The National Humanities Center Announces 2025-26 Fellows

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., April 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Humanities Center (NHC) is pleased to announce the appointment of 32 Fellows for the 2025–26 academic year. These leading scholars will come to the Center from universities and colleges in 13 US states and the District of Columbia as well as Canada and Hong Kong. Chosen from 588 applicants, they represent humanistic scholarship in African American studies; Africana studies; anthropology; Caribbean studies; history; history of art and architecture; history of the book; studies of languages and literature; medieval studies; music history and musicology; philosophy; religious studies; and theater, dance, and performance 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.

These newly appointed Fellows will constitute the forty-eighth class of resident scholars to be admitted since the Center opened in 1978. "We are so thrilled to support the exciting and important work of these scholars," said Martha Kelly, vice president for scholarly programs of the National Humanities Center. "They were selected from a large and highly competitive group of applicants from around the globe and across the disciplines comprising the humanities. We eagerly anticipate their arrival in the fall as they each contribute to our robust intellectual community and highlight the value of academic freedom, especially at this moment in time."

The National Humanities Center will award over $1,570,000 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 and awards from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the James P. Geiss & Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation, as well as contributions from alumni and friends of the Center.

NHC Fellows and Their Projects, 2025–26

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

• Christy Anderson (History of Art and Architecture; University of Toronto) Castles of the Sea
• Candace Bailey (Music History and Musicology; North Carolina Central University) Locating the Self in Black Opera: Edmond Dédé Morgiane ou Le Sultan d'isfahan
• Alison Beringer (Medieval Studies; Montclair State University) Virgil as Sculptor: Premodern Literary Perceptions of the Art of Sculpting
• Alejandra Bronfman (Caribbean Studies; SUNY at Albany) Afterlives of a Voice: History and Memory in Sonic Archives
• Cara Caddoo (History; Indiana University, Bloomington) Early Native American Filmgoing and Exhibition
• Jasmine Cobb (African American Studies; Duke University) The Pictorial Life of Harriet Tubman
• Signe Cohen (Religious Studies; University of Missouri) "No Other World Than This": A History of Atheism in South Asia
• Tressie Cottom (African American Studies; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) The Vivian: Black Mothering and Daughtering Amidst Movements
• Kathleen DuVal (History; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Yorktown: The American Revolution and the Making of the United States
• Alexander Eger (Archaeology; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Erased Archaeology: The 19th/20th Century Settlement of Bosnians at Caesarea, Israel
• Adam Ewing (Africana Studies; Virginia Commonwealth University) Blacklands: The Global Fight for African Freedom
• Jiren Feng (History of Art and Architecture; University of Hawai'i at Hilo) The Imperial Song (960–1279) Architectural Culture: Ritual Order, Political Demand, and Religious Concerns
• Ruiying Gao (History of Art and Architecture; Wake Forest University) Collating Nature: Illustrated Bencao Books in Ming China
• Grace Hale (History; University of Virginia) They Don't Own Us: Harlan County, Kentucky and the Fight for the Future of the American Working Class
• CJ Jones (Medieval Studies; University of Notre Dame) Binding Ritual: Enclosed Women, Cultural Authority, and Liturgical Books in Late Medieval Germany
• Michelle Kahn (History; University of Richmond) Neo-Nazis in Germany and the United States: An Entangled History of Hate, 1945–2000
• Chong Fuk Lau (Philosophy; The Chinese University of Hong Kong) The Abstract Kant: Rethinking the Grounds of Transcendental Philosophy
• Mireya Loza (History; Georgetown University) A Century of Guest Workers: Exploitation and Inequality on American Farms
• Patrick McKelvey (Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; University of Pittsburgh) Supporting Actors: A Disability History of Theatrical Welfare
• Ghassan Moazzin (History; The University of Hong Kong) A Business History of Modern China, c. 1800 to the Present
• Young Kyun Oh (History of the Book; Arizona State University) The King's Press: Typography and Printing in Chosǒn Korea (1392–1910)
• Travis Proctor (Religious Studies; Wittenberg University) Multispecies Perspectives on Jesus in Early Christianity (ca. 50–200 CE)
• Charles Samuelson (Medieval Studies; University of Colorado, Boulder) Sexual Consent in High Medieval French Literature
• Claire Seiler (Languages and Literatures; Dickinson College) The Narrative Lives of Polio
• Benjamin Sommer (Religious Studies; Jewish Theological Seminary of America) Psalms as Ritual, Psalms as Torah: Religious Experience and the Psalter
• Sarra Tlili (Religious Studies; University of Florida) From Sanctity to Rights: Animal Ethics in Islam
• Emine Tuna (Philosophy; University of California, Santa Cruz) Imaginative Resistance
• Carina Venter (Musicology; Stellenbosch University) Playing With/Against Power: Histories of Trauma and Abuse in South African Music-Pedagogical Spaces
• Ronald Williams (African American Studies; Independent Scholar) Black Embassy: TransAfrica and the Struggle for Foreign Policy Justice
• Terrion Williamson (African American Studies; University of Illinois, Chicago) The Unreckoned: Black Women and Serial Murder in the All-American City
• Karin Zipf (History; East Carolina University) Field Ghosts: The Vanishing American Farmworker and the New Slavery
• Jerry Zee (Anthropology; Princeton University) Faultlines: Geopolitics, Geophysics, and the Sino-American Pacific

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.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Don Solomon
[email protected]
919-406-0120

SOURCE National Humanities Center