ANNOUNCING THE 2021 GILDER LEHRMAN SCHOLARLY FELLOWS

The Gilder Lehrman Institute provides annual short-term research fellowships in the amount of $3,000 each to doctoral candidates, college and university faculty at every rank, and independent scholars working in the field of American history. The fellowships support research at archives in New York City, including the Gilder Lehrman Collection, the New York Public Library, the Schomburg Center, the New-York Historical Society, and the Columbia University Libraries. Since 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute has awarded a total of 683 fellowships.

This year, thanks to generous donations to the Scholarly Fellowship Program from John Winthrop, Sidney Lapidus, and Yaroslav Faybishenko, special attention was given to three specific topics: colonial America, the history of slavery and abolition, and the Cold War. Preference was given to applicants in those fields, although projects on all aspects of American history were welcomed.

On October 15, 2021, ten Gilder Lehrman Scholarly Fellows were selected from a total of seventy-one applicants. The Fellows’ names, affiliations, and project titles are as follows:

Adam Biggs

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

“Strange Cures: Black Doctors, Harlem Hospital, and the New Negro in American Medicine, 1919–1935”

Brandi Brimmer

Associate Professor, Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“The Other Douglass: Frederick C. Douglass, A Black Freedom Fighter in the Post-Emancipation South”

James I. Deutsch

Curator and Editor, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Washington, DC

“Identifying and Documenting Individuals Experiencing Homelessness in Colonial New York”

Dexter Fergie

PhD Candidate in History, Northwestern University

“Headquartering the World: American Power and the Space of Global Governance, 1944–1980”

Sarah Beth Gable

PhD Candidate in American History, Brandeis University

“Policing the Revolution: Massachusetts Communities and the Committees of Correspondence, Inspection and Safety, 1773–1783”

Tayzhaun Glover

PhD Candidate in History, Duke University

“Freedom on the Horizon: Fugitive Slave Flight and the Abolition of Slavery in Martinique and Guadeloupe, 1824–1848”

Christopher Minty

Managing Editor, John Dickinson Writings Project, Center for Digital Editing, University of Virginia

“The Papers of Robert R. Livingston, Member of the Committee of Five and First US Secretary of Foreign Affairs”

Barton A. Myers

Class of 1960 Professor of Ethics and History (Term 2019–2022) and Associate Professor of Civil War History, Washington and Lee University

“Champions of the Union: Lincoln’s Southern Commanders and the American Civil War Era”

Laura Ping

Adjunct Assistant Professor of History, Queens College and Pace University, and Post-Doctoral Fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities, The Library Company of Philadelphia

“Beyond Bloomers: Fashioning Change in the Long Nineteenth Century”

Keely Smith

PhD Candidate in History, Princeton University

“Communicating Power and Sovereignty: Muscogee Communication Networks, 1715–1880”

Over the course of the next two years, each Fellow will make a research trip to New York City, visit the Gilder Lehrman office to meet the staff, and submit a summary report to the Institute upon completion of the terms of the award.

For over a quarter of a century, the recipients of Gilder Lehrman Scholarly Fellowships have contributed to Gilder Lehrman programs and initiatives in various ways, as Book Breaks interviewees, History Now contributors, MA Program lecturers, Teacher Seminar instructors, and more. Leaders in the field, they both embody and support the Institute’s mission to promote the study and love of American history.

To apply for a 2022 Gilder Lehrman Scholarly Fellowship and to learn more about the program, please visit gilderlehrman.org/scholarly-fellowships.