Baylor History Professor Wins Prestigious NEH Fellowship

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded one of its highly coveted fellowships to a Baylor University history professor. Dr. Thomas Kidd has been named a recipient of the fellowship for 2006-2007, which will allow him to work full-time on his forthcoming book "Awakenings: The First Generation of American Evangelical Christianity," which is under contract with Yale University Press.
Kidd's research has been designated a We the People project, a special recognition by the NEH for model projects that advance the study, teaching and understanding of American history and culture.
"I was thrilled when I found out I had won the fellowship," Kidd said. "It is prestigious and very selective, and I am delighted the NEH chose to support my research."
NEH fellowships support individuals pursuing advanced research that contributes to scholarly knowledge or to the general public's understanding of the humanities. Recipients usually produce scholarly articles, monographs on specialized subjects, books on broad topics, archaeological site reports, translations, editions, or other scholarly tools. Full-term (9- to 12-month) NEH fellowships and Faculty Research Awards carry a stipend of $40,000 and allow recipients to take time off from teaching and other faculty duties in order to work full-time on their research projects.
Kidd's book project is intended as a comprehensive history of early American evangelical religion. "There is no such book that explores this subject as a whole. This will fill a big gap in the literature," he said.
In 2004, Kidd received a summer stipend from the NEH for research on "Awakenings."
An expert in American Colonial history, Kidd is the author of The Protestant Interest: New England after Puritanism (Yale University Press 2004). He earned his doctorate from the University of Notre Dame and began teaching at Baylor in 2002.
In addition to his NEH grants, Kidd received a Baylor Horizons/Lilly Research grant in 2003, Baylor University Research Committee grants in 2004 and 2005 and was selected for the Young Scholars in American Religion Program for 2004-05, which is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University-Purdue University.