Long-Term Research Fellowships at the Newberry Library

FAIN: RA-269816-20

Newberry Library (Chicago, IL 60610-3305)
Donald Bradford Hunt (Project Director: August 2019 to September 2020)
Keelin Burke (Project Director: September 2020 to October 2024)
Elizabeth Neary (Project Director: October 2024 to present)

48 months of stipend support (5 fellowships) per year for five years and a contribution to defray costs associated with the selection of fellows.

Grants from the NEH’s Fellowship Program at Independent Research Institutions (FPIRI) have generously allowed the Newberry Library to invite outstanding scholars to pursue ground-breaking research using our extensive collections. In this application, the Newberry requests $382,500 over three years in direct FPIRI grants to provide 24 months per year of long-term fellowship stipends for carefully-selected researchers in the humanities. Further, the Newberry requests $180,000 over three years in matching FPIRI grants to offer an additional 24 months per year of long-term fellowship stipends (12 months funded by FPIRI grants; 12 months matched by the Newberry). A FPIRI grant and additional matching funds would allow the Newberry to begin to address high demand for scholarly use of our collections, enrich humanistic inquiry, and benefit the institution long after fellowship residencies.

Media Coverage

Newly Published, from Graphic Novels to a Covid-Era Literary Obsession (Review)
Publication: New York Times
Date: 10/8/2023
Abstract: n/a
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/06/books/review/new-this-week.html

(Review)
Publication: Times Literary Supplement
Date: 11/23/2023

Author Sharony Green: The Chase and Ruins: Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras. (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Erica Williams
Publication: Gwinnett County Public Library
Date: 11/29/2023

"Sharony Green, Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras: 'The Chase and Ruins: Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras'" (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Reighan Gillam
Publication: New Books Network
Date: 11/1/2023
Abstract: n/a

Interview with Sharony Green on her New Book: The Chase and Ruins: Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Writing Workshops Staff
Publication: writingworkshops.com
Date: 4/16/2024
URL: https://writingworkshops.com/blogs/news/interview-with-sharony-green-on-hernew-book-the-chase-and-ruins-zora-neale-hurston-in-honduras

Associated Products

Ethnographic Refusals, Unruly Latinidades (Book)
Title: Ethnographic Refusals, Unruly Latinidades
Editor: Alex Chávez
Editor: Gina M. Perez
Abstract: The contributors in Ethnographic Refusals, Unruly Latinidades highlight the value of "radical inclusion" in their research and call for a critical self-reflexivity that marshals the power of bearing witness to move from rhetoric to praxis in support of these methodologies within anthropological perspectives. The essays in this collection do not offer simple solutions to histories of colonialism, patriarchy, and misogyny through which gender binaries and racial hierarches have been imposed and reproduced, but rather provide a crucial opportunity for reflection on and continued reimagination of the contours of Latinidad. These scholars deploy Latinx strategically as part of ongoing dialogues, understanding that their terminologies are inherently imprecise, contested, and constantly shifting. Each chapter explores how Latinx ethnographers and interlocutors work together in contexts of refusal--ever mindful of how power shapes these encounters and the analyses that emerge from them--as well as the extraordinary possibilities offered by ethnography and its role in ongoing social transformation.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.unmpress.com/9780826363565/ethnographic-refusals-unruly-latinidades/
Primary URL Description: Publisher website
Access Model: Book, ebook
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9780826363565

The Urban Sonorous and Collective Witness in the City of Neighborhoods (Book Section)
Title: The Urban Sonorous and Collective Witness in the City of Neighborhoods
Author: Alex Chávez
Editor: Alex Chávez
Editor: Gina M. Perez
Abstract: The contributors in Ethnographic Refusals, Unruly Latinidades highlight the value of "radical inclusion" in their research and call for a critical self-reflexivity that marshals the power of bearing witness to move from rhetoric to praxis in support of these methodologies within anthropological perspectives. The essays in this collection do not offer simple solutions to histories of colonialism, patriarchy, and misogyny through which gender binaries and racial hierarches have been imposed and reproduced, but rather provide a crucial opportunity for reflection on and continued reimagination of the contours of Latinidad. These scholars deploy Latinx strategically as part of ongoing dialogues, understanding that their terminologies are inherently imprecise, contested, and constantly shifting. Each chapter explores how Latinx ethnographers and interlocutors work together in contexts of refusal--ever mindful of how power shapes these encounters and the analyses that emerge from them--as well as the extraordinary possibilities offered by ethnography and its role in ongoing social transformation.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.unmpress.com/9780826363565/ethnographic-refusals-unruly-latinidades/
Primary URL Description: Publisher website
Access Model: Book, ebook
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 9780826363565

