The National Humanities Center is pleased to announce the appointment of 33 Fellows for the academic year 2022–23. These leading scholars will come to the Center from universities and colleges in 16 U.S. states as well as Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Africa. Chosen from 592 applicants, they represent humanistic scholarship in African American studies; East Asian studies; education studies; environmental studies; gender and sexuality studies; history; history of art and architecture; Indigenous studies; languages and literature; Latinx studies; Middle East studies; music history and musicology; philosophy; religious studies; and Slavic studies. Each Fellow will work on an individual research project and will have the opportunity to share ideas in seminars, lectures, and conferences at the Center.

Apply for 2023–24

The Center will begin accepting applications for the 2023–24 academic year on July 1, 2022 with a deadline of October 6, 2022. Details about NHC fellowships, including application instructions, are available here.

These newly appointed Fellows will constitute the forty-fifth class of resident scholars to be admitted since the Center opened in 1978. “We are delighted to support the exciting work of these outstanding scholars,” said Robert D. Newman, president and director of the National Humanities Center. “They are a remarkably diverse group whose scholarly expertise spans humanities disciplines. We look forward to welcoming them in the fall as they work on their individual projects and form a dynamic intellectual community.”

The National Humanities Center will award over $1,800,000 in fellowship grants to enable the selected scholars to take leave from their normal academic duties and pursue research at the Center. This funding is provided from the Center’s endowment and by grants from The Duke Endowment, the Henry Luce Foundation, the UNCF/Mellon Programs, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as contributions from alumni and friends of the Center.

About the National Humanities Center

The National Humanities Center is the world’s only independent institute dedicated exclusively to advanced study in all areas of the humanities. Through its residential fellowship program, the Center provides scholars with the resources necessary to generate new knowledge and to further understanding of all forms of cultural expression, social interaction, and human thought. Through its education programs, the Center strengthens teaching on the collegiate and pre-collegiate levels. Through public engagement intimately linked to its scholarly and educational programs, the Center promotes understanding of the humanities and advocates for their foundational role in a democratic society.

Contact

Don Solomon
Director of Communications
919.406.0120

NHC Fellows and Their Projects, 2022–23

Project disciplines and home institutions are parenthetically noted for each Fellow.

Naomi André (Music History and Musicology, University of Michigan) Writing Opera, Singing Blackness in the United States (John E. Sawyer Fellowship)
David Brakke (Religious Studies, The Ohio State University) A Religion of the Books: The New Testament and Other Early Christian Scriptural Practices (Henry Luce Fellowship; Hurford Family Fellowship)
Kiu-wai Chu (Environmental Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) Chinese Eco-Images in The Planetary Age: Da Tong – The Multispecies World of Humans, Animals, and Plants (Luce East Asia Fellowship)
Emmanuel David (Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of Colorado Boulder) Trans-American Orientalism: The Asia-Pacific Encounters of Transgender Pioneer Christine Jorgensen, 1961–1969 (Fellows’ Fellowship)
Irving Goh (Languages and Literature, National University of Singapore) Living on after Failure (Luce East Asia Fellowship)
Erdağ Göknar (Middle East Studies, Duke University) Legal and Affective Archives of Atrocity: Allied Occupied Istanbul (1918–23) and the Armenian Genocide (The Duke Endowment Fellowship)
Rowena Xiaoqing He (Interdisciplinary Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong) One Generation, Two Loyalties?: Evening Chats in Hong Kong (Luce East Asia Fellowship)
Gregg Hecimovich (African American Studies, Furman University) The Columbia Seven: The Life and Times of the Zealy Daguerreotypes (The Duke Endowment Fellowship)
Karima K. Jeffrey-Legette (African American Studies, Hampton University) Black Girls Write the Future: A Scholarly Investigation of Speculative Fiction by or about Women and Girls of African Descent (Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams, Jr. Fellowship)
Chin Jou (History, The University of Sydney) Captive Consumers: Prison Food in the Era of Mass Incarceration (Founders’ Fellowship)
Blair L. M. Kelley (History, North Carolina State University) Black Folk: The Promise of the Black Working Class (John Hope Franklin Fellowship; NEH Fellowship)
Martha M. F. Kelly (Slavic Studies, University of Missouri) How to be a Russian Icon: The Post-Soviet Public Life of Poet Olga Sedakova (Trustees’ Fellowship)
Thomas M. Lekan (Environmental History, University of South Carolina) “Conservation by Slaughter”: Wildlife Utilization and the African Origins of Sustainable Development, 1959–1980 (Donnelley Family Fellowship)
Mariska Leunissen (Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Facts, Evidence, and Observation: Aristotle’s Natural Scientific Study of Women and Motherhood (Robert F. and Margaret S. Goheen Fellowship; William C. and Ida Friday Fellowship)
Brian Lewis (History, McGill University) Greek to the Soul: George Ives and Homosexuality from Wilde to Wolfenden (Birkelund Fellowship)
Elena Machado Sáez (Latinx Studies, Bucknell University) Staging Activism in US Latinx Theater (John G. Medlin, Jr. Fellowship)

