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Assistant Professor Kathleen Powers Conti has become the first researcher in FSU\u2019s Department of History to receive a MacDowell Fellowship. (Anna Claire Beasley)\t\t<\/p>\n\t\tAssistant Professor Kathleen Powers Conti has become the first researcher in FSU\u2019s Department of History to receive a MacDowell Fellowship. (Anna Claire Beasley)\t\t<\/p>\n
A Florida State University faculty member has been awarded a highly competitive international fellowship to trace and preserve the architectural and environmental relics of slavery, ranging from presidential homes to city streets.<\/p>\n
Assistant Professor\u00a0Kathleen Powers Conti<\/a>\u00a0is the first\u00a0researcher\u00a0from the\u00a0Department of History<\/a> and\u00a0fifth from\u00a0FSU\u00a0to earn a MacDowell Fellowship.\u00a0Conti\u00a0will spend May and June\u00a0at the\u00a0450-acre MacDowell\u00a0estate in\u00a0Peterborough,\u00a0New Hampshire, using the\u00a0artist-in-residence opportunity to\u00a0complete\u00a0her in-progress book, \u201cFingerprints in Brick: Race, Memory, and Historic Preservation in the American South.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was overjoyed to find out I had won a MacDowell\u00a0Fellowship,\u201d\u00a0said Conti, who is also an\u00a0affiliated faculty\u00a0member\u00a0with\u00a0FSU\u2019s\u00a0Native American and Indigenous Studies Center<\/a>. \u201cThis is an extraordinary opportunity, both for my research and creative practice,\u00a0and I am excited to have the privilege to work among so many other artists and scholars.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Kathleen Powers Conti documents the historic landscape at Badlands National Park, South Dakota. (Kelsey Riddle)Kathleen Powers Conti examines historic blueprints. (Bryn Davis)<\/p>\n MacDowell has offered its retreat-style fellowship program for more than a century, promoting an environment that allows leading creatives to not only hone their craft but also inspire one another. MacDowell Fellowships are awarded in seven disciplines: architecture \u2014 for which Conti was selected \u2014 as well as film and video, interdisciplinary arts, literature, music composition, theatre and visual arts.<\/p>\n As a MacDowell Fellow, Conti joins the ranks of more than 100 Pulitzer Prize winners, 1,000 Guggenheim fellows, and 35 National Book Award winners, including Audre Lorde, Leonard Bernstein and James Baldwin.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea behind MacDowell is simple: give artists a private, secluded studio in a beautiful environment to work, without distraction,\u201d Conti said. \u201cThey provide three meals a day, and MacDowell strikes the perfect balance of solitude to devote to your work while also allowing you to benefit from the creativity and talent of all the other artists and scholars working around you.\u201d<\/p>\n While living and writing in one of the MacDowell estate\u2019s 31 house-like \u201cstudios,\u201d which do not have wireless internet or cell service, Conti will work toward the completion of her upcoming book on the history and preservation of structures and landscapes shaped by enslaved people in the U.S. South, which include ornamental gardens, presidential homes, city streets and cemeteries.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Kathleen Powers Conti and others document a historic building at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico. (Kathleen Powers Conti)Kathleen Powers Conti discusses the intricate stone masonry work at the historic Poplar Hall outside of Newark, Delaware with her graduate students MiKayla Cole, Hope Evans, Gabrielle Camp, Aidan MacKinlay and Adam Beauchamp. (Kathleen Powers Conti)<\/p>\n As an architectural historian, Conti examines how humans shape and build upon the natural environment and how these manmade structures shape society. She has worked on projects at historic sites across the U.S., including at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s birth home in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Manhattan Project facilities in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Her in-progress book includes more than seven years of site analyses and oral history interviews in addition to research from 19 U.S. archives to analyze the architectural legacy of slavery and its related challenges within the field of historic preservation.<\/p>\n \u201cMy research helps people and communities preserve the stories and places that matter to them \u2014 for us today but also for future generations,\u201d Conti said. \u201cMuch of my work focuses on making history accessible and interesting to the public. For example, if you visit a national park, what objects are on display at the museum? How do you get to interact with the exhibits and the landscape? What does the guided tour say, and is it done in a way that is engaging and interesting?\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond cultivating connections, historic preservation activities are also economically relevant. Each year in Florida, historic preservation generates $13 billion and more than 120,000 jobs, with 63 million people visiting at least one historic site, according to the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation.<\/p>\n \u201cKathleen is a gifted historian of built environments,\u201d said Department of History Chair Jennifer Koslow<\/a>. \u201cShe often studies spaces that we would like to forget because of the difficult stories they contain, especially of pain and loss. Her expertise in architectural history and historic preservation allows her to analyze the physical and the emotional aspects of the past that inform our present.\u201d<\/p>\n The MacDowell fellowship is Conti\u2019s latest award. She was recently selected for the five-week Interdisciplinary Residency program at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia, an opportunity that will allow her to continue working on her book before she travels to New Hampshire.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Conti_1-1.2F-410x512.jpg\")
Kathleen Powers Conti documents the historic landscape at Fort Union National Monument, New Mexico. (Bryn Davis) <\/p>\n