Benjamin N. Duke Fellowship

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Benjamin Newton Duke was a cofounder of the Southern Power Company, later known as Duke Energy, and was one of the most significant benefactors to Trinity College, presently known as Duke University. In his honor, the B.N. Duke Scholarship Program was established to bring outstanding students from around the Carolinas to the University to provide an environment that fosters their academic excellence, community engagement, and aspirations to become leaders.

Endowed by the Research Triangle Foundation, the Benjamin N. Duke fellowship at the National Humanities Center has been awarded annually since 1985. The Foundation is committed to promoting economic development within the Triangle and facilitating strategic partnerships that benefit both the region and the state of North Carolina.

1985–1986	Karl Theodore Hoppen	University of Hull	New Oxford History of England, Vol. XIV: 1846–1885
1986–1987	Marie Drew-Bear	Universite Lyon II	The Archives of the City Council of Hermoupolis in the Third Century A.D.
1987–1988	Shemaryahu Talmon	The Hebrew University of Isral	Literary Patterns and Speculative Thought in the Hebrew Bible
1988–1989	Daniel Gunn	University of Maine at Farmington	Ideological Rhetoric in the English Novel, 1748–1910
1989–1990	David Wallace	University of Texas at Austin	Chaucer in Florence and Lombardy: Political History and Poetic Form
1990–1991	Mark Seltzer	Cornell University	Bodies and Machines
1991–1992	Jonathan Lamb	University of Auckland	Reading Job in the Eighteenth Century: The Politics and Aesthetics of Abjection
1992–1993	Richard A.S. Seaford	University of Exeter	Mystery Cult and Its transformations in the Greek City-State to the End of the Classical Period
1993–1994	Maureen Warner-Lewis	University of the West Indies, Mona	Caribbean African-Language Texts: Translation and Cultural-Linguistic Exegesis
1994–1995	Valery Podoroga	Russian Academy of Science	The Body and Writing: Strategies of Sensibility in Russian Literature and Art of the 19th and 20th Centuries
1995–1996	Devin Stewart	Emory University	Intertextuality in the Maqamat of al-Hamadhani and Islamic Religious Discourse
1996–1997	Donald Lopez	University of Michigan	Prisoners of Shangri-la: Tibetan Buddhism and the West
1997–1998	Tad Schmaltz	Duke University	Desgabets, Regis, and Constructions of Descartes (1663–1751)
1998–1999	Nicola Beisel	Northwestern University	Race and the Politics of Abortion in America
1999–2000	Kären Wigen	Duke University	Native Places, Global Times: A Century of Regional Rhetoric in Shinano
2000–2001	Deidre Lynch	State University of New York at Buffalo	At Home in English: “Loving” Literature in the Eighteenth Century and After
2001–2002	Frank Mort	University of East London	Sexual London: Metropolitan Culture and Moral Change, 1945–63
2002–2003	Paulina Kewes	University of Wales, Aberystwyth	The Staging of History in Early Modern England
2003–2004	Lee Baker	Duke University	Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture, 1892–1968
2004–2005	Kevin Ohi	Boston College	On the Queerness of Style: Henry James and the Erotics of Form
2005–2006	Scott Casper	University of Nevada, Reno	Sarah Johnson’s Mount Vernon: African-American Life at an American Shrine, from Slavery to Jim Crow
2006–2007	James Sweet	University of Wisconsin, Madison	Domingos Alvares and the African-Atlantic Diaspora, 1710–1750
2007–2008	Erdag Göknar	Duke University	Between Orient and Nation: Orhan Pamuk and the Turkish Novel
2008–2009	Jessica Brantley	Yale University	Medieval Ways of Seeing: Image, Text, Artifact
2009–2010	Andrew Escobedo	Ohio University	Renaissance Allegories of the Will
2010–2011	Bayo Holsey	Duke University	Spectacles of Slavery: Marketing the Past in the New Millennium
2011–2012	Ernest Zitser	Duke University	The Vita of Prince Boris Ivanovich Korybut-Kurakin: An Annotated Translation
2012–2013	Morna O’Neill	Wake Forest University	Decoration and Display: British Art and International Exhibitions, 1888–1910
2013–2014	Anna Krylova	Duke University	A History of the Soviet: The Lingua Franca of Soviet Modernity
2014–2015	Jonathan Sachs	Concordia University, Canada	Decline and the Depths of Time in British Romanticism
2015–2016	Peter Carroll	Northwestern University	“This Age of Suicide”: Modernity, Society, and Self in China, 1900–1957
2016–2017	Ilya Kliger	New York University	Untimely Community: The Tragic Imagination in the Age of Russian Realism
2017–2018	Jennie Grillo	Duke University	The Afterlives of the Apocryphal Daniel
2018–2019	Joni Adamson	Arizona State University	Desirable Futures: Cosmos, Canon, and Constellations of Practice in the Environmental Humanities
2019-2020	Agnes Kefeli	Arizona State University	Re-Enchanting the Eurasian Steppe: Eco-Nationalism and Eschatology in Tatar Literature, 1960–Present
2020–2021	Ryan Emanuel	North Carolina State University	Water in the Lumbee World: Environmental Justice, Indigenous Rights, and the Transformation of Home