Patricia A. Matthew (Languages and Literature, Montclair State University) Gender, Sugar, and the Afterlives of Abolition (Anthony E. Kaye Fellowship)
Wamuwi Mbao (Cultural Studies, Stellenbosch University) Representing Discontent: South Africa in Words and on Screen (STIAS Iso Lomso Fellowship)
Andrew McClellan (History of Art and Architecture, Tufts University) Rivals on the Fenway: Isabella Stewart Gardner, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Destiny of the American Art Museum (Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellowship)
W. Jason Miller (Languages and Literature, North Carolina State University) Backlash Blues: Nina Simone and Langston Hughes (Kent R. Mullikin Fellowship)
Kristi A. Olson (Philosophy, Bowdoin College) The Economic Justice Project: Thought Experiments, Intuitions, Counterexamples, and Logic (Philip L. Quinn Fellowship)
Shailaja Paik (History, University of Cincinnati) Becoming “Vulgar”: Caste Domination and Normative Sexuality in Modern India (ACLS Burkhardt Fellowship)
Héctor Pérez-Brignoli (History, Universidad de Costa Rica) Rebellious People: Patterns of Social Revolt and Collective Violence in Central America, 1920–1954 (GlaxoSmithKline Fellowship)
Keith Richotte, Jr. (Indigenous Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told: Native America, Plenary Power, and the U.S. Constitution (Research Triangle Foundation Fellowship)
Catherine Roach (History of Art and Architecture, Virginia Commonwealth University) The Shadow Museum: A History of the British Institution, 1805–1867 (Allen W. Clowes Fellowship)
Jontyle Theresa Robinson (History of Art and Architecture, Tuskegee University) 1996 Bearing Witness: Contemporary Work by African American Women Artists and Revelations from Bearing Witness 2026 (UNCF/Mellon Faculty Fellowship)
Umrao Sethi (Philosophy, Brandeis University) Sensibilia: An Account of Sensory Perception and its Objects (William J. Bouwsma Fellowship; NEH Fellowship)
Geng Song (East Asian Studies, The University of Hong Kong) The Matrilocal Husband: Chinese-style Neoliberal Masculinities in the Digital Era (Luce East Asia Fellowship)
Molly Todd (History, Montana State University) Pictures of Conscience: Central American Refugees and International Human Rights Campaigns, 1979–2019 (Frank H. Kenan Fellowship)
Cedric R. Tolliver (Languages and Literature, University of Houston) Spook(ed): African American Literature, National Security, and the Fictions of Statecraft (M. H. Abrams Fellowship)
Nancy Tomes (History, Stony Brook University) A History of the Modern Infodemic (Archie K. Davis Fellowship; NEH Fellowship)
Tiffany Willoughby-Herard (African American Studies, University of California, Irvine) I Meant for You to be Free: A Love Letter to and Pedagogies for the Post-1994 Generation in South Africa (Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship)
Amy Louise Wood (History, Illinois State University) Sympathy for the Devil: The Criminal in the American Imagination, 1870–1940 (Delta Delta Delta Fellowship)