Year-End Round Up: 2022 Fellow Accomplishments

In 2022, Fellows from the Citizens & Scholars network continued doing exceptional work in their areas of focus. In addition to winning major awards and accolades—including a Pulitzer Prize and two MacArthur Fellowships—Fellows garnered praise for their books, earned prestigious fellowships, and won numerous professional honors. 

Major Awards & Honors 

Two Fellows from the Citizens & Scholars network have been named MacArthur Fellows, the five-year program unofficially called “Genius Grants.”  

Gabrielle Foreman, a 1986 Mellon Fellow, was awarded the grant for her work “catalyzing inquiry into historic nineteenth-century collective Black organizing efforts through initiatives such as the Colored Conventions Project.” Martha Gonzalez, a 2016 Career Enhancement Fellow, is recognized for “strengthening cross-border ties and advancing participatory methods of artistic knowledge production in the service of social justice.”

Read more about the Fellows’ work.

Salamishah Tillet won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism for her “learned and stylish writing about Black stories in art and popular culture–work that successfully bridges academic and nonacademic critical discourse.” The award recognizes her work as a contributing critic at large at The New York Times. Dr. Tillet is a double C&S Fellow, holding a 1999 Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies and a 2010 Career Enhancement Fellowship.

Read more about Dr. Tillet’s work. 

Professional Awards

Caroline Blanchard, a 2020 recipient of the HistoryQuest Fellowship, was named the NJ History Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute.  

A number of Higher Education Media Fellows have been recognized with awards from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Top of the Rockies awards. Jenny Brundin ‘20, Stephanie Daniels ‘21, Jason Gonzales ‘20, Chandra Thomas Whitfield ‘21, and Jon Reed ‘22 all were recognized for their journalism work.  

George Chauncey, a 1983 recipient of the Women’s Studies Fellowship, is the recipient of the 2022 John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity awarded by the Library of Congress. The prize recognizes and celebrates work of the highest quality and greatest impact that advances understanding of the human experience.  

Eddie R. Cole, a 2017 recipient of the Malkiel Fellowship, won the Frederic W. Ness Book Award for his book, The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom (Princeton University Press), from the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The Ness award is given to the book that best illuminates the goals and practices of a contemporary liberal education. 

Vicky Diaz-Camacho, a 2022 recipient of the Higher Education Media Fellowship, won a regional Emmy Award for a Public Affairs Program. She was a part of the Kansas City PBS team that produced the winning “Houseless in Kansas City” segment on the Flatland program.  

Jessica Harris, a 2014 recipient of the Career Enhancement Fellowship, was awarded the Change Create Transform Foundation’s 2022 Humanitarian Award and has been named a St. Louis Business Journal Champion for Diversity and Inclusion. Dr. Harris currently serves as Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Vice Chancellor for Anti-racism, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.  

Rebecca VanDiver, a 2019 recipient of the Nancy Weiss Malkiel Fellowship, was awarded a 2021 Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Reviews for her book, Designing a New Tradition: Loïs Mailou Jones and the Aesthetics of Blackness (Penn State University Press).  

Sharita Ware, a 2011 recipient of the WW Teaching Fellowship, was named the 2022 Indiana State Teacher of the Year. 

Kaylen Woods, a 2021 recipient of the WW Teaching Fellowship, was awarded a 20222 Educator Excellence Award from PERC. 

Academic Appointments and Honors 

Zaid Adhami (Newcombe ’15), Laura McTighe (Newcombe ’16), and Barbara Sostaita (Women’s Studies ‘20) are among the 2022 class of Young Scholars in American Religion named by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at IUPUI.  

Amina Gautier, a 2013 recipient of the Career Enhancement Fellowship, is a member of the inaugural cohort of Letras Boricuas Fellows from the Mellon Foundation. The Fellows are 20 Puerto Rican writers whose dynamic work spans genres including fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and children’s literature. 

Pardis Mahdavi, a 2005 recipient of the Women’s Health Fellowship, has been named Provost of the University of Montana. 

Lerone A. Martin, a 2017 recipient of the Malkiel Fellowship, was appointed faculty director for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at the Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences.  

