Announcing the Gilder Lehrman College Fellows in American History for 2022

The Gilder Lehrman Institute is pleased to announce the selection of ten Gilder Lehrman College Fellows in American History for 2022.

Through its newly launched College Fellowship Program in American History, the Gilder Lehrman Institute provides annual short-term research fellowships in the amount of $3000 each to undergraduate students majoring or minoring in History, American Studies, Africana, Political Science, or related fields.

The program enables young historians to do research primarily at the Gilder Lehrman Collection—a repository containing more than eighty thousand items documenting the political, social, and economic history of the United States—and also at other archives in New York City, including the New York Public Library, the New-York Historical Society, the Schomburg Center, and the Columbia University Libraries.

Between June 15, 2022 and January 31, 2023, each College Fellow will make a research trip to New York City, meet with members of the Gilder Lehrman staff to discuss their projects in detail, and submit a summary report to the Institute upon completion of the terms of the award.

The College Fellows’ names, affiliations, and project titles are as follows:

• Mashayla Billups, Howard University — “Black Communities and Domestic Terrorism: An Analysis”
• Zirui Chen, Columbia University — “The Great North Carolina Klan Trials, 1870–1871: Due Process, State Action, and the Southern Redemption of the Fourteenth Amendment”
• Holly Harris, Texas Christian University — “The Life of Warren David Gribbons: American Air Force POW during WWII”
• Sasha Hochman, Barnard College — “What Does It Mean to Write a ‘History of the Present’? Mercy Otis Warren’s History of the American Revolution”
• Ishani Kaul, Rice University — “An Analysis of Journalism Surrounding the American Women’s Suffrage Movement”
• Daniel Ma, Yale University — “Choctaw Claims and Choctaw-Chickasaw Treaties: A Single Political Topic?”
• Alonso Rangel, Concordia University — “The Mexican American Boundaries Revisited”
• Grace Sperber, Stanford University — “Meaning at the Pyre: Constitutional Thought at the Frontier”
• Sierra Love Trabosci, University of New Mexico — “The Impact of the American West on the United States Civil War”
• Samuel Martin Yelnosky, Columbia University — “The Southern Roots of Cold War Development Policy”

Each applicant to the program was required to submit a brief project proposal, including a 2–3 paragraph summation of their research and a list of five documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection to be used in their project. In addition, each provided a CV and a letter of recommendation from a faculty member who has taught them.

“Given the excellence of the applications we received,” says Dr. Nicole Seary, the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s Director of Fellowships, “it was difficult for the Fellowship Committee to make a final selection.”

“The Institute’s new College Fellowship Program is designed to support serious research in American history by top undergraduates who show promise of becoming future historians, scholars, and civic leaders,” says Gilder Lehrman Institute President James Basker. “We could not be more excited about identifying and working with this pool of talent, and giving them opportunities to fulfill their scholarly potential at the highest level.”

The program, which is only in its first year, will continue to grow and develop over time.

The application portal for the 2023 Gilder Lehrman College Fellowships in American History will be open from January 15 to April 10, 2023. To apply for a 2023 College Fellowship and to learn more about the program, please visit https://www.gilderlehrman.org/programs-and-events/college-fellowships-american-history/how-apply.