UNC professor Lisa Lindsay wins John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship

Lisa Lindsay found her next book in a footnote.

Lindsay, a history professor, was planning a book on African women, but stumbled on a footnote about James Vaughan, a South Carolina native who moved to Nigeria in the 1850s.

After meeting Vaughn’s descendants in Nigeria, Lindsay decided to change course.

She got some help Friday when she was tapped for a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, which will provide funding for the book about race-related struggles in Africa and America in the 19th century.

“The life of James Vaughan forms one thread in a larger fabric of interconnections during a transformative period in Atlantic history: When slavery was abolished in the United States and colonialism began in West Africa, and when people in both places struggled over slavery, freedom, and citizenship,” Lindsay’s proposal reads.

Almost 4,000 historians, scientists, novelists and artists apply for the fellowship, but only about 220 awards are given out each year.

Chairman of the history department Lloyd Kramer, said the award shows the quality of the historical scholarship at UNC.

This is the second consecutive year that a history professor received the fellowship. Fitz Brundage won in 2011 to complete his study “Torture in America: The Long History.”

“I think it’s an honor for our history department as well as for the University,” Kramer said.

Brandon Byrd, a graduate student teaching assistant in Lindsay’s trans-Atlantic slave trade class, said he was happy for Lindsay because she worked hard for it.

Lindsay said she will use her grant to relieve her from a year of teaching so she can focus on her writing.

The fellowship requires recipients to spend six to 12 months on the project.

To apply for the fellowship, Lindsay wrote a four-page proposal indicating how she would use the grant and a three-page professional narrative about her work and accomplishments.

But she said the foundation does not have a specific set of requirements.

“That is why they call these awards ‘mid-career’ awards,” she said.
Lindsay was also required to submit copies of her previously published books.

In 2003, Lindsay published a book titled “Working with Gender: Wage Labor and Social Change in Southwestern Nigeria,” which focused on women’s rights and gender in Africa.

With the fellowship, Lindsay said she will spend most of the year just writing.

“I’ve already done most of my research,” she said. “What I really need to do now is just sit in a chair and crank it out.”

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