Current Fellows and Their Projects

2023-2024

Mellon Distinguished Scholar in Residence

• Jesse Alemán, Professor of English and a Presidential Teaching Fellow, University of New Mexico.

Hench Post-Dissertation Fellowship

• Chip Badley, lecturer of English, University of California Santa Barbara, "Writing Beauty: Painting and Queer Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century American Literature"

AAS-NEH Fellowships

• Ben Davidson, visiting scholar in history, Saint Michael's College, "Freedom's Generation: Coming of Age in the Era of Emancipation"
• Wyn Kelley, senior lecturer of literature, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Brazil in Early North American Black Print Culture"
• Adam Malka, associate professor of history, University of Oklahoma, "The Carceral Turn: Crime and Punishment during the Civil War Era"
• Eric Lamore, professor of English, University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, “'Unstable as Water': Early Black Atlantic Literature and Textual Fluidity"
• E. Haven Hawley, University Librarian, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, "A Perfect Machine: The Adams Power Press"
• Andrew Porwancher, professor of Constitutional studies & Judaic studies, University of Oklahoma, "The Great Jewish Lunacy Trial"

AAS Short Term Fellowships

AAS-American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

• Kenneth Banks, associate professor of history, Wofford College, “Atlantic Oceanic Mobilities”

Alstott-Morgan

• Danielle Glassmeyer, associate professor of English, Bradley University, "Other People's Children"

American Historical Print Collectors Society

• Alison Russell, PhD candidate in history, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, "On That Shield!: American Identity and the Constitution in the Early Republic"

Stephen Botein

• Avery Blankenship, PhD candidate in English, Northeastern University, "Kitchen Ventriloquisms"
• Gordon Dennis Fraser, lecturer in English, American studies, and creative writing, University of Manchester, "Engineering Peace"

Brown Family Collection

• Thomas Blakeslee, PhD candidate, Teaching Fellow in history, Harvard University, "Domestic Disturbances: The Shaping of Black Fatherhood, Manhood, and Resistance in America"
• Charline Jao, graduate candidate in Literatures in English, Cornell University, "Family and Bereavement in the Album"

Drawn to Art

• Megan Baker, PhD candidate in art history, University of Delaware, "Pastel Rebellion: The Material Politics of North American Pastels, 1758-1814"

David Jaffee

• Elizabeth Block, senior editor, publications and editorial department, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, "Hairdressing in the 19th Century"

Christoph Daniel Ebeling

• Phillip Grider, research associate, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, "Nonhuman Agency in Early North American Media"

Kate Van Winkle Keller

• Crystal Dawn Manuel, PhD candidate in history, University of Missouri Kansas City, "Female Hymnodists of the Nineteenth Century"

Diana Korzenik Virtual Research Fellowships

• Sophie Hess, PhD candidate in American history, University of Maryland, "'Come by Water and Not by Land:' Iron, Rivers, and Challenges to Settler Colonialism in Maryland, 1608-1782"
• Rachel Hooper, professor of art history, Savannah College of Art and Design, "Black-Owned Art Collections in the United States, 1860-1870"
• Lawrence Mullen, PhD in English, SUNY Buffalo, "Intersection Wellness, Psychiatric, and Medical Institutional Care and the Patient Experience, 1820-1900"

Lapides

• Karah M. Mitchell, PhD candidate in English and comparative literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "Animals and Becoming Human(e) in Nineteenth-Century American Children's Literature"

Jay and Deborah Last

• Patricia Johnston, professor of visual arts, College of the Holy Cross, "Global Aesthetics"
• Andrea Pappas, associate professor of art and art history, Santa Clara University, "Art and Enslavement in Two Massachusetts Embroideries 1756-1758"
• Kayla Schreiber, graduate student of English, University of Southern Mississippi, "Black Fugitivity, Disability, and Sexual Deviancy in Nineteenth Century Slave Narratives
• Hampton Smith, PhD candidate in history, theory, and criticism of art and Architecture Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Making under Slavery in the Black Atlantic World, 1750-1865"
• Todd Thompson, professor of English, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, "Manifest Jestiny"

