William J. Bouwsma Fellowship | National Humanities Center

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William J. Bouwsma Fellowship

Eminent American William J. Bouwsma was a leading scholar of the European Renaissance and a past president of the American Historical Association. A recipient of Fulbright, Guggenheim, and National Humanities Center fellowships (1983–84; 1984–85), Bouwsma also served on the Center’s board of trustees from 1988 to 2000.

The fellowship was named in Bouwsma’s honor by fellow NHC trustee emeritus, Peter A. Benoliel. It has been awarded annually since 2001. Benoliel is chairman of the board of directors for IPSoft, an American technology firm focused on autonomic computing and artificial intelligence, and is chairman emeritus of Quaker Chemical Corporation, where he served as chief executive officer from 1966 until 1992 and as non-executive chairman of the board until 1997. He has served as a trustee and helped lead numerous cultural and philanthropic organizations including as president of the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, chairman of the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, chairman of Settlement Music School, and chairman of the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation. As of 2019, when he was elected an emeritus trustee, Benoliel was the longest serving trustee of the National Humanities Center.

2001–2002 Luca Boschetto Independent scholar Economy, Politics, and Law in Renaissance Florence: The Court of the Mercanzia, 1394–1577
2002–2003 Tom Beghin University of California, Los Angeles Performing Rhetoric: Joseph Haydn’s Keyboard Sonatas as Muscial Orations
2003–2004 Wye J. Allanbrook University of California, Berkeley Happy Endings: Comic Musical Theater from Lully to Sondheim
2004–2005 Robin D. Moore Temple University Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba
2005–2006 Philip Rupprecht Brooklyn College, City University of New York Avant-Garde Nation: British Musical Modernism Since 1960
2006–2007 Theodore Buehrer Kenyon College Mary’s Idea: Mary Lou Willliams’ Development as a Big Band Composer
2007–2008 R. Larry Todd Duke University Becoming Fanny Hensel: The Life and Music of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel
2008–2009 Christian Thorau University of Music and Performing Arts, Frankfurt Guided Listening and the Touristic Gaze–The Emergence of ‘Musical Baedekers’
2009–2010 Katherine Preston College of William & Mary Against the Grain: Women Managers and English Opera in Late Nineteenth-Century America
2010–2011 Suzannah Clark Harvard University Quirks in Tonality: Aspects in the History of Tonal Space
2011–2012 John Monfasani University at Albany, State University of New York A Three-Volume Study of the Plato-Aristotle Controversy of the 15th Century
2012–2013 Pamela O. Long Independent scholar Rome Restored: Knowledge, Power, and Engineering, 1557–1590
2013–2014 Claire Sponsler University of Iowa Reading the Beauchamp Pageant
2014–2015 Bettye Collier-Thomas Temple University “She is a Politician”: African American Women and Politics
2015–2016 Daniel Nolan Australian National University Theoretical Values
2016–2017 Tamara Sears Rutgers University Wilderness Urbanisms: Architecture, Landscape, and Travel in Southern Asia
2017–2018 Pavlos Kontos University of Patras Spectators of Moral Matters in Aristotle
2018–2019 Peter Villella University of North Carolina at Greensboro Of Ruin and Rebirth: The Construction of Aztec History, 1531–1625
2019–2020 Alexia Yates University of Manchester, U.K. Rise of the Rentier: France and the Making of Financial Modernity, 1830–1930
2020–2021 Lester Tomé Smith College The Avant-garde Imagination: Transatlantic Visions of Ballet
2021–2022 Samantha Pinto The University of Texas at Austin Under the Skin
2022–2023 Umrao Sethi Brandeis University Sensibilia: An Account of Sensory Perception and its Objects
2023–2024 Elanor Taylor Johns Hopkins University The Foundations of Social Metaphysics
2024–2025 Sarah Scott Manhattan College The Moral Philosophy of Frances Power Cobbe: Forgotten Anglo-Irish Philosopher and Women’s Rights and Animal Welfare Activist