The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History awarded two UW-Madison professors prestigious research fellowships earlier this month.
Ethelene Whitmire, a UW-Madison associate professor at the School of Library and Information Studies, and Chad Alan Goldberg, a UW-Madison associate professor of sociology, are two of 26 recipients to win the award for the first half of 2008.
The Gilder Lehrman Fellowships provide doctoral candidates, postdoctoral scholars and independent scholars with the opportunity to conduct research work in five library archives in New York City.
Both Whitmire and Goldberg said they plan to use the libraries' archives for books they are writing.
Whitmire will use the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture for her biography, Harlem Renaissance Librarian: A Black Feminist Biography of Regina Andrews.""
Goldberg will conduct research using the Gilder Lehrman Collection at the New York Historical Society for his project titled ""The Women's Suffrage Movement and the Development of the U.S. Welfare State, 1869-1920.""
Whitmire, who has also been awarded the Vilas Associates Award, said she felt the fellowship would give her a greater opportunity to expand her research.
""I was very excited to get support,"" she said. ""It shows that people find the research interesting enough to support it.""
Goldberg said his areas of research focus on comparative-history and political sociology.
Goldberg said he was ""very happily surprised"" when he found out about receiving the fellowship through an e-mail from Whitmire. He is currently on leave and is teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem but plans to return to Madison this fall.
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, founded in 1994, seeks to promote American history education, according to a statement. The Institute also offers the Gilder Lehrman History Scholars Program, an award for undergraduate students to have the opportunity to partake in a summer scholarship program in New York City.
