Duke Professors Earn Fellowships to Study Overlooked Connections

Mbaye Lo, associate professor of the practice of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies and International Comparative Studies, and Nancy MacLean, William H. Chafe Distinguished Professor of History and Public Policy, are among the National Humanities Center’s 36 fellows for the 2021–22 academic year. They will spend a year away from their regular teaching duties as resident scholars at the Research Triangle Park–based center, working on independent book-length projects.

Lo’s project, Blacks in Arabic Sources: An Intellectual History of Africanism in the Arab World, is an attempt to understand anti-Black racism—which Lo calls “Africanism”—in Arabic-speaking cultures on its own terms. Learn more about their work here.