2023 Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders

Scholars Committed to Campus Engagement Named

Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders for 2023

The Institute for Citizens & Scholars has named 10 scholars as Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders (MEFL) for 2023. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the MEFL Awards support junior faculty whose research focuses on contemporary American history, politics, culture, and society, and who are committed to the creation of thriving campus communities for students and faculty.

The MEFL Award seeks to free the time of junior faculty working toward tenure so that they can both engage in and build support systems, professional networks, and scholarly groups that make their academic fields and campuses thrive. Each recipient receives a 12-month stipend of $20,000 while working toward tenure.

The exceptional early-career professors in this year’s class work in fields such as women’s and gender studies, history, and performing arts and film. Awardees’ scholarship focuses on critical issues such as religion, immigration, public policy, and race. In addition to pioneering research, they also take on additional campus responsibilities like mentoring, serving on advisory councils, working with student scholars, and giving additional talks and lectures. (See the full list of Fellows below.)

The 2023 class comes from a competitive applicant pool representing disciplines across the humanities. The final MEFL awardees were selected through an interview process by a selection committee of four former and current university leaders with various academic and research backgrounds.

Established in 2015, the program has now supported more than 70 junior faculty who represent the next generation of leaders and scholars in the humanities and social sciences and who are poised to play a significant role in shaping American higher education. Through their own work to make their fields and institutions reflective of our democracy, they are expanding young people’s understandings and frameworks for active roles in civil society.

For more information about the MEFL Award, eligibility requirements, and the next application cycle, visit https://citizensandscholars.org/fellowships/mefl/

Eladio B. Bobadilla, University of Pittsburgh | History

No More Back Doors: A History of the Immigrants’ Rights Movement

Kelly M. Britt, CUNY Brooklyn College | Anthropology

Sensing the City: Historic Landscapes Empowering Future Communities

Hareem Khan, California State University, San Bernadino | Anthropology

Racialized Authenticity: Transnational Aesthetic Practices in the Ethnic Beauty and Wellness Industries

Marci Kwon, Stanford University | Art History

Making Chinatown: Art, Aesthetics, and Asian America

Suzanne Lye, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Classics

To Starve and To Curse: Women’s Anger in Ancient Greek Literature and Magic

Laura A. Orrico, Temple University | Sociology

On the Edge: Making it Work in the Age of Precarity

Nahir I. Otaño Gracia, University of New Mexico | Literature

Whiteness and the Global North Atlantic in the Middle Ages and the Present

 Iván Ramos, Brown University | Literature

Mourning Without Bodies: Queer and Feminist Aesthetics in the Time of Violence

 Chris Suh, Emory University | History

Between Korea and America: Diaspora Politics in the Age of Decolonization

 Terrell Winder, University of California, Santa Barbara | Sociology

Unspoiled: How Black Gay Youth Transform Racial and Sexual Stigma