News Article

Humanistic Scholarship Responding to Today’s Most Pressing Issues

ACLS is proud to support a wide breadth of humanistic scholarship that responds to urgent issues faced by society.
Published: January 10, 2023

What does humanistic knowledge actually do? How will it help others? As ACLS President Joy Connolly writes in her Community Message for January 2023, the scholarship ACLS supports through its fellowship and grant programs “shows that humanistic scholars make visible that which would otherwise remain invisible…If we are to understand the wicked problems [society faces], we must create more space for humanistic study and teaching.”

“Afterlives of Conviction: Work, Race and the Criminal Records Complex in the US”

Melissa Burch, 2022 ACLS Fellow

“Community-based Knowledges and Visions for Racial, Health, and Climate Justice”

University of Nevada, Reno, 2022 Sustaining Public Engagement Grantee

“Stop Sexual Violence!: Popular Culture and Female Bonding in China’s Pandemic Era”

Xuefei Ma, 2022 Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies Early Career Fellow

“Towards Digital Justice: Developing US Citizenship Application & Website with Refugees & Immigrants”

Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 2022 ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grantee

“The Third Edition of Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy”

Kimberly A. Probolus, 2021 ACLS Leading Edge Fellow appointed to the Southern Poverty Law Center

“Images as sociopolitical currency in the 2020 #EndSARS protest in Nigeria”

George Chukwuka Odoh, 2021 African Humanities Program Postdoctoral Fellow

“Been On The Shop Floor Too Long – Black Labor After The 1964 Civil Rights Act”

D. Caleb Smith, 2022 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow

“Indigenous Autocracy: Race, Power, and Resources in Porfirian Tlaxcala, Mexico”

Jaclyn A. Sumner, 2020 ACLS Project Development Grantee

“‘Drawing Unbelonging’ uses comics as a medium of inquiry to engage the sociopolitical through the lens of the personal, to critically look at pressing issues of our time, and draw attention to systemic and interconnected issues pertaining to race, gender, disability, and environmental inequality.”

Kay Sohini F’21 discusses the process of creating her graphic dissertation using comics as a method, and how nontraditional approaches to scholarship can create space for inclusive work accessible to the public.

Left: Image from Sohini’s graphic dissertation, “Drawing Unbelonging”
Fellows in Focus
All Fellow & Grantee Stories

Contributing to Black Histories and Futures

ACLS fellows and partners share their work creating spaces for Black communities and stories in partnership with the Leading Edge and Mellon/ACLS Scholars and Society Fellowship programs.

Bringing Seattle Together for Intergenerational Anti-Racist Workshops

Mellon/ACLS Scholars and Society Fellow Ralina L. Joseph F’19 leads intergenerational skills-building workshops to combat racism.

Researching LGBTQ+ Identities in Ancient Hindu Mythology

Community College Faculty Fellow Meena Nayak F’19 shares her experience researching homosexual and transgender identities in Hindu myths.

Exploring global art histories through the lens of immigration

Luis Vargas-Santiago, 2020 Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art, shares his research analyzing imagery of Emiliano Zapata through the lenses of immigration and cultural dispersion.

“Atlanta’s public housing history recognized, thanks to the work of an Emory associate professor”

Christina Crawford, 2020 Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art, was recently recognized for bringing overdue recognition to two Atlanta housing projects that were the first federally-funded public housing in the nation.

Learn more about Crawford’s project, “Atlanta Housing Interplay: Expanding the Interwar Housing Map.”

Learn More About the Work ACLS Supports