Hartman Named MacArthur Fellow

COURTESY MacARTHUR FOUNDATION

Professor of English and Comparative Literature Saidiya Hartman is one of 26 recipients of the 2019 MacArthur fellowship, given out annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Hartman earned a $625,000 “genius grant” to be distributed over the next five years. “I am delighted to receive the MacArthur. It means the world to me,” she said. “It gives me the time I need to write and think.”

Hartman is a scholar of African-American literature and cultural history. Her works, which include Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America; Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route; and most recently, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, explore the afterlife of slavery in modern American society.