Professor of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies Catherine Conybeare is one of 81 scholars named a 2019 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellow.
ACLS fellowships and grants are awarded to individual scholars for excellence in research in the humanities and related social sciences. This year’s 81 fellows were selected by their peers from more than 1,100 applicants, in a review process with multiple stages. Awards range from $40,000 to $70,000, depending on the scholar’s career stage, and support six to 12 months of full-time research and writing.
Conybeare will use the fellowship to write her latest book, Augustine the African:
Scattered references in writings throughout his life show that Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) was intensely aware of himself as an African. Yet his intellectual legacy has been subsumed into the purported universalism of a Eurocentric history of ideas. This book reconsiders Augustine's works, particularly the letters and sermons which are less formal and less well-known than his grand treatises, to produce a detailed account of the Africanness of Augustine. The focus on an African perspective, rather than a Roman or “universal” one, yields a completely new account of Augustine’s thought and significance.
“The 2019 ACLS Fellows exemplify ACLS’s inclusive vision of excellence in the humanities and humanistic social sciences,” said Matthew Goldfeder, director of fellowship programs at ACLS. “The awardees, who hail from more than 60 colleges and universities, were selected for their potential to make an original and significant contribution to knowledge. They are working at diverse types of institutions, on research projects that span antiquity to the present, in contexts around the world; the array of disciplines and methodologies represented demonstrates the vitality and the incredible breadth of humanistic scholarship today.”
Department of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies