Robin Brooks, associate professor in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of English, was awarded a Trustees’ Fellowship by the National Humanities Center, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing research and discovery about the human experience and fostering connections among scholars and educators.
Brooks joins 30 fellows chosen from 453 applicants, representing humanistic scholarship, including specitalites in African American studies, anthropology, archaeology and food studies.
Brooks is a cultural and literary analyst who explores matters concerning Black communities in the United States and the African diaspora. For the duration of her fellowship, she will be writing her book-in-progress, “Death Proximity: Grief and Emotional Wellness Stories in Black Communities.” The book examines the subject of human death via interviews with people of African descent and detailed analyses of published 21st-century memoirs by Black authors in the United States.
Her 2022 book, “Class Interruptions: Inequality and Division in African Diasporic Women’s Fiction,” received an honorable mention for the Barbara T. Christian Literary Award from the Caribbean Studies Association. Brooks’ research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.