Stanford Humanities Center
Next year’s scholars will range from undergraduate students to senior scholars, including Hume Honors Fellows to be appointed in the fall.
Starting in September, the Stanford Humanities Center (SHC) will welcome nearly 50 new and returning scholars for the 2026–27 fellowship year. The incoming cohort represents humanistic scholarship in African American studies, anthropology, art history, comparative literature, East Asian studies, English, history, linguistics, music, philosophy, religious studies, urban studies, and other fields. In the collegial environment of the Center, the fellows will pursue individual research projects, share ideas in seminars and lectures, and participate in the many workshops and public events that fill the Center’s calendar.
Among the newly appointed fellows are eight faculty members from within Stanford: Haiyan Lee (East Asian Languages and Cultures), Emily Levine (Graduate School of Education), Yoshiko Matsumoto (East Asian Languages and Cultures), Michael Penn (Religious Studies), Rose Salseda (Art and Art History), Partha Pratim Shil (History), Leif Wenar (Philosophy), Mikael Wolfe (History).
From a large and highly competitive group of external faculty applicants, eight fellowships have also been awarded to Moustafa Bayoumi (Brooklyn College, CUNY), Sahera Bleibleh, Jelani Favors (Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute), Ellen Huang (ArtCenter College of Design), Maya Kronfeld (Duke University), Julie Napolin (The New School), Omari Weekes (Queens College, CUNY),Tiana Wilson (University of Pittsburgh).
They’ll be joined by nine Stanford PhD students, including four Dissertation Prize Fellows and four Next Generation Scholars. Launched in 2021, the Next Generation Scholar Program is the Center’s newest fellowship. It supports Stanford graduate students in year seven or above whose work demonstrates the highest distinction and the promise of future achievement. Many of the recipients have gone on to either postdoctoral fellowships or tenure-track positions.
The Center will also welcome 10 Mellon postdoctoral fellows, exceptional early career scholars with PhDs from outside Stanford. In addition to teaching as lecturers within Stanford humanities departments, Mellon Fellows enjoy opportunities to develop their research, publish, and contribute to the intellectual life of their departments and the Humanities Center. Offered as a two-year appointment (with the possibility of a third year), the Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities is directed by Kären Wigen, Frances and Charles Field Professor in History at Stanford.
As in previous years, the Center will add to its fellowship community 10 undergraduate Hume Honors Fellows writing their senior theses on humanities topics.
Additionally, the Center offers support to up to six Stanford graduate students to serve as Digital Public Fellows, working in an editorial role with other SHC Fellows and speakers to identify topics and solicit content in all media to publish on Arcade, the open-access site that forms an integral part of the SHC’s digital platform.
“I believe there's something that was built into the Humanities Center at the time of its founding, namely an intellectual openness, a willingness to entertain unconventional approaches that might produce unusual scholarship,” says director Roland Greene. “Every year, we take great care identifying fellows at all levels who can converse with each other—who would enlarge whom and who might disagree with whom productively—and whose projects are complementary.
The Center's fellowships are made possible by gifts and grants from the following individuals, foundations, and Stanford offices: The Esther Hayfer Bloom Estate, Theodore H. and Frances K. Geballe, Mimi and Peter Haas, Marta Sutton Weeks, the Mericos Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the office of the Dean of Humanities and Sciences.
The Center will begin accepting applications for the 2027–28 academic year in August. Details about fellowships, including application instructions and eligibility, are available online.
About the Stanford Humanities Center
Established in 1980, the Stanford Humanities Center sponsors advanced research in the humanities and the interpretive social sciences by investing in experiences—fellowships, workshops, lectures, and other events—that enrich research in and across the disciplines. The internationally renowned Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA), now part of the Humanities Center, embraces emerging digital methodologies and tools to complement existing traditional research methods of analysis and interpretation. Together, the Stanford Humanities Center and CESTA serve as the hub of an international network of fellows, visiting scholars, students, and alumni. For further information, please visit shc.stanford.edu.
