Gaston Espinosa, the Arthur V. Stoughton Associate Professor of Religious Studies, has been awarded a National Humanities Fellowship from the National Humanities Center (NHC) Institute for Advanced Study, located in the Research Triangle Park of North Carolina. The NHC was founded by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978. It provides a national focus for the best work in the liberal arts and has funded scholars from more than 30 nations.
The internationally competitive award, this year given to just 7.9 percent of the 404 applicants, enables Espinosa to take off the 2011-12 academic year to focus on writing and scholarship.
"As always, it was a very rigorous competition," said NHC Vice President and Deputy Director Kent Mullikin. "Each year the center can accept only a few of the outstanding scholars who apply for fellowships." Recipients for the 2011-12 Fellowship included just two liberal arts college scholars. Some of the others named are scholars from Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Cornell, and Boston universities. Espinosa is the only scholar from the field of religious studies who was awarded a Fellowship.
National Humanities Center Director George Harpham, in his notification letter to Espinosa, added after reading Espinosa's project proposal, "I was delighted at the prospect of your coming to the National Humanities Center."
Espinosa will use his sabbatical to work on several book projects, including Righteousness and Justice: Religion, Barack Obama, and the 2008 Election, Latino Religions and Politics in American Public Life, and Brown Moses: Francisco Olaz?bal and Latino Pentecostal Charisma, Power, and Healing in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.
"I was surprised and deeply honored by the selection, since it is one of the most competitive fellowships in the humanities," Espinosa said.
Selection is based on originality, scholarly importance, and impact. The Fellowships are open to any scholars in the humanitiesfrom any nationas well as individuals from the sciences, social sciences, the arts, the professions, and public life, wishing to pursue a humanistic project.
During the academic year, fellows and invited visitors are featured in monthly lectures attended by local scholars, students, and the general public from the U.S. and around the world. (More information about the NHC.)
In addition to his three new books in progress, Espinosa has edited, introduced, and written chapters for Religion and the American Presidency: George Washington to George W. Bush, (Colombia University Press, 2009), Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism, and Culture (Duke University Press Books, 2008), Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2005), and Religion, Race, and the American Presidency (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2010).
His teaching and research interests include American religious history, American religions and politics, Latino religions and politics, religion and the Civil Rights movement, and religion, politics and global violence.
Espinosa is chair of the CMC Department of Religious Studies and The Claremont Colleges Religious Studies Program. He also serves as president of La Comunidad of Hispanic Scholars at the American Academy of Religion and co-editor of the Columbia University Press Series in Religion and Politics.