UR professor earns Appalachia fellowship
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University of Richmond Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Jillean McCommons has been awarded the Wilma Dykeman “Faces of Appalachia” Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship.
The award, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Appalachian Studies Association, honors one person annually with money to support studies of gender, race, and/or ethnicity in Appalachia. It honors the legacy of Tennessee writer Wilma Dykeman Stokely.
McCommons will use the funding to continue her work on a book project tentatively titled “Black Appalachia: The Black Appalachian Commission and the Construction of a Black Regional Consciousness.” The book explores the history of the Black Appalachian Commission, a grassroots organization created in 1969 to advocate for the economic needs of Black people in the mountains. The book also is expected to examine the contributions of Black Appalachian women to the BAC.
“I am very grateful to the ASA for this award,” says McCommons. “Wilma Dykeman wrote so many field-defining books on Appalachia. She did what many of us aspire to do. I am pleased to be a part of that legacy.”
McCommons has taught at UR since 2022 and previously served from 2020-22 as a pre-doctoral fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia.
