Legacy Fellowship

The Legacy Fellowship, also for research on any topic supported by the collections, is funded by the gifts of former fellows and research associates. The tradition of former fellows directing their annual gifts to support a fellowship began in 1997. In that year a special effort was undertaken to solicit current-use funds from former holders of fellowships at AAS. The aim was to help a young scholar by supporting a short-term fellowship. This fellowship is awarded to an individual engaged in scholarly research and writing - - including doctoral dissertations - - in any field of American history and culture through 1900.

Application Deadline
Contact Person
Nan Wolverton

Fellows

Date Name Affiliation Position
2024-25 Karen Woods Weierman Worcester State University Professor of English Forty Acres and a Mule: A Legal and Literary History
2023-24 Karen Racine University of Guelph Professor of History Samuel Larned in South America: The Monroe Doctrine's Dependable Diplomat
2022-23 Richard Bell University of Maryland, College Park Professor of History The First Freedom Riders:Streetcars and Street Fights in Jim Crow New York
2020-21 Cynthia Smith Independent Scholar Sentimental Sailors: Rescue and Conversion in Antebellum U.S. Literature
2019-20 Michelle Sizemore University of Kentucky Associate Professor of English Figures: Literature and Mathematics in the Atlantic World, 1750-1860
2018-19 Courtney Buchkoski University of Oklahoma PhD Candidate in English Benevolent Colonization: Emigration Aid and the American West, 1820-1880
2017-18 Charlene Lewis Kalamazoo College Professor The Traitor's Wife: Peggy Arnold and Revolutionary America
2016-17 Justin Pope Beloit College Visiting Assistant Professor of History Dangerous Spirit of Liberty: How Slave Rebellion Transformed the Atlantic World
2015-16 Robin Smith University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill PhD Candidate The 'Iron Harp': Encountering the Industrial Soundscape in the 1840s and 1850s
2014-15 Julia Bernier University of Massachusetts, Amherst PhD Candidate in American Studies A Papered Freedom
2013-14 Adam Thomas University of California, Irvine PhD Candidate Racial Ambiguity and Citizenship in the Postemancipaton Transtlantic World
2012-13 Alpen Razi University of Toronto PhD Candidate Colored Citizens of the World
2011-12 Sari Altschuler CUNY Graduate Center PhD Candidate National Physiology: George Lippard and Antebellum Medical Discourse
2010-11 Matthew Bahar University of Oklahoma PhD Candidate People of the Dawnland and their Atlantic World
2009-10 Spencer Keralis New York University PhD Candidate Children of Wrath: Violence, Remembrance, and the Making of Youth in Antebellum America
2008-09 Allison Malcom University of Illinois, Chicago PhD Candidate "A Protestant Patriotism: Anti-Catholicism and the Rise of Nationhood in North America, 1830-1870."
2007-08 James Kabala Brown University PhD Candidate A Christian Nation?: Religion and the State in the Early American Republic, 1787-1844
2006-07 William Wagner University of California, Berkeley PhD Candidate Divided Landscapes: Geographic Literacy and the Mapping of Sectional Conflict in America, 1846-1865
2005-06 Sara Babcox First University of Michigan PhD Candidate The Mechanics of Renown: Culture and Celebrity in Nineteenth-Century America
2004-05 Robb Haberman University of Connecticut PhD Candidate "Magazine Production and the Economics of the Print Trade in Post-Revolutionary America"
2002-03 J. Opal Brandeis University PhD Candidate Ambition and Democracy: Worldly Pursuits and Aspirations in New England, 1780 - 1830
2001-02 Kate Larson University of New Hampshire PhD Candidate Asante, Daughter of Zion: The Life and Memory of Harriet Tubman
2000-01 Matthew Hale Brandeis University PhD Candidate Neither Britons nor Frenchmen: The Creation of American Nationality, 1789-1815
1999-00 Elizabeth Reis University of Oregon Adjunct Assistant Professor Heaven Help Us: Angles, Gender, and American Religions
1998-99 Bridget Ford University of California, Davis PhD Candidate People of Sorrow, Children of Grace: Race and Religion in the Antebellum West