The
Washington Post is reporting that Northwestern University historian
Dylan Penningroth (and 22 others) have won one of
this year's McArthur Fellowships. As Northwestern University's website explains, Penningroth
(PhD, Johns Hopkins 1999)
specializes in African American history and in U.S. socio-legal history.
He is affiliated with Northwestern’s Department of African American
Studies, and holds a joint appointment as Research Professor at the
American Bar Foundation. His first book, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South (2003), won the Avery Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians. His articles have appeared in the Journal of American History, the American Historical Review, and the Journal of Family History.
Penningroth’s awards have included an NEH, an NSF, the Huggins-Quarles,
and a Weinberg College Teaching Award. In 2011 he was named a McCormick
Professor of Teaching Excellence.
Penningroth is currently working on a study of African Americans'
encounter with law from the Civil War to World War II. Combining legal
and social history, the study explores the practical meaning of legal
rights for black social, cultural, and religious life. His next project
is a study of the legacy of slavery in colonial Ghana. Professor
Penningroth welcomes inquiries from prospective graduate students.
Update: Northwestern's story is
here, with a video interview of Professor Penningroth's discussion os his research.
