The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has named CSUSB history assistant professor Isabel Huacuja Alonso as one of its 2019 ACLS Fellows.

Huacuja Alonso, who joined CSUSB in 2016, was nominated and selected based on her work: “Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting and the Politics of Sound in Modern South Asia.”

“Radio for the Millions” is a transnational history of radio broadcasting in Hindi and Urdu from 1920 to 1980. It argues that the medium of radio enabled listeners and broadcasters in South Asia to contest the cultural, linguistic, and political agendas of the British colonial administration and subsequent independent Indian and Pakistani governments.

“It is an honor for me to represent CSUSB in accepting this fellowship,” Huacuja Alonso said.

Alonso was one of 81 awardees, who were selected by their peers from over 1,100 applicants in a review process with multiple stages. The awards won range from $40,000 to $70,000, depending on the scholar’s career stage, and support six to 12 months of full-time research and writing.

“The 2019 ACLS Fellows exemplify ACLS’s inclusive vision of excellence in the humanities and humanistic social sciences,” said Matthew Goldfeder, director of fellowship programs at ACLS. “The awardees, who hail from more than 60 colleges and universities, were selected for their potential to make an original and significant contribution to knowledge. They are working at diverse types of institutions, on research projects that span antiquity to the present, in contexts around the world; the array of disciplines and methodologies represented demonstrates the vitality and the incredible breadth of humanistic scholarship today.”

Formed a century ago, ACLS is a nonprofit federation of 75 scholarly organizations.  As the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences, ACLS holds a core belief that knowledge is a public good. As such, ACLS strives to promote the circulation of humanistic knowledge throughout society. In addition to stewarding and representing its member organizations, ACLS employs its $140 million endowment and $35 million annual operating budget to support scholarship in the humanities and social sciences and to advocate for the centrality of the humanities in the modern world.

The ACLS Fellowship program, the longest running of its current fellowship and grant programs, is funded primarily by its endowment. Institutions and individuals have contributed to the program, include The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Arcadia Charitable Trust, the Council’s Research University Consortium and college and university Associates, past fellows, and individual friends of ACLS.

For more information on the American Council of Learned Societies, visit the ACLS website or contact Matthew Goldfeder, fellowships@acls.org.