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PhD Candidate Jérémie-Brink Awarded Louisville Institute Fellowship

Loyola History Department PhD Candidate Nathan Jérémie-Brink has been awarded a Louisville Institute Dissertation Fellowship for the 2017-2018 academic year.  This competitive writing fellowship is given to PhD candidates whose research contributes to the study of North American Christianity.

Nathan’s dissertation examines the distribution of African American antislavery texts from the 1770s to 1850.  This research rediscovers the people and practices that developed alternative black distribution networks integral to abolition. Antislavery print moved through diverse actions–individual and communal, formal and informal, legal and illegal.  Religious organizations and civic institutions moved various forms of media. Pastors subscribed to and served as agents for antislavery newspapers that informed their preaching and activism. Readers copied print materials into handwritten letters or journals they shared among family and friends. Texts were smuggled, mailed in violation of censorship laws, or read aloud to people lacking or prohibited from literacy. Not only did these strategies move print, but these texts and the participants in these exchanges developed social networks for black empowerment and agitated for the abolition of slavery.

Supervised by Dr. Kyle Roberts, Nathan’s dissertation committee also includes Drs. John Donoghue, Tim Gilfoyle, and Jeffrey Glover (Department of English).  His archival research and writing has enjoyed generous fellowship support from the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Historical Society, a Lapidus Award from the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (OIEAHC), and the Schmitt Foundation.  He is also currently a Graduate Scholar-in-Residence at the Newberry Library.  Nathan is grateful for consultation with Dr. Jessica Horowitz, Assistant Dean of the Graduate School, and additional support through the Graduate School’s Research Incentive Award for Graduate Students (RIAGS) program.