Henry Luce Senior Fellowship

Honoring American magazine publisher, the Henry Luce Senior fellowship has been awarded annually since 1996. Henry Luce built a publishing empire including Time, Fortune, and Life magazines, becoming one of the most powerful figures in the history of American journalism. Time sought to present news in narrative form and stressed world events, an area that Luce believed was neglected in American newspapers and magazines. Publications frequently utilized library research materials to make stories and articles more complete.

The Henry Luce Senior fellowship was endowed by the Henry Luce Foundation and was designed to support scholars who could be especially effective in stimulating interdisciplinary exchanges among their peers. The Henry Luce Foundation, established by Henry in 1936, honored his parents who were missionary educators in China. Today, the Foundation advances its mission through grantmaking and leadership programs in the fields of Asian studies, higher education, religion and theology, art, and public policy.

1996–1997	Paul Strohm	Indiana University, Bloomington	Usurpation and Symbolic Legitimation in Lancastrian England
1997–1998	Richard Trexler	Binghamton University, State University of New York	Playing the Crucified: The Social Drama of Good Friday in Past and Present
1998–1999	Bertram Wyatt-Brown	University of Florida	Melancholy’s Children: Southern Writers and Alienation
1999–2000	Sherry Ortner	Columbia University	The Newark: An Ethnographic Study of Class and Culture in the United States
2001–2002	Elizabeth Clark	Duke University	Rewriting the History of Early Christianity
2002–2003	Sherman Cochran	Cornell University	Inside a Chinese Family: The Private Correspondence of the Lius of Shanghai, 1910–1956
2003–2004	Stephen Murray	Columbia University	Telling the Story of Gothic: Building and Interlocutor
2004–2005	Joel Marcus	Duke University	The Passion Narrative in the Gospel of Mark
2005–2006	Gary Macy	University of San Diego	Ordination and Women in the Medieval West
2006–2007	James Dobbins	Oberlin College	Religious Meanings in Japanese Buddhist Art
2007–2008	David Wong	Duke University	Chinese Philosophy, Moral Psychology, and Practical Reason
2008–2009	Tomiko Yoda	Duke University	Girl Time: Gender, Media, and Postmodern Consumer Culture in Japan
2009–2010	Charles Orzech	University of North Carolina at Greensboro	The Secrets of the Three Mountains: Esoteric Buddhism in Continental East Asia, 755–1279
2010–2011	Bernard Levinson	University of Minnesota	Revelation and Redaction: The Role of Intellectual Models in Biblical Studies
2011–2012	Dorothy Wong	University of Virginia	Formation of an International Buddhist Art Idiom in East Asia, c. 640–760
2012–2013	Cynthia Brokaw	Brown University	Transforming the Frontier: Education, Book Culture, and the Rise of ”Sichuan Learning”
2013–2014	Jinhua Chen	University of British Columbia	Sacred Bone: Relic-Worship in Medieval China
2014–2015	Jinhua Jia	University of Macau	Religiosity and Literacy: The Journey of Daoist Priestesses in Tang China (618–907)
2015–2016	Norman Jutcher	Syracuse University	Eunuchs in the Age of China’s Last Great Emperors
2016–2017	Christopher Grasso	College of William & Mary	Skepticism and American Faith: From the Revolution to the Civil War
2017–2018	Caroline Jones	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Contested Visibilities and the Anthropogenic Image
2018–2019	Bart Ehrman	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	The Invention of Heaven and Hell
2019–2020	Olga Dror	Texas A&M University	Ho Chi Minh’s Cult in Vietnamese Statehood
2020–2021	Rivi Handler-Spitz	Macalester College	Contentious Conversations: Masters, Disciples, and the Culture of Yulu Literature in Late Ming China
2021–2022	Howard Chiang	University of California, Davis	A Transcultural Revolution of the Unconscious: Psychoanalysis and Chinese Culture across the Pacific
2022–2023	David Brakke	The Ohio State University	A Religion of the Books: The New Testament and Other Early Christian Scriptural Practices
2023–2024	Richard J. Powell	Duke University	Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect
2024–2025	Kim Haines-Eitzen	Cornell University	Crossing the River of Fire: Apocalypse, Transformation, and the Elements in Late Antiquity