National Humanities Center chooses UF professor for fellowship

June 7, 2010

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Leah Rosenberg, associate professor of English at the University of Florida, has been selected as a National Humanities Center Fellow for the 2010-2011 academic year. She is the ninth scholar from UF to earn NHC fellowship.

The National Humanities Center will award nearly $13 million in individual fellowship grants to enable scholars to take leave from their normal academic duties and pursue individual research projects at the center.

Rosenberg was selected along with 35 other distinguished scholars from six foreign countries and other institutions across the United States. Chosen from 442 applicants, the fellows represent more than 20 fields of humanistic scholarship. Each will have the opportunity to share ideas in seminars, lectures and conferences at the NHC.

Rosenberg received a fellowship to support her second book project, “Contested Possessions: Tourism and the Representation of Caribbean Folk Culture.” In her book, she employs literature and film to study how the prominence of tourism in the Caribbean and the prominence of Caribbean culture across the globe are two facets of the inter-related development of Caribbean nationalism, U.S. power and global capitalism.

Rosenberg teaches Caribbean and postcolonial studies, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary courses. She received her doctorate in comparative literature from Cornell University in 2000.

The NHC, located in the Research Triangle Park of North Carolina, is a privately incorporated independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. Since 1978, NHC fellowship scholars have produced more than 1,200 humanistic books. The center also sponsors programs to strengthen the teaching of the humanities in secondary and higher education.

The newly appointed fellows will constitute the 33rd class of resident scholars.