Thomas Conlan (Photo courtesy of the Department of East Asian Studies) and Katja Guenther (Photo by Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications)

Thomas Conlan and Katja Guenther have been awarded fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, which funds humanistic research.

This year the ACLS gave 78 awards — the highest in the history of the program. Peer reviewers selected the fellows from a pool of nearly 1,150 applicants. Awards range from $40,000 to $70,000, depending on the scholar’s career stage, and support scholars for six to 12 months of full-time research and writing.

“Fellows were selected for their potential to make an original and significant contribution to knowledge, resulting from research on cultures, texts and artifacts from antiquity to the present, in contexts around the world,” said Matthew Goldfeder, director of the fellowship programs at ACLS in announcing the awards.

Conlan, a professor of  East Asian studies and history, will pursue his research project, “Kings in All but Name: The Rise of the Ōuchi, 1350-1465, and Japan’s Age of Yamaguchi, 1466-1551.”

Guenther, an associate professor of history, will pursue her research project, “The Mirror and the Mind: A History of Self-Recognition in the Sciences of Mind and Brain.”