply for the fellowship, applicants must submit a brief research proposal for a paper on the work of John Dewey.
Call for Applications
We are pleased to announce the call for applicants for the Center for Dewey Studies Essay Award for the 2026-2027 academic year. The application deadline is August 31, 2026.
In 2027, we will celebrate the centennial anniversary of the publication of Dewey's The Public and Its Problems. As such, we are particularly interested in proposals that work with that text, the Dewey-Lippmann debate, or any of the themes therein: democracy, communication, public opinion, scientific expertise, and particularly the relationships between these concepts.
Application Requirements
- 250-500 word research proposal describing your paper topic and sources to be used.
- Brief description of your past experience with the life and work of John Dewey and related topics.
- To be eligible, you must be an SIU student who will be enrolled both Fall 2026 and Spring 2027.
2024-2025 Awardees
The winners of the first annual Center for Dewey Studies Essay Award:
- Harrison Jackson, “Anthropocentrism and Dewey's Naturalistic Metaphysics”
- Danica Jenck, “Eurocentrism in Dewey's Naturalistic Critique of Supernaturalism”
- Peter Kojo Kontoh, “Dewey and Nkrumah on Education”
- Andrii Leonov, “The epistemological side of Dewey’s naturalistic metaphysics: sense and signification”
- Jessica Soester , “Reconstructive Democracy: Political Tension and the Restoration of (Dynamic) Equilibrium”
- Michael Timm, “Dewey and Merleau-Ponty: Naturalism, Scientism, and Experience”
Recipients completed research at the Center for Dewey Studies and participated in weekly research group meetings in the Center for Dewey Studies.
Essay Award Working Papers Volume
This volume of working papers was assembled and edited by the award winners themselves. They constructed the style guide and even chose the title, John Dewey’s Contemporary Continuities. They were guided by Director Matthew J. Brown, but they deserve full credit for their hard work on these essays. As working papers, we expect the contributions to this volume to be developed further, whether into journal articles, Master's theses, dissertation chapters, or other works.