Two faculty members recently earned fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).
The ACLS, established in 1919, is a private, nonprofit federation of scholarly associations that awards annual fellowships to professors and graduate students working in the humanities. Applicants submit detailed research proposals, and each year, approximately 70 assistant, associate, and full professors are chosen to receive grants for six to 12 months of full-time research and writing.
This year’s fellowship recipients from the University of Chicago are Leah Feldman, an assistant professor and the director of undergraduate studies in comparative literature, and Justin Steinberg, professor of Italian literature.
Feldman, who studies the historical relationships between Turkish, Persian, and Russian societies, will spend her fellowship year writing a book, On the Threshold of Eurasia: Revolutionary Poetics in the Caucasus. The book will examine debates over colonialism and orientalism during the early twentieth century through poetry, prose, and art.
Steinberg’s manuscript, Mimesis on Trial: Evidence, Inquest, and Realism in Boccaccio’s Decameron, will explore the effects of the inquisitorial trial on realism in literature. The project follows Steinberg’s first book, Dante and the Limits of the Law, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2013.
Two members of the University faculty received ACLS fellowships in 2016, as did three faculty members in 2015.