2026–27 Fellows and Projects
Noor Amr
Lubert Stryer Next Generation Scholar
Department of Anthropology, Stanford University
Church Asylum: Religion, Migration, and the Boundaries of the Political in Germany
Moustafa Bayoumi
External Faculty Fellow
Department of English, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Like a Palestinian: How the Idea of Palestine Has Changed in—and Is Changing—America
Sahera Bleibleh
Marta Sutton Weeks External Fellow
Independent Scholar
Forbidden Space: Spatial Violence and the Everyday in Palestine
Erica Camisa Morale
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of Southern California
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University
The Vanishing Dead Body and the Emerging Persona in Early Modern East Slavic Lyrics
Chris Cristóbal Chan
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University
Exhibiting the Spectral State: Public Art, Ruination, and Revitalization in the Taiwan Strait
Emre Can Daglioglu
Next Generation Scholar
Department of History, Stanford University
Silk-made Capitalism: Technoscience, European Financial Control, and Sericulture in the Ottoman Empire (1881–1914)
Jelani Favors
External Faculty Fellow
Vice President, Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute (United Negro College Fund)
Losing Whiteness: Power, Privilege, and Murder in the Post Reconstruction South;
Sacred Spaces: Black College Seminaries and the Moral Traditions of the Civil Rights Movement
Max Fennell-Chametzky
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of History, Stanford University
Primate Verbalizations: Ape Language Experiments and the Global Remaking of the Human, 1930–2018
Matthew Gilbert
Next Generation Scholar
Department of Music, Stanford University
Blow for Californi-o: Histories of Folk Music in the American West
Mario A. Gómez Zamora
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of California, Santa Cruz
Department of Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford University
Queer P’urhépecha Histories and Performances Beyond Borders
Gaby Greenlee
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of California, Santa Cruz
Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University
Inka Borders and the Power of Volatility: On the Fringes and Edges of Textile and Territory
Rachael Louise Healy
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of Anthropology, Stanford University
Growing Up in “Peace”: Violence, Care, and Girlhood in a West Belfast Neighbourhood
Ellen Huang
External Faculty Fellow
Department of Humanities and Sciences, ArtCenter College of Design
Jingdezhen Porcelain and the Transformation of China, c. 1644–1911
Paul Johnston
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, Harvard University
Department of Classics, Stanford University
Roman Literature in Greek and Latin: Bilingualism, Empire, and the Shaping of the Classical Canon
Daniel Koplitz
SHC Dissertation Fellow Affiliate
Department of Music, Stanford University
Sounding Unsettled in the Premodern West
Maya Kronfeld
Distinguished External Junior Faculty Fellow
Literature Program and the Departments of Philosophy and Music, Duke University
Spontaneous Form: Philosophy, Literature, Jazz
Haiyan Lee
Violet Andrews Whittier Internal Fellow
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University
New Animism: An Unnatural History of the Chinese Environmental Imagination
Emily Levine
Internal Faculty Fellow
Graduate School of Education, Stanford University
Agreeing to Disagree: Academic Freedom, Political Speech, and the American University
Ainan Liu
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, Princeton University
Department of French and Italian, Stanford University
Barbaric Acts in French Classical Theater
Ali Madani
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, Brown University
Department of English, Stanford University
Categorical Fictions: Literary History, Colonialism, and the Forms of Early Modern English
Yoshiko Matsumoto
Donald Andrews Whittier Internal Fellow
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University
Pragmatics of Understanding: Communication as an Improvisational Duet
Mpho Calachan Molefe
Kimberly Oden and Donald Brewster Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of English, Stanford University
“The Conditions for Our Remaining”: Provisional Belonging in Post-Apartheid South African Literature
Johanna Mueller
Next Generation Scholar
Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University
An American Mission? Nineteenth-Century Missionaries and the Contested Meanings of “America”
Julie Napolin
External Faculty Fellow
Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School
Stay With Me: Conversation Before and After AI
Lara Norgaard
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, Harvard University
Department of Comparative Literature, Stanford University
Afterlives of Translation: Connective Memory in Cold War Indonesia and Latin America
Unjoo Oh
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of English, Stanford University
See(m)ing Error: GenAI and the Latents of Early Modern Literature
Timothy Pantoja
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, New York University
Department of African and African American Studies, Stanford University
Scenes of Reflection: Compelling Insinuations and Black Empathy
Michael Penn
Ellen Andrews Wright Internal Fellow
Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University
The Church of Baghdad
Rose Salseda
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University
Muralism, A Cry for Justice: Chicano Art and the Cultivation of Humanity at Stanford University
Partha Pratim Shil
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of History, Stanford University
The Street and the State: Decolonization, Labor Protests and State Making in India, c. 1945–1952
Colin Weaver
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of Chicago
Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University
Strange Ecologies: Imagination and Ethics in the Pluriverse
Omari Weekes
External Faculty Fellow
Department of English, Queens College, City University of New York
Lurid Affinities: Sex and the Spirit in Post-Civil Rights Black Literature
Leif Wenar
Donald Andrews Whittier Internal Fellow
Department of Philosophy, Stanford University
The Value of Unity
Tiana U. Wilson
Distinguished External Junior Faculty Fellow
Department of Africana Studies, University of Pittsburgh
Triple Jeopardy: The Ideology, Activism, and Legacy of the Third World Women’s Alliance
Mikael Wolfe
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of History, Stanford University
A Geopolitical Revolution: How Extreme Weather and Climate Shaped Cuban Socialist Development, 1955–1971
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