Michelle Granshaw Awarded 2026 ACLS Fellowship
Award Recognizes Excellence in Humanities and Social Sciences Research
The University of Pittsburgh is proud to announce that Dr. Michelle Granshaw (Associate Professor, Theatre Arts) has been awarded a 2026 ACLS Fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The ACLS Fellowship Program is the organization’s longest running program and supports outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.
Granshaw is one of 63 scholars selected from a pool of over 2,000 applicants through a multi-stage peer review process. ACLS Fellowships provide up to $60,000 to support scholars for six to 12 months of full-time research and writing. Awardees who are independent scholars, adjunct faculty, or have teaching-intensive roles receive an additional stipend between $3,000 and $6,000. Granshaw’s research presents a new history of desegregation, protest, and the theatre. In its exploration of the two decades after the Civil War, “The Fight for Desegregation: Race, Freedom, and the Theatre After the Civil War” reimagines theatre’s role in the fight for civil rights as well as the way Reconstruction, civil rights activism, and the white backlash to these efforts shaped US theatre as an institution, a cultural site, and political space. The project traces two intertwined narratives: the emergence and decline of a national, decentralized effort by Black Americans that worked to desegregate US theatres, and how white theatre managers, artists, and audiences fought to reinforce and maintain a theatre institution with its foundation in white supremacy and ultimately succeeded.
“We are proud to award ACLS Fellowships to 63 outstanding scholars across a range of fields,” said ACLS President Joy Connolly. “Deep understanding of humanity and human endeavor doesn’t come out of thin air: it rests on the work of generations of scholars who need time to do research and develop their arguments. We salute the new fellows’ contributions to knowledge and to society, and we celebrate their expertise and dedication.”
The ACLS Fellowship Program is funded primarily by the ACLS endowment, which has benefited from the generous support of esteemed funders, institutional members, and individual donors since the organization’s founding in 1919.