Dr. Jacqueline Emery, an assistant professor in the English Department at SUNY Old Westbury, has received a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend award to undertake research in preparation for her new book on Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the American feminist author and intellectual. The NEH award, one of only 233 given nationwide in 2019, supports cultural infrastructure projects, advanced scholarly research, humanities exhibitions and documentaries, and the preservation of historic collections.
“These new NEH-supported projects will help shore up the nation’s most valuable assets: its history, literature, historic sites, regional traditions, and cultural institutions,” said NEH Chairman Jon Parrish Peede. “NEH is proud to support the advancement of learning and sharing of knowledge nationwide.”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) is considered one of the most well-known and influential feminist intellectuals of the early twentieth century. Best known for her short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” Gilman was a lecturer and prolific author who wrote more than a dozen books, several plays, and hundreds of short stories and poems. She was also a journalist and wrote nearly fifteen hundred articles for newspapers and magazines. Emery’s work will focus on creating the first collection of her journalism.
“My edited collection will not only make Gilman’s journalism accessible to scholars and students but also provide a new critical framework for considering Gilman’s legacy and contribute to ongoing efforts among feminist scholars to recover and advance the study of women’s writing through the periodical archive,” said Emery. “I plan to use the NEH Summer Stipend to conduct comprehensive searches of the newspapers and magazines Gilman contributed to as editor and writer."
Emery’s last book, “Recovering Native American Writings in the Boarding School Press,” won the Ray & Pat Browne Award for Best Edited Collection in Popular Culture and American Culture from the Popular Culture Association & American Culture Association, and was selected as one of Choice’s Outstanding Academic Title award winners for 2018.