ACLS News

The new initiative, funded by a $1.9 million grant from the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation, will support research and teaching in Buddhist studies.

88 scholars receive awards to support new research in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.

The 22 awardees, recent Ph.D.s from a range of humanistic disciplines, will take up two-year positions at participating universities across the country.

The report features a message from President Yu and highlights of the year's activities, along with a complete listing of 2012 fellows and grantees and their research projects.

ACLS President Pauline Yu issued the following statement concerning federal funding of research in political science: "The ACLS urges the Congress to restore adequate funding for research in political science by the National Science Foundation..."

The American Council of Learned Societies is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2013 Collaborative Research Fellowships.

The Board of Directors of the American Council of Learned Societies announced today its reappointment of Pauline Yu to a third five-year term as president, beginning July 2013.

The American Council of Learned Societies is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2013 ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowships.

ACLS was saddened to learn of the passing of Sarah Namulondo (F'11), who was a lecturer in the department of literature at Makerere University at the time of her death.

On February 15, 2013, the American Council of Learned Societies hosted a panel presentation and discussion at the College Art Association's (CAA) 2013 annual conference to mark the 20th year of the Henry Luce Foundation ACLS Dissertation Fellowships in American Art.

Cohen was in the inaugural cohort of ACLS Digitial Innovation Fellows.

We are saddened to learn of the passing of Gerda Lerner, a pioneer in the field of women's history and the 2005 Charles Homer Haskins Lecturer.

Our office will be closed from December 24, 2012 through January 1, 2013. We look forward to sharing our work with you here in the new year.

On December 4, 2012 ACLS convened the fourth annual meeting of heads of national fellowship-granting organizations in the humanities.

O'Donnell's term as chair begins January 1, 2013.

Michael Heim, translator, scholar, and friend to ACLS, died this past September.

ACLS is pleased to announce that Bruno Nettl will deliver the Haskins Prize Lecture at the 2014 ACLS Annual Meeting. 

"The humanities help to make the world a better place by revealing to us the complexities and ambiguities of human society in its varied dimensions, helping to shake us from our old biases and habits of thought, from which prejudice and discrimination (even unintentional bias) stem."

ACLS is pleased to announce the publication of the 2012 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture by Joyce Appleby.

"Personal stories are often the inspiration for history projects."

The American Council of Learned Societies is pleased to announce 51 fellowship awards to African scholars in the fourth year of the African Humanities Program (AHP), a multi-year initiative of annual, international competitions funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The program is open to humanities scholars in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.

The program will aid scholars embarking on careers in research and teaching on Chinese history, literature, culture, and society.

"Whitman’s writing has special standing both because of its quality and because of his proximity to the war.  No other significant writer experienced the war so directly and for such an extended period of time. Perhaps only Abraham Lincoln commented on it with as much insight and eloquence."

"Biotechnology is giving us the capability not just to change our world, but to change ourselves—to manipulate and partially redesign our own bodies and minds."

The 13 fellows will join partnering organizations for two-year terms. They will participate in the substantive work of these agencies and receive professional mentoring to further transition into non-academic careers.

"So, what did I do with my ACLS fellowship during 2006-07? Or, how do scholars finish off books that have consumed many years of their careers?"

We are pleased to announce that Jack Fitzmier, executive director of the American Academy of Religion, will serve as chair of the Executive Committee of the Conference of Administrative Officers.

More than 320 humanities scholars worldwide have received awards.

Earl has served on the ACLS Board of Directors since 2004.

The report is available online and in print.

The 39 recent Ph.D.s will take up two-year positions at one of the participating U.S. universities.

The landmark American National Biography offers portraits of more than 18,700 men and women—from all eras and walks of life—whose lives have shaped the nation.

Together, they comprise a quarter of fellows named in the humanities and social sciences.

The program brings together 15 scholars from different institutions, disciplines, and countries whose varied perspectives will yield new advances in research.

ACLS was gratified to learn that at its board of trustees meeting on March 1, 2012, the Carnegie Corporation of New York approved a grant of $5.45 million in continued support of the African Humanities Program.

Anne was associated with the ACLS-sponsored Darwin Correspondence Project since its beginnings in 1974.

The nine fellows will spend a year dedicated to a major scholarly project intended to advance digital humanistic scholarship by broadening understanding of its nature and exemplifying the robust infrastructure necessary for creating such works.

