Residential Fellows

The first two awards go to Dr. James W. Cook, Assistant Professor of History and Director of American Studies at Butler University, and Dr. Wiliam Ralph Heath, Professor of English, Mount Saint Mary's College.

Dr. Cook's project, "Cracks in the White Republic: Race, Culture, and Transgression in the U.S. North, 1780-1865," is a study of interracial "cultures" that emerged in the United States between the dawn of emancipation and the Civil War. Dr. Cook argues that "in the broadest sense, I am writing a book about interracial 'transgressions': a cultural history of the people, places, and relationships which in one way or another violated the early Republic's emerging racial caste system."

Dr. Heath's project, "William Wells's Path," is an historical novel that uses the life of Wells, (an interpreter, Indian agent, and acculturated member of the Miami tribe who served both Native American communities and the federal government during the tumultuous conquest of the Northwest Territory by the United States), to illuminate his times and capture the meaning of a crucial period.