University of Arkansas Historian Wins Prestigious National Fellowships

Photo Submitted

Jim Gigantino, assistant professor of history in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, has just won two prestigious national fellowships: the David Library of the American Revolution Research Fellowship and the Esther Ann McFarland Fellowship for Research in African American History.

The David Library of the American Revolution is located in Bucks County, Pa., and houses nearly 8 million pages documenting events from 1750 to 1800 and the American Revolution: diaries, dissertations, correspondence, government records, military service records, newspapers and periodicals. The David Library offers residential fellowships (housing plus research stipend) during the summer to scholars specializing in early American history.

The Esther Ann McFarland Fellowship supports research in African American History among the vast collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and Library Company of Philadelphia. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania only gives one Esther Ann McFarland Fellowship each year.

Professor Gigantino is a scholar of Colonial America, the American revolution, and American slavery and teaches courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels in these fields. The awards will support the final research phase of his book, Freedom and Slavery in the Garden of America: African Americans and Abolition in New Jersey, 1775-1861.