Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, the Julia Cherry Spruill Professor of history in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, has been elected as a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies.
Hall, Ph.D., is a pioneering scholar in Southern women’s history and the founding director of the Southern Oral History Program in UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South. In her 37 years at the helm, the program has recorded approximately 4,300 first-hand accounts of history by the people who lived it.
Hall is among 212 new academy fellows announced today (April 19). They include individuals that the academy calls some of the world’s most accomplished leaders in academia, art, business, the humanities, philanthropy and science. The class will be inducted Oct. 1 at academy headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.
With Hall, UNC has 34 faculty members in the academy, an independent policy research center founded in 1780 to undertake studies of complex and emerging problems.
In 1999, Hall was called “one of the nation’s pre-eminent scholars of the New South” when awarded a National Humanities Medal, bestowed by President Bill Clinton. The medal honors those whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to the humanities.
For more information, refer to the news release at UNC News.
Published April 19, 2011.