Fellowships at the National Humanities Center

FAIN: RA-20063-90

National Humanities Center (Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-0152)
W. Robert Connor (Project Director: December 1988 to January 1994)

To support 12 postdoctoral fellowships in the humanities each year for three years.

Associated Products

The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (Book)
Title: The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke
Author: Jeffrey C. Stewart
Abstract: A tiny, fastidiously dressed man emerged from Black Philadelphia around the turn of the century to mentor a generation of young artists including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jacob Lawrence and call them the New Negro -- the creative African Americans whose art, literature, music, and drama would inspire Black people to greatness. In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar and earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. Locke also received a cosmopolitan, aesthetic education through his travels in continental Europe, where he came to appreciate the beauty of art and experienced a freedom unknown to him in the United States. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America and his promotion of the literary and artistic work of African Americans as the quintessential creations of American modernism. In the process he looked to Africa to find the proud and beautiful roots of the race. Shifting the discussion of race from politics and economics to the arts, he helped establish the idea that Black urban communities could be crucibles of creativity. Stewart explores both Locke's professional and private life, including his relationships with his mother, his friends, and his white patrons, as well as his lifelong search for love as a gay man. Stewart's thought-provoking biography recreates the worlds of this illustrious, enigmatic man who, in promoting the cultural heritage of Black people, became -- in the process -- a New Negro himself.
Year: 2018
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Prizes

Pulitzer Prize for Biography
Date: 4/15/2019
Organization: The Pulitzer Prizes
Abstract: "A panoramic view of the personal trials and artistic triumphs of the father of the Harlem Renaissance and the movement he inspired."

National Book Award for Nonfiction
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: National Book Foundation

PROSE Award for Best Biography/Autobiography
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: Association of American Publishers

The Mark Lynton History Prize
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: Columbia Journalism School
Abstract: The Mark Lynton History Prize is awarded to a book-length work of history on any topic that best combines intellectual distinction with felicity of expression.

Black Caucus of the American Library Association Award for Nonfiction
Date: 2/1/2019
Organization: Black Caucus of the American Library Association
Abstract: The awards recognize excellence in adult fiction and nonfiction by African American authors.

Forty Acres in the Twenty-First Century: Black Reparations Today (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Forty Acres in the Twenty-First Century: Black Reparations Today
Abstract: In 2010 legal scholar Alfred Brophy wrote, “Something that is often missing from ‘reparations talk’ is a specific plan for repairing past tragedies.” In this webinar, we fill Brophy’s lacuna, engaging in a conversation over a detailed redress plan for the atrocities visited upon multiple generations of Black American descendants of persons enslaved in the United States. The detailed redress plan, drawn from our book From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century, will explore the following aspects of an African American reparations project: who will be eligible, what is the size of the fund, how the fund will be distributed, and how the fund will be financed. The case for Black reparations will be made not only on the basis of the atrocity of slavery but also nearly a century of legal segregation accompanied by white terrorist campaigns and ongoing harms including mass incarceration, police executions of unarmed Blacks, and discrimination in multiple arenas. Subjects: History; Reparations; African American History; Racial Justice; Racism
Author: Kirsten Mullen
Author: William A. Darity, Jr.
Date: 01/25/2022
Location: Live Stream
Primary URL: https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/education-material/forty-acres-in-the-twenty-first-century-black-reparations-today/

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