Northwestern University
Record four PhD candidates win dissertation fellowship
May 13, 2021
The Office of Fellowships is thrilled to announce a record-breaking number of Northwestern recipients among this year’s class of Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Completion Fellowship winners! With funding from the award, Ashley Dennis, Hayana Kim, Andrea Rosengarten, and Azadeh Safaeian will finish their PhD studies next year.
Inspired by her commitment to educational equity and the dearth of Black history curriculum in the
predominantly Black and brown schools she attended, Ashley’s research in the Department of African American Studies considers how and why Black women educators promoted Black history and culture to children during the mid-twentieth century. Her dissertation examines teachers, librarians, and authors who challenged stereotypes in texts for children and supplemented or replaced them with antiracist writings of their own. Their writings include books, bibliographies, school curricula, plays, and radio scripts.