Announcing the 2019 ACLS Fellows

A photo of Native American author and activist Zitkala-Sa (Yankton Dakota Sioux). ACLS Fellow Laurie Arnold (Sinixt Band, Colville Confederated Tribes) explores her works and legacy, along with those of Sarah Winnemucca and Mourning Dove, to reframe the narrative of Native American cultural activism and recognize these women as historians of their time.

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is proud to announce the 2019 ACLS Fellows. This year’s 81 fellows were selected by their peers from over 1,100 applicants in a review process with multiple stages. Awards range from $40,000 to $70,000, depending on the scholar’s career stage, and support six to twelve months of full-time research and writing.

“The 2019 ACLS Fellows exemplify ACLS’s inclusive vision of excellence in the humanities and humanistic social sciences,” said Matthew Goldfeder, director of fellowship programs at ACLS. “The awardees, who hail from more than 60 colleges and universities, were selected for their potential to make an original and significant contribution to knowledge. They are working at diverse types of institutions, on research projects that span antiquity to the present, in contexts around the world; the array of disciplines and methodologies represented demonstrates the vitality and the incredible breadth of humanistic scholarship today.”

The ACLS Fellowship program, the longest-running of our current fellowship and grant programs, is funded primarily by our endowment. Institutions and individuals have contributed to this program, including The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Arcadia Charitable Trust, the Council’s Research University Consortium and college and university Associates, past fellows, and individual friends of ACLS.

ACLS Fellows, including those with named fellowships, are listed below; for more information about the recipients and their projects, click here.

Francesca Russello Ammon (Assistant Professor of City, Regional Planning, and Historic Preservation, University of Pennsylvania) Preserving the City: Urban Renewal and Restoration in Society Hill, Philadelphia 

Adrian Anagnost (Assistant Professor of Art, Tulane University) Organic Architectures

Kevin B. Anderson (Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) Mapping the Late Marx: On Colonialism, Gender, Development, and Multilinear Concepts of Revolution

Laurie Arnold (Associate Professor of History, Gonzaga University) Native American Cultural Activism as Historical Text: From Sarah Winnemucca to Twenty-First Century Drama

Yury P. Avvakumov (Associate Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame) Ukrainians, Russians, and the Holy See, 1900-1939: Metropolitan Sheptytsky’s “Orthodox Catholic” Project and Its Post-Confessional Challenge

Anthony Barbieri-Low (Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara) The Black Land and the Middle Kingdom: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient Egypt and Early China
ACLS Yvette and William Kirby Centennial Fellow in Chinese Studies

Janine G. Barchas (Professor of English, University of Texas, Austin) Renting in the Age of Austen

Marsha E. Barrett (Assistant Professor of History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) The Decline of Centrist Politics and the Rise of the Punitive State: A Political History of Nelson Rockefeller

Erin Beeghly (Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Utah) What’s Wrong with Stereotyping?

Shanna Greene Benjamin (Associate Professor of English, Grinnell College) Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay

Susanna Berger (Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Southern California) Visual Expertise and the Aesthetics of Deception in Early Modern Italy

Allan M. Brandt (Professor of the History of Science, Global Health, and Social Medicine, Harvard University) Enduring Stigma: Historical Perspectives on Disease Meanings and Their Impact

Susan Burch (Professor of American Studies, Middlebury College) Committed: Native Self-determination, Kinship, Institutionalization, and Remembering

Christopher Collins (Professor of Linguistics, New York University) The Eastern Khoisan Languages of Botswana

Catherine Conybeare (Professor of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies, Bryn Mawr College) Augustine the African

Jay Crisostomo (Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) The Social Lives of Sumerian

Joanna Dee Das (Assistant Professor of Performing Arts, Washington University in St. Louis) Dancing for God and Country: Performing Politics in “A Perfect American Town”

Marlene L. Daut (Associate Professor of African American Studies, University of Virginia) Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of Haiti

Joshua Foa Dienstag (Professor of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles) The Human Boundary: Freedom, Citizenship, and Democracy in a Post-Human Age

Polina Dimova (Visiting Scholar of German, Russian, and East European Studies, Vanderbilt University) At the Crossroads of the Senses: The Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism

Laura F. Edwards (Professor of History, Duke University) Only the Clothes on Her Back: Textiles, Law, and Commerce in the Nineteenth-Century United States

