Afro-Am Department PhD Student Marcus Smith Earns 2024 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship

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Marcus P. Smith in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies has been awarded a 2024 Mellon/American Council of Learned (ACLS) Dissertation Innovation Fellowship. He is among 45 awardees selected from a pool of more than 700 applicants. The fellowships support doctoral students in the humanities and interpretive social sciences as they pursue bold and innovative approaches to dissertation research. 

The research pursued by Smith employs an interdisciplinary methodology, drawing from history, ethnography and landscape studies to examine the development of grassroots museums in historically Black rural, agro-urban and coastal communities. His project investigates and recounts the narratives of museum inception, community mobilization, resource acquisition, curatorial decision-making, and establishing the museums as viable and sustainable institutions in different social, political and economic contexts.

Each honoree receives an award of up to $50,000 to support external mentorship that offers new perspectives on the fellow’s project and expands their advising network. With fellows pursuing their research across the country and beyond, ACLS will also provide opportunities for virtual networking and scholarly programming throughout the award terms.

ACLS launched the fellowship program in 2023 with the support of the Mellon Foundation to advance a vision for doctoral education that prioritizes openness to new methods and sources, underrepresented voices and perspectives and scholarly experimentation. The awards are designed to accelerate change in the norms of humanistic scholarship by recognizing those who take risks in the modes, methods and subjects of their research.