MOUNT HOLYOKE HISTORIAN
IS NAMED ACLS FELLOW

South Hadley, MA---Mount Holyoke associate professor of history Jeremy King is one of 79 scholars to be recognized this year by the American Council of Learned Societies through its 2003-2004 Fellowship Program. In a national competition, ACLS made awards totaling over $2.6 million to 79 scholars for postdoctoral research in the humanities and humanities-related social sciences. From 1,027 applicants, awards were made to 37 women and 42 men for research periods of six months to one year. The Fellows are affiliated with 64 institutions in the United States and one in Canada.

King plans to use the fellowship during 2004-5 to write a substantial part of his second book on Central European history. Called Separate and Equal?: The Habsburg Experiment, 1905-1914, the book will explore a set of constitutional amendments partly implemented in the Habsburg Monarchy between 1905 and 1914. According to King, the amendments offer insight into a classic problem: how to reconcile two or more territorially intermingled peoples within a single state, without abandoning liberal principles such as the right of free association and the equality of individuals before the law. King will focus in particular on group rights and the politics of "benign" but compulsory racial classification, and will undertake some comparison between the Habsburg Monarchy and the United States. King's first book, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848-1948, was published in 2002 by Princeton University Press.

Institutions and individuals contribute to the ACLS Fellowship Program and its endowment, including The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Council's college and university Associates, and former Fellows and individual friends of the ACLS.

The American Council of Learned Societies, with offices at 633 Third Avenue, New York, New York, is a private, non-profit federation of 68 scholarly associations devoted to the advancement of humanistic studies in all fields of learning.