What MLK’s “I Have a Dream” Speech Says About Hope in Democracy

Richard Reddick, a 2005 recipient of the Career Enhancement Fellowship, was appointed Senior Vice Provost for Curriculum and Enrollment and Dean of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Texas-Austin 

Kayla Vinson, a 2010 recipient of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowship, has been named the inaugural director of the Law and Racial Justice Center at Yale. 

Fellows in the News

In the South Florida Times: Historians have documented how college students contributed to the civil rights movement. Less attention has been paid to the role college presidents played in the fight for equality. Eddie R. Cole (Malkiel Fellowship 2017), author of the book “The Campus Color Line,” discusses various ways these leaders contributed. Read the full article here. 

On The Take Away: Kelly Dittmar (Women’s Studies Fellowship ‘10), Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University-Camden and the Director of Research at the Center for American Women in Politics (CAWP) joins us to discuss the unique political lessons we can learn from studying the recruitment, campaigns, media coverage, and outcomes of elections where women are vying for office against other women. Hear the full episode here. 

Related: How Gender Intersects with Politics 

On A Chat in the Garden: Amira Rose Davis (Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders Fellowship ‘21) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas-Austin where she specializes in 20th Century American History with an emphasis on race, gender, sports, and politics. Dr. Davis joined host Monique A. J. Smith to discuss her career path, advice for others, and current initiatives. Hear the full episode here. 

RECENT PUBLICATIONS 

Gene G. Byrd (Woodrow Wilson Fellowship ’68), Paths to Dark Energy (Degruyter)  

Gene G. Byrd (Woodrow Wilson Fellowship ’68), The Evolving Universe and the Origin of Life (Springer) 

Kaysha Corinealdi (Career Enhancement Fellowship ’19) Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean Panamanian World Making in the Twentieth Century (Duke University Press) 

Amira Rose Davis (Mellon Emerging Faculty Leader Fellowship ‘21) Can’t Eat a Medal: The Lives and Labors of Black Women Athletes in the Age of Jim Crow (UNC Press)  

Annie Gray Fischer (Women’s Studies Fellowship ’71), The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification (University of North Carolina Press) 

Gary G. Gaffney (Woodrow Wilson Fellowship ’66), Notes on Drawing (Lulu) 

James C. Klagge (Newcombe Fellowship ’82), Wittgenstein’s Artillery: Philosophy as Poetry (MIT Press) 

James C. Klagge (Newcombe Fellowship ’82), Tractatus in Context: The Essential Background for Appreciating Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Routledge) 

Charles Stephen Layman (Newcombe Fellowship ‘82), God: Eigh Enduring Questions (University of Notre Dame Press) 

Sam Lebovic (Nancy Weiss Malkiel Fellowship ’16) A Righteous Smokescreen: Postwar America and the Politics of Cultural Globalization (University of Chicago Press)  

Ana Muñiz (Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders Fellowship ‘21) Borderland Circuitry: Immigration Surveillance in the United States and Beyond (University of California Press) 

Mairead Sullivan (Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders Fellowship ’20) Lesbian Death: Desire and Danger between Feminist and Queer (University of Minnesota Press) 

Danielle Terrazas Williams (Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders Fellowship ’21) The Capital of Free Women: Race, Legitimacy, and Liberty in Colonial Mexicoby (Yale University Press) 

2022 C&S Fellows 

Citizens & Scholars was pleased to welcome more than 120 Fellows into the C&S network this year. Fellows are high school students who organized local community projects, STEM graduates pursuing teaching careers in Philadelphia, journalist covering underreported issues in career education, and scholars from a range of fields pursuing work and research that is expanding perspectives and understanding at campuses across the country. Meet the Fellows from the various Fellowship classes below. 

• The 2022 Teaching Fellows 
• The Fall 2022 Higher Ed Media Fellows 
• The 2022 Civic Spring Fellows 
• The 2022 Career Enhancement Fellows 
• The 2022 Newcombe Fellows 
• The 2022 Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders 
• The Spring 2022 Higher Ed Media Fellows 
• The 2022 Women’s Studies Fellows