Three Yale PhD students were selected for the 2026 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation fellowship, which is awarded by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and supported by the Mellon Foundation.
Ruthie Block, a PhD candidate in English and Black Studies, Estelle Guéville, a PhD candidate in Medieval Studies, and Taylor Wilson Thompson, a PhD candidate in American Studies and Black Studies, were among the 50 fellows selected for this year’s cohort.
The program supports doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences as they pursue innovative approaches to dissertation research, including new methodologies, formats, and collaborations with community partners beyond the academy. ACLS launched the program in 2023 to expand and recognize a wider range of research methods, modes, and subjects in dissertation research.
“The 2026 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellows present some of the most exciting and forward-thinking scholarship happening today in the humanities and social sciences,” said Alison Chang, ACLS Senior Program Officer in US Programs. “ACLS is proud to support their scholarship, and we look forward to following their impact in the academy and beyond.”
Each fellow receives an award of up to $52,000, consisting of a $42,000 stipend; up to $8,000 for project-related research, training, professional development, and travel; and a $2,000 stipend to support external mentorship that offers new perspectives on the fellow’s project and expands their advising network.
Block’s research examines mid-to-late twentieth-century Black women who stewarded rare collections of early Black texts within their homes. Centering collectors whose domestic repositories constituted sites of literary activism outside institutional frameworks, it reorients conventional historiographies of the Black feminist literary renaissance and the Black ‘archival turn’.
Guéville studies female scribal practices in Medieval Europe. Combining palaeography, codicology, and computational methods, it recovers the hidden labor of female scribes and analyzes how they shaped medieval textual culture.
Thompson’s dissertation, “The Choreography of Capital” mobilizes Black feminist theory and performance studies methods to critically approach American Reconstruction economic history anew. Her dissertation studies how nineteenth century Black cooperative and mutual aid organizations created their own uniquely Black, radical visions of free labor and labor value in the wake of emancipation.
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Original article posted by the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences