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William C. and Ida Friday Fellowship

William “Bill” Friday was a nationally recognized educator who served as the head of the University of North Carolina system from 1956 to 1986. Friday remained an influential voice in North Carolina after retiring from UNC, serving as host of North Carolina People, a talk show on the UNC-TV public television network, which he began while still president of the UNC system.

Friday’s involvement with the Center began before its founding as one of the leaders (along with Archie Davis) who were instrumental in bringing the Center to North Carolina. Friday served on the Center’s board of trustees starting in the mid-1970s and helped guide it through its tender early years. He was elected chairman of the board in 1987 when he retired as president of the UNC system. He was made an emeritus trustee when he stepped down from that role in 1988.

The William C. and Ida Friday Senior fellowship was endowed by numerous generous donors and has been awarded annually to a senior humanities scholar since 2001.

2001–2002	Patricia Ann Sullivan	Harvard University	Struggle toward Freedom: A History of the NAACP
2002–2003	John Kucich	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	Melancholy Magic: Masochism and Late Victorian Political Identities
2003–2004	David Ringrose	University of California, San Diego	Europeans in the World, 1400–1650
2004–2005	Rex Martin	University of Kansas	Rawls on Economic Justice
2005–2006	Mary Kinzie	Northwestern University	The Poems I am Not Writing: A Meditation in Verse
2006–2007	Alice Kessler-Harris	Columbia University	A Biography of Lillian Hellman
2007–2008	Amelie Rorty	Harvard University	On the Other Hand: The Ethics of Ambivalence
2008–2009	Robert DuPlessis	Swarthmore College	Atlantic Stuff: Histories of Consumption in the Early Modern South Atlantic World
2009–2010	Dorit Bar-On	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	Expression, Action, and Meaning
2010–2011	Peter Railton	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	Toward a Unified Theory of Rationality in Belief, Desire, and Action
2011–2012	James Van Cleve	University of Southern California	Problems from Reid
2012–2013	Susan R. Wolf	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	Values and Well-Being
2013–2014	Martha S. Jones	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	Overturning Dred Scott: Race, Rights and Citizenship in Antebellum America
2014–2015	Nan E. Woodruff	Pennsylvania State University	Legacies of Everyday Struggle: History, Memory, Trauma in the Contemporary South
2015–2016	Reinhard Bernbeck	Freie Universität Berlin	Material Traces of Nazi Terror: Reflections on History, Experience, and Memory
2016–2017	Laurent Dubois	Duke University	Katherine Dunham: An Afro-Atlantic Itinerary
2017–2018	John H. Smith	University of California, Irvine	How Infinity Came to be at Home in the World: Metaphors and Paradoxes of Mathematics in German Thought, 1675–1830
2018–2019	Matthew J. Smith	University of the West Indies	Onward Forward: A Social History of Jamaican Music, 1950–1980
2019–2020	Marianne Constable	University of California, Berkeley	Chicago Husband-Killing and the New Unwritten Law
2020–2021	Keith D. Miller	Arizona State University	Who Wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X?
2021–2022	Jane F. Thrailkill	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	The Agony of Empathy: A Health Humanities Intervention
2022–2023	Mariska Leunissen	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	Facts, Evidence, and Observation: Aristotle’s Natural Scientific Study of Women and Motherhood
2023–2024	Wanda S. Pillow	The University of Utah	Troubling Intimacies: Sacajawea and York as National Subjects
2024–2025	David J. Vázquez	American University	Days of Futures Past: Latinx Science Fiction and Speculative Futurity