Legacy

• Karen Racine, professor of history, University of Guelph, "Samuel Larned in South America: The Monroe Doctrine's Dependable Diplomat"

Barbara Packer

• Alice de Galzain, PhD candidate in English literature, University of Edinburgh, "Recounting the Lives of Women Writers: Emerson on Fuller, Godwin on Wollstonecraft, and Sand on Sand"

Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson

• Kathryn Angelica, PhD candidate in history, University of Connecticut, "An Uneasy Alliance: Cooperation and Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Black and White Women's Activism"
• Daniel J Burge, associate editor in research and collections, Kentucky Historical Society, "The Washington Doctrine, A Continental History, 1800-1920"
• Alexander Chaparro-Silva, PhD candidate in history, The University of Texas at Austin, "Writing the Other America: Democracy, Race, and Print Culture in the Americas, 1830-1898"
• Ronald Angelo Johnson, associate professor of history, Baylor University, "Mutual Entanglements: Transracial Ties between Haitians and Revolutionary Americans"
• Samantha Plasencia, assistant professor of English, Colby College, "Signifying Against Anti-Blackness: Black Rhetorical Communities in Early America 1760-1830"
• Taneil Ruffin, PhD candidate in history, Princeton University, "Haitian Revolution Refugees and Legal Cultures of Slavery and Freedom in the Atlantic World, 1791-1860"
• Grant Stanton, PhD candidate in history, University of Pennsylvania, "White Allies in Revolutionary Massachusetts?: The Antislavery Commitments of Isaiah Thomas and Ezekiel Russell"
• Helena Yoo Roth, PhD candidate in history, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, "American Timelines: Imperial Communications, Colonial Time-Consciousness, and the Coming of the American Revolution"

Reese

• Shaibal Dev Roy, PhD candidate in English, University of Southern California, "Publishing Americans in Nineteenth-Century India"
• Alice Martin, PhD candidate in English, Rutgers University, "Playing with Scripted Intimacy: The Uptake of American Autograph Albums, 1820-1860"

Justin G. Schiller

• Emily C. Bruce, associate professor of history, University of Minnesota Morris, "Siblings on the Move: German, Irish, and French Canadian Families, 1840-1930"

Joyce Tracy

• Kevin McPartland, PhD candidate in history, University of Cincinnati, "The Birthing of a Nation: Confederate Nationalism in the Southern Press"

Fellowships for Creative and Performing Artists and Writers - 2023

Hearst Foundations

• Danielle Legros Georges, poet, research for “Acts of Resistance to New England Slavery by Africans Themselves in New England,” a series of poems about Black self-determinism and articulations of freedom within and against the context of Northern slavery
• D. Lance Marsh, playwright, professor of theatre, Oklahoma City University and Associate Artistic Director at Oklahoma Shakespeare Company, research for “Macbeth/Forrest/Macbeth” a radical reworking of the text of Shakespeare’s Macbeth as seen through the lens of the Astor Place Riots

Robert and Charlotte Baron

• Monique Celeste Hayes, historical novelist, research for “Sally Forth,” on African-American experience during the American Revolution from the years 1771-1785
• Kristina Martino, poet and visual artist, research for “The Avian Kingdom,” a project that concerns reinventing the pastoral poem and fusing human consciousness with that of the landscape, as well as various environmental and health crises

Jay and Deborah Last

• Jen Bervin, poet and interdisciplinary artist, research for “Measuring the Sun,” encompassing new and ongoing work on Emily Dickinson focused on artworks in the form of composites, concordances, visual indexes, and artist books

Fellowships for Creative and Performing Artists and Writers - 2024

Hearst Foundations

• Alison Clarke, poet, research on Harriet E. Wilson for a historical fiction trilogy
• Tina Spangler, documentary filmmaker, research for her historical film about the life, work, and massive influence of artist Frances Flora “Fanny” Palmer (1812-1876)

Robert and Charlotte Baron

• Leslie Schomp, visual artist and senior lecturer, investigation into the history of American lacemaking in past centuries
• Jessica Mehta, inter/multi/anti-disciplinary poet, artist, and scholar, research for “Red-Acted” a collection of Indigenous erasure poetry