Their project will explore a student-centered approach to course design.

On Monday, February 13, 2012, President Obama awarded the National Humanities Medal to ACLS Board Chair Kwame Anthony Appiah and Board member Teofilo Ruiz.

Created through Donald J. Munro’s generous gifts, the fund will help support ACLS Fellowships awarded for research projects on Chinese philosophical traditions and ethical systems.

On December 12, 2011, ACLS hosted the third annual gathering of leaders of agencies granting research fellowships to scholars in the humanities through national peer-reviewed competitions.

ACLS is pleased to anounce that Robert Alter, Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, will deliver the Haskins Prize Lecture at the 2013 ACLS Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD.

Namesake of ACLS Fellowship for American history dies at the age of 95.

Grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will support a second Public Fellows competition and a third New Faculty Fellows competition.

"Despite the thousands of documentary images made, photographs functioned neither to reveal history transparently nor to obscure it. Photographs make history. As such, images were integral to the incarceration process from its beginning and shaped the historical events that they purported to disclose. Rather than portholes on the past, photographs are artifacts in their own right that can be mined to enrich historical understanding."

"Freshness appears pre-industrial, yet its wide availability—whether in supermarkets or farmers’ markets—depends on a host of industrial technologies, from refrigeration to the Internet. “Fresh” may connote pure, but it has come at a high price for many humans, animals, and ecosystems. Its history shows, ultimately, that freshness is anything but natural."

"It is often said that a crucial feature defining our own species is language: while many other animals have systems of communication in some sense, only humans communicate with messages of unbounded complexity and breathtaking subtlety such as one finds in Swahili, German, or Iroquoian. So it is often said, but is it true? And if it is true, just how important is this distinctive feature to making us who we are?"

Stipends awarded in 2011-12 will be $65,000 for full professors, $45,000 for associate professors, and $35,000 for assistant professors. 

During the 2011 ACLS Annual Meeting last May, 44 Burkhardt Fellows gathered to celebrate a milestone for the Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowships for Recently Tenured Scholars.

"I will never forget the first time I went to visit Marie at her make-shift home in an overcrowded compound in the northern, less-glitzy part of Dubai known as the Satwa neighborhood."

The book on Roman architecture will be based on his ACLS-funded research.

Nearly $15 million was awarded to 350 scholars worldwide, making ACLS a major source of support for humanistic scholarship in the United States.

"[T]his approach to the study of stories and storytelling can get at the heart of questions concerning how people make sense of—and thereby put themselves in a position to engage with—the circumstances and forces that help shape the course of their lives."

The ANB is the premier print and online reference source for significant figures in American history.

The World History Association (WHA) was admitted to constituent membership in the American Council of Learned Societies at the 2011 ACLS Annual Meeting.

“[T]here is nothing unduly 'utopian' in the idea that fairness in the global economy can and should substantially guide public deliberation and choice about the kind of international world we should have and move towards.”

The project will publish all known letters to and from Charles Darwin.

In 2011 the program will place eight recent Ph.D.s in two-year staff positions at partnering agencies in government and the non-profit sector.

ACLS is pleased to announce the 2011 cohort of New Faculty Fellows.

The ACLS Annual Report for 2009-2010 has just been released, online and in print. 

Six scholars have received awards for projects that advance the digital humanities.

Gerhard L. Weinberg G'71, F'65 has been awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society for Military History, the newest of ACLS's 70 member societies.

We at the American Council of Learned Societies are delighted to extend our congratulations to ACLS President Emeritus Stanley N. Katz on his receipt of the 2010 National Humanities Medal. 

Six teams have been selected this year for the third cohort of Collaborative Research Fellows, whose projects range from Roman slaves to Chinese roads.

ACLS Fellows Jesse Ferris F’08, F’07, Omnia El Shakry F’07, Iza Hussin F’07, Todd Presner F’06, and Jessica Winegar F’09 reflect on the uprising in Egypt.

Eileen Gardiner and Ronald G. Musto, co-directors of ACLS Humanities E-Book, jointly named executive director of the Medieval Academy of America and editor of Speculum.

ACLS will close for the holidays on December 24 and reopen on January 3.

ACLS congratulates Alexander C. Y. Huang F'10 on his receipt of the Modern Language Association's eighteenth annual Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies for Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange.

