RICHMOND, VIRGINIA.- The Virginia Historical Society has awarded thirty-eight research fellowships for 2003 to scholars from eighteen states, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Each receives a stipend while conducting research at the VHS. The most popular broad categories to be examined in recent years are African American history, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and women’s history. Some of the specific projects being researched this year include changing interpretations of Thomas Jefferson since World War II (Frank Cogliano, University of Edinburgh), a cultural history of the Shenandoah Valley (Paul Anderson, Clemson University), suicide in early America (Terri Snyder, California State University, Fullerton), and pain and suffering in moral evaluations of slavery (Margaret Abruzzo, Notre Dame). A complete listing of recipients and topics is below.

The Mellon Fellowship program, now in its sixteenth year, was initially endowed by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 1987. Since then, contributions from other sources have enabled the VHS to create these additional fellowships: the Frances Lewis Fellowships in women’s studies, the Betty Sams Christian Fellowships in business history, and the Reese Fellowships in American Bibliography and the History of the Book in the Americas. Nearly 400 researchers have benefitted from this opportunity since the program’s creation. The research library at the Virginia Historical Society is renowned world-wide for its comprehensive holdings and detailed cataloging. Researchers can examine catalog entries on line (http://vhs3.vahistorical.org/star/x.starmarc.html). For information on the Fellowship program, see (www.vahistorical.org/research/fellowships.htm) or contact Nelson D. Lankford, director of publications and scholarship, at nelson@vahistorical.org or 804.342.9672.

Recipients:

-Margaret Abruzzo of the University of Notre Dame for researching the role of changing perceptions of pain and suffering in moral evaluations of slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

-Austin Allen of the University of Houston - Downtown for researching "Imposing Sovereignty, Containing Slavery: Jacksonian Jurisprudence and the Origins of the Dred Scott Case."

Paul Anderson of Clemson University for researching a cultural history of the Shenandoah Valley.

-Kevin Berland of Pennsylvania State University - Shenango for researching a new edition of William Byrd’s Dividing Line histories.

-Thomas Brown of the University of South Carolina for researching the book, The Reconstruction of American Memory: Civic Monuments of the Civil War.

-Steven Bullock of Worchester Polytechnic Institute for researching, The Politics of Politeness: Culture, Class, and Power in Provincial America, 1690–1760.

-Derek Catsam of Minnesota State University for researching the Freedom Rides in Virginia.

-Matthew Clavin of American University for researching the dissertation, "Men of Color, to Arms! Remembering Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution in the American Civil War."

-Frank Cogliano of the University of Edinburgh for researching interpretations of Thomas Jefferson in scholarship since the conclusion of the Second World War.

-Benjamin Cohen of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University for researching the shared trends between environmental history and the history of chemistry in antebellum Virginia.

-Christopher Curtis of the State University of West Georgia for researching the evolving legal and political ideas of land ownership in antebellum Virginia.

-Kenneth Deitreich of West Virginia University for researching the relationship between ideas of masculinity in the antebellum United States and the coming of the American Civil War.

-Jim Downs of Columbia University for a study of medicine and health during Reconstruction.

-Kenneth Fones-Wolf of West Virginia University for researching pro-Confederacy sentiments in the Wheeling region.

-John Wess Grant of Michigan State University for researching aspects of the political and economic development of free black communities in Richmond, and Monrovia, Liberia.

-Barbara Hahn of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for researching the dissertation, "Making Tobacco Bright: Big Business, Small Farms, and the Establishment of the Tobacco Culture, 1865–1935."

-Wallace Hettle of the University of Northern Iowa for researching Stonewall Jackson in memory and history.

-Warren Hofstra of Shenandoah University for researching a project concerning the Shenandoah Valley entitled, "The World of Wheat."

-Caroline Janney-Lucas of the University of Virginia for researching the role of white women in the celebration and creation of the Confederate past.

-Laura Croghan Kamoie of American University for researching Irons in the Fire: The Business History of the Tayloe Family and the Virginia Gentry, 1700–1830.

-Mitchell Kinsinger of Northwestern College for researching the struggle of Presbyterians for religious liberty in colonial America.

-John Majewski of the University of California, Santa Barbara for, Southern Leviathan: Economic Policy and the Origins of the Confederate State in Virginia and South Carolina.

-Amy Minton of the University of Virginia for a study of social relations in Richmond, Virginia, during the mid-nineteenth century.

-Kathleen Murphy of Johns Hopkins University for researching the dissertation entitled "Reading Nature’s Texts in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic."

-Alexis Pott of the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London for researching dress in Virginia, 1660–1740.

-Paul Quigley of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for researching the dissertation, "Disordered Nation: The Evolution of Southern Nationalism, 1848–1865."

-Lewie Reece of Anderson College for a study of John S. Wise, the Republican Party in Virginia, and disenfranchisement.

-James Rice of the State University of New York-Plattsburgh for researching a book entitled Natural Understandings: Indians, Colonists, and the Potomac River, 700–1800.

-Kirsten Schultz of the University of Toronto for researching Confederate songsters.

-Arwin Smallwood of Bradley University for researching the history of the Tuscarora Indians of the Iroquois Nation.

-Terri Snyder of California State University - Fullerton for researching suicide in early America.

-Rebecca Starr of the University of Gloucestershire for researching Virginia influences on the writings of Sophia Bledsoe Herrick, 1871–1877.

-Scott Stephanof Ball State University for study of domestic devotion among whites in the antebellum South.

-Konrad Tuchscherer of St. John’s University for research of Lott Cary and Augustus Curtis.

-Psyche Williams-Forson of McDaniel College for researching "Chicken is More than a Meal: The Case of the Black Female Waiter Carriers of Gordonsville, Virginia."

-Tomoko Yagyu of the University of North Carolina for researching the slave trade in antebellum Richmond and Alexandria.

-John Zaborney of the University of Maine at Presque Isle for research entitled "Slave Hiring and White Society in Antebellum Virginia."

-Natalie Zacek of the University of Manchester for researching the book, Dangerous Tenants: The Culture of Politics and the Politics of Reputation in a Colonial British American World.