by Cassandra Cloutier, Assistant Director of Research

Each year, the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) awards dozens of fellowships to support scholars from a variety of fields as they use our collections in new and exciting ways. The Society offers a variety of short-term fellowships, which include the Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship in collaboration with the Boston Athenaeum and the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium award in collaboration with thirty other institutions throughout New England, and the MHS-NEH Long-Term Fellowship.

For the 2024-2025 fellowship season, we offered three new fellowships for our short-term award. These included the Abigail Bowen Wright Fellowship for projects concerning the long twentieth century, the Elizabeth Woodman Wright Fellowship for projects on the relationship between Massachusetts and the world, and a fellowship to support the study of social and cultural club life in Boston supported by the Algonquin Club Foundation.

The Research Department at the Massachusetts Historical Society is delighted to announce its newest cohort of fellows awarded for the 2024-2025 academic year. With this cohort of Research Fellows, we have supported over 1,000 scholars through our various fellowship programs. We look forward to learning more about the following projects in the coming year!

MHS-NEH Long Term Fellows

• Cornelia Dayton, University of Connecticut, “The Man Who Married Phillis Wheatley: John Peters, Trader, Lawyer, Physician, and Gentleman”
• Donald F. Johnson, North Dakota State University, “The Popular Politics of American Independence”
• Betsy Klima, University of Massachusetts, Boston, “The Muses of Massachusetts and the Drama of Revolutionary Boston”
• Ross Nedervelt, Florida International University, “Security, Imperial Reconstitution, and the British Atlantic Islands, 1763-1824”

New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC)

Fellows Visiting the MHS

• Emma Chapman, University of California, Davis, “Missing: Mobility, Kinship, and Absent People in New England and New France, 1680-1720”
• Andrew Colpitts, Cornell University, “Rehearsing Rurality: Theatricality, Rural Identity, and the Performance of Nostalgia in New England”
• Al Coppola, John Jay College, CUNY, “Enlightenment Visibilities”
• Blake Grindon, Johns Hopkins University, “The Death of Jane McCrea: Sovereignty and Violence in the Northeastern Borderlands of the American Revolution”
• Timothy Hastings, University of Massachusetts Amherst, “Situating Race in New Hampshire’s Atlantic World”
• Monique Hayes, Independent Scholar, “Sally Forth”
• Elizabeth Hines, University of Chicago, “Anglo-Dutch Commerce, Religion, and War, 1634-1652”
• Thomas Lecaque, Grand View University, “Holy War Rhetoric in Early America, 1680-1765”
• Gerard Llorens-DeCesaris, Pompeu Fabra University (Spain), “Antislavery imperialism: the United States, Cuba, and Spain during Reconstruction”
• Robin Preiss, New York University, “Sounding Rot: Diagnostic Listening for Decay and Danger in the North Atlantic Maritime”
• Catherine Sasanov, Independent Scholar, “The Last & Living Words of Mark: Following Clues to the Enslaved Man’s Life, Afterlife & to His Community in Boston, Charlestown, & South Shore MA”
• John Suval, Independent Scholar, “Visionaries & Reactionaries: The Battle for America in the Age of Whitman and Pierce”
• Eric Totten, University of Arkansas, “‘Demoralized on the Slavery Question’: Military Occupation in the Federal Department of the South and the Politics of Emancipation, 1862-1863”
• Elliott Warren, College of William & Mary, “The Common Hall: Local Leaders and the Development of America’s Political Economy in the Era of the French Revolution, 1786-1800”

Fellows Not Visiting the MHS

• Chloe Bell-Wilson, University of California, Los Angeles, “So Hormonal: Estrogenic Bodies in the United States”
• Julie Burke, Columbia University, “Irregularities of the System: Women and their Abortions in Nineteenth-Century Britain”
• Savannah Clark, University of Maine, “Letters from Home: Northern New England Women and the American Civil War”
• Lydia Crafts, Manhattan College, “‘Little Empire’: Medicine, Public Health, and Human Experimentation in 20th Century Guatemala”
• Courney Dorroll, Wofford College, “Women in Higher Education Leadership”
• Bruce Dorsey, Swarthmore College, “What Happened in 1977 and Why?: Stories from the Origins of America’s Culture Wars”
• James Fortuna, Santa Fe College, “The Civilian Conservation Corps in New England, 1933–42”
• Whitney Gecker, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, “The Self- Memorializing of Elite Colleges: Oral History Archives and the Production of Prestige”
• Elizabeth Hauck, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Mrs. Batson and Mrs. Hicks: Race, Rights, and the Mothers’ Fight for Boston Public Schools”
• Joshua Iaquinto, University of Sydney, “Imperfect Parts: The Manuscript Fragment in American Verse, 1840-1900”
• May Jeong, Independent Scholar, “The Life: Sex, Work, and Love in America”
• William Little, The Ohio State University, “Annotating Classical Latin Poetry in the Fifteenth Century”
• Nathan Lucky, Clark University, “Resistance with Words: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency during the Holocaust”
• Mackenzie Tor, University of Missouri, Columbia, “Spirited Struggles: The Black Temperance Movement in Nineteenth-Century America”
• Joseph Weisberg, Brandeis University, “From Generation to Generation: Understanding Jewishness, Family, Commerce, and Slavery in Early and Antebellum America”

Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship on the Civil War, Its Origins, and Consequences

• Sarah Gardner, Mercer University, “Shakespeare Fights the American Civil War”

Short-Term Fellowships

• Chelsi Arellano, Florida State University, “Glorious Change: Gender, Politics, and the Popular during the Reign of William III and Mary II” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars)
• Jared Asser, University of Georgia, “A Reconstruction of Feeling: How Emotions Shaped Change in the Post-Civil War Period” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
• Boone Ayala, University of Chicago, “Leviathan’s Peripheries: Political Ideology and Corporate Autonomy in England and its Empire” (W. B. H. Dowse Fellowship)
• Megan Baker, University of Delaware, “Crayon Rebellion: The Material Politics of North American Pastels, 1758-1814” (Andrew Oliver Research Fellowship)
• Collin Bonnell, Concordia University, “Joining the Ascendancy: Six Old English Families’ Transformations from ‘Irish’ to ‘British’ Elites” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
• Galen Bunting, Northeastern University, “Gendered Trauma in World War One Nurse Narratives” (Ruth R. Miller Fellowship)
• Emma Chapman, University of California, Davis, “Missing: Mobility, Kinship, and Absent People in Early New England and New France, 1680-1720” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars in Massachusetts)
• Abby Clayton, Indiana University Bloomington, “Narrating Abolition: Scissors-and-Paste Reform in the Emerging Anglosphere” (Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellowship)
• Sara R. Danger, Valparaiso University, “American Girls, Literary Labor, and The Lowell Offering” (Marc Friedlaender Fellowship)
• Madeline DeDe-Panken, The Graduate Center CUNY, “Gathering Knowledge, Sustaining Science: Women Foragers and American Mushroom Culture, 1880- 1930” (Mary B. Wright Environmental History Fellowship)
• Shaibal Dev Roy, University of Southern California, “Pandita Ramabai and the Nineteenth-Century American Feminists” (Alyson R. Miller Fellowship)
• Ethan Gonzales, University of Virginia, “The Visible State: U.S. Diplomatic Agents and Information in Europe and the Federal Territories, 1789-1800” (Louis Leonard Tucker Alumni Fellowship)
• Timothy Hastings, University of Massachusetts Amherst, “Situating Race in New Hampshire’s Atlantic World” (African American Studies Fellowship)
• Seokweon Jeon, Harvard University, “Guardians of Divine Borders: Tracing the Religious Underpinnings Boston’s Nativist Movement and Immigration Policy Formation, 1894-1921” (C. Conrad & Elizabeth H. Wright Fellowship)
• Adam Laats, Binghamton University (SUNY), “School Children: A New History of US Public Education” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
• Thomas Lecaque, Grand View University, “Holy War Rhetoric in Early America, 1680-1765” (Kenneth & Carol Hills Fellowship)
• Arya Martinez, University of New Hampshire, “The Turbulent Confederation: The Bank of North America and the Emergence of a New National Economy” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
• Peter C. Messer, Mississippi State University, “Pressing Problems and Riotous Customs: The Liberty Riot and the coming of the American Revolution” (Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship)
• Marcus Nevius, University of Missouri, “Internal Enemy of the Most Alarming Kind: Marronage and the Political Economy of Fear in the British Atlantic in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
• Isaac Robertson, New York University, “Phillis Wheatley (Peters) and the Peril and Deliverance of Shipwreck” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
• Erin Russell, American University, “Keeping the Books, Minding the Linens: Household Recordkeeping in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-century New England” (Benjamin F. Stevens Fellowship)
• Alaina Scapicchio, University of South Florida, “America Bewitched: Memory and Commemoration of Witchcraft” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
• Wulfstan Scouller, Yale University, “Money, Guns, and Land: A Longue Durée History of King Philip’s War” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars in Massachusetts)
• Rebecca Simpson Menzies, University of Southern California, “From Agawam to Springfield: Society, Culture, and the Environment in a Seventeenth Century Town” (W. B. H. Dowse Fellowship)
• Kwelina Thompson, Harvard Business School, “A Literary Life: Exploring the Publishing Industry in Boston’s World of Letters” (Fellowship to Support the Study of Social and Cultural Club Life in Boston sponsored by the Algonquin Club Foundation)
• Andrew Walgren, University of Georgia, “Media Combat: The Great War and the Transformation of American Culture” (Abigail Bowen Wright Fellowship)
• Elliott Warren, College of William & Mary, “The Common Hall: Local Leaders and the Development of America’s Political Economy in the Era of the French Revolution, 1786-1800” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
• Christopher Willoughby, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, “Collected Without Consent: A Global History of Harvard Medical School’s Racial Skulls” (Elizabeth Woodman Wright Fellowship)
• Cooper Wingert, Georgetown University, “Wartime Freedom Seekers, Provost Marshals, and Emancipation during the US Civil War” (Military Historical Society of Massachusetts Fellowship)

Learn more about the MHS Fellowship programs.