Zora Neale Hurston: Reclaiming a Legendary Writer for Alabama (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Zora Neale Hurston: Reclaiming a Legendary Writer for Alabama
Abstract: Public presentation: Zora Neale Hurston: Reclaiming a Legendary Writer for Alabama
Author: Sharony Green
Date: 10/1/2021
Location: Holt High School, Tusacaloosa Alabama

Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras (Article)
Title: Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras
Author: Sharony Green
Abstract: Best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston also spent a significant part of her life pursuing different cultural, historical, and anthropological concerns, all of which coalesced in her attempts to locate a “mystery city” in Honduras. Hurston traveled to the country in 1947, drafting her final published novel there as well as writing freelance articles to help fund her search for the lost city. Though her search for the city was fruitless, Hurston planned to return to Honduras another time to continue her work. She did not return, but decades later, in 2015, scholars discovered the ruin Hurston had sought so many years before, validating her suspicions of its existence.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://www.alabamaheritage.com/issue-148-spring-2023.html
Primary URL Description: Magazine website
Access Model: Subscription
Format: Magazine
Publisher: Alabama Heritage

Zora Neale Hurston (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Zora Neale Hurston
Writer: Sharony Green
Director: Sharony Green
Abstract: On this episode of the Women Who Shaped Alabama, Dr. Sharony Green tells us about Zora Neale Hurston as an Alabama author & anthropologist in the early 20th century.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://videos.trailblazertv.org/watch-now/?video_id=10679&title=Zora%20Neale%20Hurstonhttp://
Primary URL Description: Girl Scouts of North-Central Alabama’s Women Who Shaped Alabama series, Trailblazer Channel website
Access Model: Open access
Format: Video
Format: Web

Alongside Slavery’s Asides: Reverberations of Edward Young’s The Revenge (Article)
Title: Alongside Slavery’s Asides: Reverberations of Edward Young’s The Revenge
Author: Amy B. Huang
Abstract: In an 1847 lecture before the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Salem, William Wells Brown stated: “Were I about to tell you the evils of Slavery, to represent to you the Slave in his lowest degradation, I should wish to take you, one at a time, and whisper it to you. Slavery has never been represented; Slavery never can be represented.” In these oft-cited lines, Wells Brown makes a strong claim for the absolute impossibility of representing slavery. But I wish to pause and stay with his earlier suggestion that it might just be possible to tell about slavery in a whisper. Breaking through the fastidiousness of the audience, a whisper can bring the condition of slavery close.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/theatre-survey/article/abs/alongside-slaverys-asides-reverberations-of-edward-youngs-the-revenge/882058EB60D55F208A2C0592185660E2
Primary URL Description: Journal website
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Theater Survey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Heterosexual Nouns: The Masculinist Dreams of Nineteenth-Century Linguistics (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Heterosexual Nouns: The Masculinist Dreams of Nineteenth-Century Linguistics
Abstract: As part of a workshop for German teachers on the topic of gender, Sophie Salvo, Ph.D. will give an overview of the historical theories of grammatical gender in German linguistics. The lecture will be in English and is free and open to the public.
Author: Sophie Salvo
Date: 12/9/2022
Location: Goethe-Institut Chicago 150 N Michigan Av, Suite 200, Chicago, lL 60601
Primary URL: http://www.thevisualist.org/2022/12/heterosexual-nouns/
Primary URL Description: Event website

The Sex of Language (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: The Sex of Language
Abstract: Grammatical gender—a system of classifying nouns as masculine, feminine, or neuter—has long been the bane of language learners. That in German “a young lady has no sex, but a turnip has” led Mark Twain to lament “the awful German language.” But for 19th-century German linguists, grammatical gender was not capricious or irrational, but rather a deeply meaningful structure that provided insight into cultural norms and primitive forefathers. This session provides an overview of theories of grammatical gender from this period and explores how they centered on a fundamental question: Is it possible to imagine “the human” as unsexed?
Author: Sophie Salvo
Date: 10/1/2022
Location: University of Chicago
Primary URL: https://humanitiesday.uchicago.edu/presentations/sex-language
Primary URL Description: Event website

Gendered Origins: Inventing the Invention of Language in the Late Eighteenth Century (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Gendered Origins: Inventing the Invention of Language in the Late Eighteenth Century
Author: Sophie Salvo
Abstract: Conference Presentation: Gendered Origins: Inventing the Invention of Language in the Late Eighteenth Century
Date: 9/16/2022
Primary URL: https://www.thegsa.org/sites/default/files/01_program_2022_Final.pdf
Primary URL Description: Conference program

El disco es cultura: Sonic artifacts and Latinx Chicago (Article)
Title: El disco es cultura: Sonic artifacts and Latinx Chicago
Author: Alex Chávez
Abstract: n/a
Year: 2024
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: American Anthropologist 126, no. 2

The Chase and Ruins: Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras (Book)
Title: The Chase and Ruins: Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras
Author: Sharony Green
Abstract: Zora Neale Hurston, an anthropologist and writer best known for her classic novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God," led a complicated life often marked by tragedy and contradictions. When both she and her writing fell out of favor after the Harlem Renaissance, she struggled not only to regain an audience for her novels but also to simply make ends meet. In "The Chase and Ruins," Sharony Green uncovers an understudied but important period of Hurston's life: her stay in Honduras in the late 1940s. On the eve of an awful accusation that nearly led to her suicide, Hurston fled to Honduras in search of a lost Mayan ruin. During her yearlong trip south of the US border, she appears to have never found the ruin she was chasing. But by escaping the Jim Crow south to Honduras, she avoided racist violence in the United States while still embracing her privilege—and power—as a US citizen in postwar Central America. While in Honduras, Hurston wrote Seraph on the Suwanee, her final novel and her only book to feature white characters, in an attempt to appeal to Hollywood's growing appetite for "crackerphilia" (stories about poor white folks) and to finally secure herself some financial stability. In a letter to her editor, Hurston wrote that in Honduras, she may not have found the Mayan ruin she was looking for, but she finally found herself. Hurston's experience in Honduras has much to teach us about Black women's lives and the thorny politics of postwar America as well as America's long and complicated entanglement with Central America. In an attempt to find historical meaning in an extraordinary woman's conceptions of herself in a changing world, Green unearths letters, diaries, literary writings, research reports, and other archival materials. The Chase and Ruins encourages us to reckon with and reimagine Hurston's fascinating life in all of its complexity and contradictions.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12947/chase-and-ruins
Primary URL Description: publisher's website
Publisher: John Hopkins University Press
Type: Single author monograph

‘Given Me Back Myself’—Zora Neale Hurston’s Postwar Sojourn in Miami and Honduras (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: ‘Given Me Back Myself’—Zora Neale Hurston’s Postwar Sojourn in Miami and Honduras
Author: Sharony Greene
Abstract: n/a
Date: 9/1/2023
Conference Name: Speaker, University of Miami, Miami, FL, September 2023

Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras (Article)
Title: Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras
Author: Sharony Green
Abstract: n/a
Year: 2023
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Alabama Magazine, No. 148

On Memory and Movement (Article)
Title: On Memory and Movement
Author: Amy Huang
Abstract: n/a
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2023.a909450
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Eighteenth-Century Studies 57, no. 1

Were the Annals of Winchester Dedicated to Adam of Dryburgh? (Article)
Title: Were the Annals of Winchester Dedicated to Adam of Dryburgh?
Author: Marisa Libbon
Abstract: n/a
Year: 2023
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Notes and Queries 70

An Archaeology of the Air: Havelok the Dane and the wind farms of Grimsby (Article)
Title: An Archaeology of the Air: Havelok the Dane and the wind farms of Grimsby
Author: Marisa Libbon
Abstract: n/a
Year: 2023
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: The European Review of Books, issue 3

The Baller and the Court: Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón’s Battle with Ololiuhqui and his Courtship of the Mexican Inquisition in Seventeenth Century Mexico (Article)
Title: The Baller and the Court: Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón’s Battle with Ololiuhqui and his Courtship of the Mexican Inquisition in Seventeenth Century Mexico
Author: Edward Anthony Polanco
Abstract: n/a
Year: 2024
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Ethnohistory 71, no. 2

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