William J. Bouwsma Fellowship

Eminent American William J. Bouwsma was a leading scholar of the European Renaissance and a past president of the American Historical Association. A recipient of Fulbright, Guggenheim, and National Humanities Center fellowships (1983–84; 1984–85), Bouwsma also served on the Center’s board of trustees from 1988 to 2000.

The fellowship was named in Bouwsma’s honor by fellow NHC trustee emeritus, Peter A. Benoliel. It has been awarded annually since 2001. Benoliel is chairman of the board of directors for IPSoft, an American technology firm focused on autonomic computing and artificial intelligence, and is chairman emeritus of Quaker Chemical Corporation, where he served as chief executive officer from 1966 until 1992 and as non-executive chairman of the board until 1997. He has served as a trustee and helped lead numerous cultural and philanthropic organizations including as president of the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, chairman of the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, chairman of Settlement Music School, and chairman of the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation. As of 2019, when he was elected an emeritus trustee, Benoliel was the longest serving trustee of the National Humanities Center.

2001–2002	Luca Boschetto	Independent scholar	Economy, Politics, and Law in Renaissance Florence: The Court of the Mercanzia, 1394–1577
2002–2003	Tom Beghin	University of California, Los Angeles	Performing Rhetoric: Joseph Haydn’s Keyboard Sonatas as Muscial Orations
2003–2004	Wye J. Allanbrook	University of California, Berkeley	Happy Endings: Comic Musical Theater from Lully to Sondheim
2004–2005	Robin D. Moore	Temple University	Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba
2005–2006	Philip Rupprecht	Brooklyn College, City University of New York	Avant-Garde Nation: British Musical Modernism Since 1960
2006–2007	Theodore Buehrer	Kenyon College	Mary’s Idea: Mary Lou Willliams’ Development as a Big Band Composer
2007–2008	R. Larry Todd	Duke University	Becoming Fanny Hensel: The Life and Music of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel
2008–2009	Christian Thorau	University of Music and Performing Arts, Frankfurt	Guided Listening and the Touristic Gaze–The Emergence of ‘Musical Baedekers’
2009–2010	Katherine Preston	College of William & Mary	Against the Grain: Women Managers and English Opera in Late Nineteenth-Century America
2010–2011	Suzannah Clark	Harvard University	Quirks in Tonality: Aspects in the History of Tonal Space
2011–2012	John Monfasani	University at Albany, State University of New York	A Three-Volume Study of the Plato-Aristotle Controversy of the 15th Century
2012–2013	Pamela O. Long	Independent scholar	Rome Restored: Knowledge, Power, and Engineering, 1557–1590
2013–2014	Claire Sponsler	University of Iowa	Reading the Beauchamp Pageant
2014–2015	Bettye Collier-Thomas	Temple University	“She is a Politician”: African American Women and Politics
2015–2016	Daniel Nolan	Australian National University	Theoretical Values
2016–2017	Tamara Sears	Rutgers University	Wilderness Urbanisms: Architecture, Landscape, and Travel in Southern Asia
2017–2018	Pavlos Kontos	University of Patras	Spectators of Moral Matters in Aristotle
2018–2019	Peter Villella	University of North Carolina at Greensboro	Of Ruin and Rebirth: The Construction of Aztec History, 1531–1625
2019–2020	Alexia Yates	University of Manchester, U.K.	Rise of the Rentier: France and the Making of Financial Modernity, 1830–1930
2020–2021	Lester Tomé	Smith College	The Avant-garde Imagination: Transatlantic Visions of Ballet
2021–2022	Samantha Pinto	The University of Texas at Austin	Under the Skin
2022–2023	Umrao Sethi	Brandeis University	Sensibilia: An Account of Sensory Perception and its Objects
2023–2024	Elanor Taylor	Johns Hopkins University	The Foundations of Social Metaphysics
2024–2025	Sarah Scott	Manhattan College	The Moral Philosophy of Frances Power Cobbe: Forgotten Anglo-Irish Philosopher and Women’s Rights and Animal Welfare Activist