The national Council of Colleges of Arts & Sciences (CCAS) has recognized ACLS with its 2010 Arts & Advocacy Award for "essential support to Ph.D. students and mid-career faculty members by providing fellowships for scholarly research."  

Joyce Appleby, professor emerita of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, will deliver the 30th Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture at the 2012 ACLS Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA. 

ACLS is pleased to announce the publication of the 2010 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture, A Life of Learning by Nancy Siraisi.

ACLS congratulates Dan Cohen F’06, Todd Presner F’06, Andrew Stauffer F'06 and Timothy Tangherlini F’09.

Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown studies the effects of environmental poisoning in a poverty enclave on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

Dissertation completion and postdoctoral fellowships were awarded to scholars in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded ACLS $11.6 million in support of the Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowships, Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowships for Recently Tenured Scholars, and New Faculty Fellows program.

Listen to a panel discussion on the Google Books project and its implications for scholarship from the 2010 ACLS Annual Meeting.

Intern will work in fellowships and grants department during June and July.

In 2010, ACLS awarded over $15 million to more than 380 U.S.-based and international scholars, including the 2010 ACLS New Faculty Fellows.

The Society for Military History was admitted to the American Council of Learned Societies at the 2010 Annual Meeting.

The Conference of Administrative Officers (CAO) will welcome John F. Kutsko on July 1, 2010, when he succeeds Kent Richards as executive director of the Society of Biblical Literature. 

The American Council of Learned Societies mourns the loss of Charles Ryskamp.  In 2001, the Council and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation established the Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowships in honor of his achievements as a scholar and as a leader of cultural and philanthropic institutions. 

The recent earthquake in Haiti has captured the world’s attention. Here, four ACLS fellows—scholars of art, literature, political science, and linguistics—describe how their research can expand our understanding of the disaster.

We are saddened at the loss of Michael Leff, president of the Rhetoric Society of America.

"Much of the extraordinary value of this collection," says Miller, "lies in the more intimate, frequently extemporaneous nature of recorded speech events, including conversations between well-known militants and their audiences, celebrations after militant operations, and poetry."

Entitled “A Life of Learning: Six People I Have Learned From,” the lecture presents the voices and stories of six Americans who have enriched and transformed the English language.

The Conference of Administrative Officers (CAO) welcomes Katherine Finley, who will assume the position of executive director of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) on March 1, 2010.

On December 14, the American Academy of Rome named Christopher S. Celenza F'03 its twenty first director.

Mitchell S. Green F’00, F’05 will embark on a three-year study on the possibility of introducing philosophical education to Virginia high school curricula.

Henry Glassie, College Professor Emeritus of Folklore at Indiana University, Bloomington, will deliver the 29th Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture at the 2011 ACLS Annual Meeting in Washington D.C.

Two ACLS member societies recognize What Blood Won´t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America by Ariela J. Gross F’03.

At its forty-second Triennial Council, the Phi Beta Kappa Society elected ACLS President Pauline Yu to its nominating committee.

ACLS is pleased to announce the ACLS New Faculty Fellows Program, which will provide funding for two years of teaching and research to 50 recent Ph.D.s.

The American Council of Learned Societies announces 35 fellowship awards to African scholars in the first year of its African Humanities Program (AHP), a multi-year initiative of annual, international competitions funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

ACLS announces openings for a program officer and a program assistant in its fellowships office.

The Online Fellowship Application system is now open for the 2009-10 competitions. OFA is available at http://ofa.acls.org.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded ACLS $10.6 million in continued support of the Early Career Fellowship Program, which provides support for young scholars to complete their dissertations and, later, to advance their research after being awarded the Ph.D.

In 2009, ACLS awarded over $10.2 million to 336 scholars based in the US and abroad working in the humanities and interpretive social sciences. This represents the largest amount the Council has given in a single year.

ACLS President Pauline Yu issues statement on appointment of new NEH Chair.

Deadlines for the 2009 10 fellowship and grant competitions are now available.   Awarding peer reviewed fellowships to individuals and, on occasion, grants to groups and institutions is at the core of ACLS activity. The intensive peer review process is

Nancy Siraisi, Distinguished Professor, Hunter College, City University of New York (retired), will deliver the Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture at the 2010 ACLS Annual Meeting in Philadelphia next May.