Jonathan E. Elmer (Professor of English, Indiana University, Bloomington) Remedial Poe
ACLS Carl and Betty Pforzheimer Fellow in English and American Literature

Amy Erdman Farrell (Professor of American Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Dickinson College) Girl Scouts of the USA: Democracy, Sisterhood, and Empire

Julia Fawcett (Associate Professor of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, University of California, Berkeley) Unmapping London: Performance and Urbanization after the Great Fire of 1666

Amanda H. Frost (Professor of Law, American University) Unmaking Americans: A History of Citizenship Stripping in the United States

Matthew John Garcia (Ralph and Richard Lazarus Professor of History, Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies, and Human Relations, Dartmouth College) Eli and the Octopus: The Man Who Failed to Tame United Fruit Company

Valentina N. Glajar (Professor of Modern Languages, Texas State University, San Marcos) The Afterlife of Files: Herta Müller's Story of Surveillance

Andrea S. Goldman (Associate Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles) The Frenchman and the Chinese Opera: Imperialism, Homoeroticism, and Transnational Masculinities in China, 1900-1950
ACLS Frederic E. Wakeman, Jr. Fellow in Chinese History

Isabel Cherise Gómez (Assistant Professor of Latin American and Iberian Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston) Cannibal Translation: Literary Reciprocity in Contemporary Latin America

Cam Grey (Associate Professor of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania) Living with Risk in the Late Roman World

Christopher Hager (Associate Professor of English, Trinity College, CT) Illiterate: An American History

Amy A. Hasinoff (Associate Professor of Communication, University of Colorado, Denver) The Traffic in Images of Women: Revenge Porn and Shared Accountability for Online Harm

Matthew S. Hedstrom (Associate Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies, University of Virginia) The Religion of Humanity: Spiritual Cosmopolitanism, Politics, and the United Nations

James Heinzen (Professor of History, Rowan University) Underground Entrepreneurs and the Soviet Shadow Economy under Late Socialism, 1950s-1980s

Anna Henchman (Associate Professor of English, Boston University) Tiny Creatures and the Boundaries of Being in the Nineteenth-Century British Imagination

Isabel Huacuja Alonso (Assistant Professor of History, California State University, San Bernardino) Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting and the Politics of Sound in Modern South Asia

Calvin Hui (Assistant Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures, College of William and Mary) Useless: Fashion, Media, and Consumer Culture in Contemporary China

Jennifer Jahner (Assistant Professor of Humanities, California Institute of Technology) The Medieval Experimental Imagination: Scientific and Literary Method in Later Medieval England

Richard Janko (Professor of Classical Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) The Derveni Papyrus: A New Edition with Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary
ACLS Barrington Foundation Centennial Fellow in Classical Studies

Katie L. Jarvis (Assistant Professor of History, University of Notre Dame) Democratizing Forgiveness: Reconciling Citizens in Revolutionary France

Jeannette Eileen Jones (Associate Professor of History and Ethnic Studies, University of Nebraska, Lincoln) America in Africa: US Empire, Race, and the African Question, 1821-1919

Hilary Falb Kalisman (Assistant Professor of History and Endowed Professor of Israel/Palestine Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder) Standardized Testing: An Imperial Legacy of the Modern Middle East

Ippolytos Andreas Kalofonos (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, University of California, Los Angeles) “All I Eat Is ARVs”: Surviving the AIDS Economy in Central Mozambique

Catherine M. Kearns (Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Chicago) Unruly Landscapes: Environment and Society on Ancient Cyprus

Greta L. LaFleur (Assistant Professor of American Studies, Yale University) A Queer History of Sexual Violence

Priya Lal (Associate Professor of History, Boston College) Human Resources: Professional Labor and Nation Building in Southeastern Africa

Melinda Latour (Assistant Professor of Music, Tufts University) The Voice of Virtue: Moral Song in Late Renaissance France, 1574-1652

Keith D. Leonard (Associate Professor of Literature, American University) Black Avant-Gardism

James S. Leve (Professor of Music, Northern Arizona University) Disability Musical Theater: Dramaturgy, Performance, Accommodation, and Access

Darryl Li (Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago) The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity

Marc Matera (Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Cruz) The African Grounds of Race Relations in Britain

