“Henning and Nez are shaping new directions in their disciplines,” said Padraic Kenney, the College’s associate dean for graduate education. “They are doing vanguard work that is going to matter. We are delighted that we will be remotely hosting them for the year.”

Henning is a Black feminist theorist whose research interests include social epistemology, informal logic, and argumentation. In one of the online classes she will teach this year, she and her students will analyze why people (especially Black Africans) speak in different ways, and how language has consequences for the projection of identity and self-image in society.

Nez, who grew up on a Navajo reservation in Arizona, studies Native American language learning, teaching, and revitalization. They are also a documentary filmmaker who have taught Native people how to preserve their stories through media technology.

Two recent graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences have also been named Emerging Voices Fellows. Gaelle Le Calvez House, who earned a Ph.D. in Hispanic Literature, is a 2021 fellow in the Division of Humanities at Yale University, and Charlene Jennifer Fletcher, who earned a Ph.D. in History was a 2020 fellow at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University. A third IU College graduate, Abby Ang, who earned a Ph.D. in English, was awarded a Leading Edge Fellowship by the ACLS.

The American Council of Learned Societies launched the Emerging Voices Fellows program in 2020 to encourage promising new scholars in the humanities in the midst of a challenging academic job market and the uncertainties of the COVID pandemic. This year’s group of 48 fellows were selected from a pool of 300 applicants after an extensive peer-review process.

Story by Julie Gray