ACLS/SSRC/NEH International and Area Studies Fellowship Program

FAIN: RA-50012-04

American Council of Learned Societies Devoted to Humanistic Studies (New York, NY 10017-6706)
Donna Heiland (Project Director: September 2003 to June 2009)

Four humanities fellowships each year for three years.

This proposal requests NEH funds to support the program of ACLS/SSRC/NEH Fellowships in International and Area Studies over four years. The program is integrated into the central ACLS fellowship competition in acknowledgement that multi-disciplinary research characterizes not only area studies but much work in the humanities in general; area studies scholarship benefits from evaluation in this larger context. Integration of the programs maximizes the number of NEH Fellows as they are supported both by grant funds and by ACLS endowment funds. The program offers 15 fellowships a year to post-doctoral scholars working on Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, East Europe, or the former Soviet Union in all disciplines of the humanities.

Associated Products

Remnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries and Synagogues of Suriname: Essays (Book)
Title: Remnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries and Synagogues of Suriname: Essays
Author: Rachel Frankel
Author: Aviva Ben-Ur
Abstract: This volume offers a historical and cultural overview of Suriname's Jewish community, with special emphasis on its synagogues and the Jewish and Creole cemeteries.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/remnant-stones-the-jewish-cemeteries-and-synagogues-of-suriname-essays/oclc/755704750&referer=brief_results
Publisher: Hebrew Union College Press
Type: Other
ISBN: 9780878202515

Colonial Meltdown: Northern Nigeria in the Great Depression (Book)
Title: Colonial Meltdown: Northern Nigeria in the Great Depression
Author: Moses E. Ochonu
Abstract: Colonial Meltdown explores the unraveling of British colonial power at a moment of global economic crisis. Ochonu shows that the economic downturn made colonial exploitation all but impossible and that this dearth of profits and surpluses frustrated the colonial administration which then authorized a brutal regime of grassroots exactions and invasive intrusions. The outcomes were as harsh for Northern Nigerians as those of colonial exploitation in boom years. Northern Nigerians confronted colonial economic recovery measures and their agents with a variety of strategies. Colonial Meltdown analyzes how farmers, women, laborers, laid-off tin miners, and Northern Nigeria's emergent elite challenged and rebelled against colonial economic recovery schemes with evasive trickery, defiance, strategic acts of revenge, and criminal self-help and, in the process, exposed the weak underbelly of the colonial system. Combined with the economic and political paralysis of colonial bureaucrats in the face of crisis, these African responses underlined the fundamental weakness of the colonial state, the brittleness of its economic mission, and the limits of colonial coercion and violence. This atmosphere of colonial collapse emboldened critics of colonial policies who went on to craft the rhetorical terms on which the anticolonial struggle of the post-World War II period was fought out.
Year: 2009
Primary URL: http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/colonial+meltdown
Primary URL Description: Ohio University Press website
Secondary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/colonial-meltdown-northern-nigeria-in-the-great-depression/oclc/320802305&referer=brief_results
Secondary URL Description: WorldCat
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780821418901

Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosúa (Book)
Title: Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosúa
Author: Allen Wells
Abstract: Seven hundred and fifty Jewish refugees fled Nazi Germany and founded the agricultural settlement of Sosúa in the Dominican Republic, then ruled by one of Latin America’s most repressive dictators, General Rafael Trujillo. Tropical Zion tells the story of General Trujillo, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and those fortunate pioneers who founded a successful employee-owned dairy cooperative on the north shore of the island. The Roosevelt administration sanctioned the Sosúa colony. Since the United States did not accept Jewish refugees in significant numbers, it encouraged Latin America to do so. That prodding strengthened U.S. relations with Latin American dictatorships for decades to come. Meanwhile, as Jewish organizations worked to get Jews out of Europe, discussions about the fate of worldwide Jewry exposed fault lines between Zionists and Non-Zionists. Throughout his discussion of these broad dynamics, Wells weaves vivid narratives about the founding of Sosúa, the original settlers and their families, and the life of the unconventional beach-front colony.
Year: 2009
Primary URL: http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=17976
Publisher: Duke University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780822344070

Idols in the Temple: Icons and the Cult of Confucius (Article)
Title: Idols in the Temple: Icons and the Cult of Confucius
Author: Julia K. Murray
Abstract: Until 1530, sculptural images of Confucius and varying numbers of disciples and later followers received semiannual sacrifices in state-supported temples all over China. The icons’ visual features were greatly influenced by the posthumous titles and ranks that emperors conferred on Confucius and his followers, the same as for deities in the Daoist and Buddhist pantheons. This convergence led to visual conflation and aroused objections from Neo-Confucian ritualists, culminating in the ritual reform of 1530, which replaced images with inscribed tablets and Confucius’s kingly title with the designation Ultimate Sage and First Teacher. However, the ban on icons did not apply to the primordial temple of Confucius in Qufu, Shandong. Post-1530 gazetteers publicized the distinction by reproducing a line drawing of this temple’s sculptural icon, and persistent replications of this image helped to popularize his cult. The same period saw a proliferation of non-godlike representations of Confucius, including his portrayal as a teacher, whose iconographic origins can be traced to a painted portrait handed down through generations of his descendants. In recent years, variations of this teacher image have become the basis for new sculptural representations, first in Taiwan, then in Hong Kong and the Chinese diaspora, and finally on the mainland. Now installed at sites around the world, statues of Confucius have become a contested symbol of Chinese civilization.
Year: 2009
Primary URL: http://www.asian-studies.org/publications/JAS.htm
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Asian Studies vol.68 no.2
Publisher: The Association for Asian Studies, Inc.

The Global Rebranding of Confucius (Book Section)
Title: The Global Rebranding of Confucius
Author: Julia K. Murray
Editor: Kenneth Pomeranz
Editor: Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Editor: Kate Merkel-Hess
Abstract: After years of being reviled in the People's Republic of China as the mastermind of a feudalistic system that hobbled China's efforts to modernize, Confucius has come prominently back into favor as one of its most precious cultural assets.
Year: 2009
Publisher: Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield
Book Title: China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance
ISBN: 978-0742566606

Confucius: His Life and Legacy in Art (Catalog)
Title: Confucius: His Life and Legacy in Art
Author: Wensheng Lu
Author: Julia K. Murray
Abstract: Catalogue of an exhibition from China, on view at the China Institute Gallery in New York until June 13, 2010.
Year: 2010
Catalog Type: Exhibition Catalog
Publisher: China Institute in America

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