Martin Earns ACLS Fellowship and Book Grant for 2016-2017

Lerone Martin has earned two notable awards for the 2016-2017 academic year. The assistant professor with the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis has been awarded an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship, as well as a Book Grant from The Louisville Institute. Both offer support for his research project titled, “J. Edgar Hoover’s Stained Glass Window: The FBI and Christian America.” The project examines how the religious culture of the FBI and its collaboration with clergy, faith communities, and church organizations helped construct and shape popular notions of Christian America during the 20th Century.

The ACLS Fellowship Program awards fellowships to individual scholars working in the humanities and related social sciences and is one of this nation’s most competitive fellowship competitions, with awards to approximately five percent of applicants. Since 1957, more than 9,500 scholars have held ACLS fellowships and grants. The peer-review process used to select ACLS Fellows enables distinguished scholars to reach broad consensus on standards of excellence in humanities research.

Martin also has earned a Book Grant from The Louisville Institute for “J. Edgar Hoover’s Stained Glass Window.” The First Book Grant Program for Minority Scholars assists junior, non-tenured religion scholars of color to complete a major research project on an issue in North American Christianity related to the priorities of The Louisville Institute. The program enables scholars to spend an entire academic year devoted to that research project while free of other professional responsibilities.

The Louisville Institute is a Lilly Endowment-funded program based at Louisville Seminary supporting those who lead and study American religious institutions. The fundamental mission of The Louisville Institute is to enrich the religious life of American Christians and to encourage the revitalization of their institutions, by bringing together those who lead religious institutions with those who study them, so that the work of each might inform and strengthen the other.

For more information, please see the ACLS website at https://www.acls.org/about/ and The Louisville Institute website at http://www.louisville-institute.org/default.aspx.