Is there a song more loathsome than “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow?” On the surface, it says, “hey, this guy’s a good ‘un, let’s celebrate him!” But deeper down, it says, “We approve of this person. Therefore, they are good and true and trustworthy and we shall make sure everyone is unable to say otherwise.” Welcome to the semantic mess that is fellow.
Before we get too deep in, let me set some stakes: I can count the number of fellowships I’ve applied to recently on exactly one1 finger. I have, however, been reading up a bunch of them and something pernicious has become glaringly obvious: fellow, in academia, is a prime example of semantic obfuscation, something that sounds like one thing but has a deeper meaning that can run counter to the initial one. Kind of like in the song.
Fellow, to modern ears, sounds nice. Quaint even. It sounds like clean-cut respectable young men singing in a barbershop quartet in some elite prep school. Or like a drunken sing-a-long after Tom down at the bar has just come into some money and celebrated by buying a round of drinks. Or possibly just a loose coalition of Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Hobbits2.
What it does not sound like is money. And yet, that is exactly what fellow has always meant, especially in modern day academia. But we’ll get there. To begin, here’s Merriam-Webster’s take on fellow in the academic sense, especially as it is applied outside the British isles3:
: a person appointed to a position granting a stipend and allowing for advanced study or research
In other words, a fellowship, on the surface, is a way for universities to give extra funds to worthy individuals so that they may pursue advanced degrees or research without starving to death. Look a little deeper though, and we see that those same fellowships are a way of sugar-coated gatekeeping research agendas while avoiding paying a living wage to their adjunct faculty, and yet still getting credit for the researchers' achievements.
To take these ideas in reverse order, fellow is what we call prestige language. It’s a word that is seen favorably and, when used as a title, gives a certain gravitas to the bearer. It’s not dissimilar to Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of symbolic capitalism, the idea that the prestige we assign to different roles and titles is a kind of non-monetary currency. Fellow falls into this realm, or at least it is said to do so by those conferring the title.
As for the money, consider this (very) rough analogy: many waitstaff in the U.S. earn a wage far smaller than they might elsewhere because they’re expected to make up the shortcoming through tips. In much the same way, a fellow might be denied a salary because they’re expected to make up the difference through grants, a stipend, and begging on the streets between classes.
Finally, fellowships are gatekeeping in nice clothes. From outside it might seem as though you get turned down for a fellowship because your research is not up to snuff. It doesn’t match the universities aims or goals. Fine. Except, who sets the goals? If universities are not open to applicants from across the vast field of arts and sciences then they are, in fact if not in name, deciding what research gets to go forward.
(And, I’ll be honest, this falls squarely in the field of things that are like they are because of classicism and then capitalism and I’d burn the whole thing down if I could in favor of a more egalitarian system. Vote for me!)
So, fellowship is less about camaraderie than it is about cold, hard cash because, well, isn’t everything?
Okay, key facts time:
Fellow comes from the Old Norse word félagi and is literally money (fé) plus “person who pays” (lagi). However, by the 13th century, fellow broadened into meaning “same” or “part of a set”. From there it starts to acquire prestige through the institutions in which it is assigned as a title.
In other words, and another loaded analogy, think of Judith Butler’s theory of gender as societal construct. We perform gender because it’s demanded by society. In the same way, institutions both demand and create the role of a fellow by assigning the title to those who would climb the academic ladder.
Anyway, fellow continues to broaden semantically through the next few hundred years, picking up nuances and connotations as the years roll by, culminating in the recent century when both the Brits and Russians used it mockingly against others and to convey brotherly comradeship amongst themselves4.
But, at its core, fellow remains a money-loving word, whether it’s in standing pints with the fellows in the bar or applying for research fellowships at home. And, in English, as we well know, money is power.
But maybe the best way to look at this is through our long-standing belief here at Learned Central that there are vanishingly few true synonyms in English. There are a lot of words that have similar meanings or uses, but each of these comes pre-loaded with nuance and feeling that may or may not change on the situation. Fellow, in the academic sense, is one such example. Fellow’s closest synonyms in this context are words like grantee, recipient, or even scholar or postdoc. All of these confer something beyond the meaning of fellow. Grantee is all about the money, recipient means you’ve been given something (not earned, given), and both scholar and postdoc mean you’re neither fish nor fowl. You’re not a student but you’re not faculty yet either. Might as well be a fellow traveller of the liminal zone between aspiring and accepted.
There’s a lot more to say about fellow, but I’m out of time and words. So, here are a few ideas I didn’t quite follow through on. If you’ve got a hot take, let me know. Anyway, I shoehorned Judith Butler in up above, but her work on gender has a lot of linguistic application:
how do the labels we choose to describe ourselves dictate what performances we do in society?
is fellow a gendered word? The dictionary says no, the bible says no5, but I’ll bet most of your friends say yes.
some labels are inherently more vulnerable than others. Where does fellow land on that scale?
Pick your thesis, report back with a dissertation. Maybe it’ll get you some funding. In the meantime, let’s take this as a reminder of how we can choose to exchange our free labor: you can give it to a university or a corporation or an institution, or you can use it to question and hold those same authorities to the fire. Your choice.
Stay curious,
Joel
scarred, calloused, middle
Obviously a ridiculous idea that would never work as a book much less a movie.
One caveat for this entire essay is that fellow, in the U.K. still carries a weight that it has lost in other countries. In practical terms, this means that fellows at elite British institutions are often fully salaried members of the staff. Or so I’m given to understand.
Frankly, the entire Etymonline entry is worth reading as it gets into the deeply entrenched nationalist uses of the word by both the British and the Russians at different points in their histories.
“And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.” High school sucks for everyone.
Tolkien’s Fellowship had clearer funding terms than modern academia.
You know the great (alleged) Oscar Levant quote about virginity? He once said, "Doris Day? I knew her before she was a virgin."