Past Recipients - The Center for the Study of the American South

2011-12

LaKisha Simmons, Ph.D.

Dissertation: “Black Girls Coming of Age: Sexuality and Segregation in New Orleans.” LaKisha Simmons received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Her research focus while at the Center was black girlhood and sexuality in Jim Crow New Orleans, 1930-1954. Following her fellowship, Simmons went on to join the faculty in Transnational Studies at SUNY Buffalo.

Anderson Blanton, Ph.D.

Dissertation: “Hittin’ the Prayer Bones: The Materialities of Faith and Divine Communication in Southern Appalachia.” Anderson Blanton received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. His work focuses on prayer cloths and the materialities of faith in Southern Appalachian church communities. Following his CSAS postdoctoral fellowship, Andy was awarded a grant from the Social Science Research Council to conduct ethnographic research on the relationships between experiences of the divine and the objects and technologies used in prayer in charismatic and Pentecostal Christian communities in northwestern Virginia.

2010-11

Tammy Ingram, Ph.D.
Dissertation: “Dixie Highway: Private Enterprise and State Building in the South, 1900-1930.” Tammy Ingram received her Ph.D. from Yale University. Following her fellowship year, she was James T. and Ella Rather Kirk Visiting Scholar at Agnes Scott College before joining the history faculty at the College of Charleston.

Scott Matthews, Ph.D.
Dissertation: “Up Against the World Like It Is: Documentary Expression in the South, 1925-1965.” Scott Matthews received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. Following his fellowship year, Matthews went on to teach in the history department of Georgia State University.

2009-10

R. Blakeslee Gilpin, Ph.D.
Dissertation:“Monster and Martyr: America’s Long Reckoning with Race, Violence, and John Brown.” Gilpin received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2009. His dissertation, “Monster and Martyr: America’s Long Reckoning with Race, Violence, and John Brown,” examines the complex circumstances which have allowed Brown to remain relevant and controversial 150 years after his death. Following his fellowship year, Gilpin went on to a fellowship at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney before joining the history faculty at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of John Brown Still Lives! America’s Long Reckoning with Violence, Equality, & Change (UNC Press, 2011).

Zoe Trodd, Ph.D.
Dissertation: “The Reusable Past: Abolitionist Aesthetics in the Protest Literature of the Long Civil Rights Movement.” Zoe Trodd received her Ph.D. from Harvard University. Following her fellowship year, Trodd went on to teach at Columbia University before joining the faculty of the University of Nottingham (U.K.) as Chair of American Literature in the Department of American and Canadian Studies.

2008-09

Malinda Maynor Lowery, Ph.D.
Dissertation: “Indians, Southerners, And Americans.“ Malinda Maynor Lowery received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A Lumbee Indian, Lowery challenges through her work common assumptions that the South’s racial cleavages involved only blacks and whites. She examines Indian identity and federal policy during the Jim Crow era, showing how American and southern identities acquire new layers of meaning when confronted with the Lumbees. The profound ambiguities of race, citizenship and colonialism find essential expression in the intersection of Indian, southern and American identities. Following her fellowship year, Lowery went on to join the history faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation (UNC Press, 2010).

Ben Wise, Ph.D.
Dissertation: “Cosmopolitan Southerner: The Life and World of William Alexander Percy.” Ben Wise received his Ph.D. from Rice University. William Alexander Percy is well known to students of the American South as author of Lanterns on the Levee, plantation owner, and adoptive father of the novelist Walker Percy. Wise’s project considers the lesser-known aspects of Percy’s historical experience: namely his participation in and contribution to the emergence of a modern gay identity in America. Following his fellowship year, Wise went on to join the history faculty at the University of Florida. He is the author of William Alexander Percy: The Curious Life of a Mississippi Planter and Sexual Freethinker (UNC Press, 2012).

2007-08

Stephen Inrig, Ph.D.
Dissertation: “In a Place So Ordinary: North Carolina and the Problem of AIDS.” Stephen Inrig received his Ph.D. from Duke University. Taking its title from a line in Albert Camus’s The Plague, Stephen Inrig’s work provides a historical analysis of the AIDS epidemic in North Carolina. He explores the ways HIV/AIDS affected people in North Carolina and how people in the state shaped responses to the epidemic in the United States and around the world. Key to Inrig’s analysis is the role southern communities played in transitioning AIDS policies away from their exceptionalist origins toward more traditional public health strategies. Following his fellowship year, Inrig went on to join the faculty of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in the Department of Clinical Sciences Division of Outcomes and Health Sciences Research. He is the author of North Carolina and the Problem of AIDS: Advocacy, Politics, and Race in the South (UNC Press, 2011).

Danielle McGuire, Ph.D.
Dissertation: “At the Dark End of the Street: Sexualized Violence, Community Mobilization, and the African American Freedom Struggle.” Danielle McGuire received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University. Focusing on the period from 1940 to 1975, McGuire examined how sexual violence and the defense of black womanhood served as catalysts for the modern Civil Rights Movement. In viewing civil rights history through the lens of sexual assault, McGuire’s work shed light on issues of sexual violence and power that plague communities throughout the world. Following her fellowship year, McGuire went on to join the history faculty at Wayne State University.

2006-07

Katherine Charron, Ph.D.
Dissertation: “Teaching Citizenship: Septima Poinsette Clark and the Transformation of the African American Freedom Struggle.” Kat Charron received her Ph.D. from Yale University. While a fellow, Charron turned her dissertation on African American civil rights activist and educator Septima Poinsette Clark into a book. Following her fellowship year, Charron went on to join the history faculty at North Carolina State University. She is the author of Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark (UNC Press, 2009).

Amy Wood, Ph.D.
Dissertation: “Spectacles of Suffering: Witnessing Lynching in the New South.” Amy Wood received her Ph.D. from Emory University. During her postdoctoral year, Wood revised her dissertation on lynching, white supremacy, and spectacle in the New South. Following her fellowship year, Wood went on to join the history faculty at Illinois State University. She is the author of Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 (UNC Press, 2009).