Ndubueze L. Mbah (Assistant Professor of History, State University of New York, Buffalo) Rebellious Migrants: Forging Cosmopolitan Identity and Postcolonial Spaces in the Bight of Biafra, 1840-1960
ACLS Centennial Fellow in the Dynamics of Place

Julie A. Minich (Associate Professor of English, Mexican American, and Latina/o Studies, University of Texas, Austin) Health, Justice, and Latina/o/x Expressive Culture

Ada Palmer (Associate Professor of History, University of Chicago) Why People Censor, from the Inquisition to the Internet

Nandini B. Pandey (Associate Professor of Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison) Diversity and Difference in Imperial Rome

Sun-Young Park (Assistant Professor of History and Art History, George Mason University) The Architecture of Disability in Modern France

Gerard Passannante (Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Maryland, College Park) God is in the Detail: Cosmic Order and the Sense of Scale

Nathalie M. Peutz (Assistant Professor of Arab Crossroads Studies, New York University Abu Dhabi) Gate of Tears: Migration and Impasse in Yemen and the Horn of Africa

Anne Pollock (Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, King's College London, UK) Race and Biopolitics in the Twenty-first Century

Emily Remus (Assistant Professor of History, University of Notre Dame) Charge It: Women, Credit, and the Making of Modern America

Jennifer Rhee (Associate Professor of English, Virginia Commonwealth University) Counting: Cultures of Measurement, Quantification, and Surveillance

Sara Ritchey (Associate Professor of History, University of Tennessee, Knoxville) Communities of Care: Women, Healing, and Prayer in the Late Medieval Lowlands

Kathryn Susan Roberts (Assistant Professor of American Studies, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Netherlands) The New Monastics: Creative Community and Literary Form

Joshua D. Rothman (Professor of History, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa) The Ledger and the Chain: A Biography of the Domestic Slave Trade

Britt Rusert (Associate Professor of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst) The Afric-American Picture Gallery: Imagining Black Art, circa 1859

Rashmi Sadana (Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, George Mason University) Gender, Urban Space, and Everyday Life in the Age of the Delhi Metro, 2002-2018

Joel Alden Schlosser (Assistant Professor of Political Science, Bryn Mawr College) Refusing Mere Existence: Philosophical Asceticism and the Politics of Refusal

Erik Rattazzi Scott (Associate Professor of History, University of Kansas) Soviet Defectors and the Borders of the Cold War World

Samantha Katz Seal (Assistant Professor of English, University of New Hampshire) Chaucerian Dynasty: The Father of English Poetry and His Family

W. Anthony Sheppard (Professor of Music, Williams College) The Performer's Voice: Timbre and Expression in Twentieth-Century Vocal Music
ACLS Susan McClary and Robert Walser Fellow in Music Studies

Satoko Shimazaki (Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Southern California) Kabuki Actors, Print Technology, and the Theatrical Origins of Modern Media

Heather Streets-Salter (Professor of History, Northeastern University) The Chill Before the Cold War: The Noulens Affair and the Global Struggle Between Communism and Anti-Communism in the Interwar Period

Xiaofei Tian (Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University)Writing Empire and Self: Cultural Transformation in Early Medieval China
ACLS Donald J. Munro Centennial Fellow in Chinese Arts and Letters

Katherine Unterman (Associate Professor of History, Texas A&M University, College Station) The Colonial Constitution: Law and Empire in the US Territories

Don Edward Walicek (Professor of English and Linguistics, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras) Speaking ‘American’ in Samaná: Migration, Freedom, and Belonging

Keren Weitzberg (Teaching Fellow of History, University College London, UK) Marketized Identities: A History of ID Cards, Registration, and Biometrics in Kenya

Kimberly Welch (Assistant Professor of History and Law, Vanderbilt University) Lending and Borrowing Across the Color Line in the Antebellum American South
ACLS Oscar Handlin Fellow in American History

Claire Wendland (Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison) Partial Stories: Maternal Death in a Changing African World

Ashli White (Associate Professor of History, University of Miami) Revolutionary Things

Michael E. Woods (Associate Professor of History, Marshall University) The Business of Bigotry: John Van Evrie and the Rise of a Racist Publishing Empire

Marcia Yonemoto (Professor of History, University of Colorado, Boulder) The Ties that Bind: Adult Adoption and Family Formation in Japan, 1700-1925

Contact: Matthew Goldfeder, fellowships@acls.org