Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Illinois professor awarded ACLS fellowship

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — University of Illinois professor Erik S. McDuffie is the recipient of a 2017 fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.

McDuffie, a professor of African American studies and of history, is one of only 71 fellows chosen from nearly 1,200 applicants, according to an ACLS news release.

The ACLS Fellowship, which supports scholars for six to 12 months of full-time research and writing, is the second prestigious fellowship for McDuffie this academic year. He also received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship last fall.

“Professor McDuffie’s scholarship is making critical contributions to the practice of historical research and is dramatically expanding our knowledge of the historic role African-Americans have played in national and global developments that defined much of the 20th century,” said Interim Provost John Wilkin. “He is an exemplary scholar and this is well-deserved recognition.”

Both fellowships will support McDuffie’s work on his book “Garveyism in the Diasporic Midwest: The American Heartland and Global Black Freedom, 1920-1980.”  His study aims to serve as a model for writing new histories of both the Midwest and the African diaspora. The project is based on extensive original research conducted in Canada, Ghana, Grenada, Jamaica, Liberia, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States.

McDuffie considers how the Midwest’s global manufacturing centers and political infrastructures offered blacks freedom and opportunities that they could not find elsewhere, creating fertile ground for Garveyism and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the largest black protest movement in world history. At its height in the early 1920s, the UNIA claimed 6 million members worldwide.

Attending to the paradoxes and gendered contours of Garveyism, the project globalizes African-American history and reorients the study of the African diaspora by taking into account the significance of the heartland in shaping the history of the 20th century black world, from Cleveland and Chicago to the Caribbean and West Africa.

Founded in 1919, the ACLS is a private, nonprofit federation of 74 national scholarly organizations, advancing scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences. It will award over $18 million in fellowships and grants this year to more than 300 scholars worldwide.

Read Next

Humanities Diptych image with book cover of "The New Internationals" and a headshot of English professor David Wright Faladé

English professor’s novel tells of love triangle in post-WWII Paris, based on his family history

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new novel by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign English professor David Wright Faladé tells the story of three people in a love triangle in post-World War II Paris. The characters in “The New Internationals” — a young French woman who has survived the Holocaust, a university student from West Africa and a […]

Life sciences Portrait of the research team posing together.

Minecraft players can now explore whole cells and their contents

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists have translated nanoscale experimental and computational data into precise 3D representations of bacteria, yeast and human epithelial, breast and breast cancer cells in Minecraft, a video game that allows players to explore, build and manipulate structures in three dimensions. The innovation will allow researchers and students of all ages to navigate […]

Arts Photo of seven dancers onstage wearing blue tops and orange or yellow flowing skirts. The backdrop is a Persian design.

February Dance includes works experimenting with live music, technology and a ‘sneaker ballet’

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The dance department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will present February Dance 2025: Fast Forward this week at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. February Dance will be one of the first performances in the newly renovated Colwell Playhouse Theatre since its reopening. The performances are Jan. 30-Feb. 1. Dance professor […]

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010