Erika Valdivieso awarded 2026 ACLS Fellowship
Valdivieso, Assistant Professor of Classics, was selected as one of 63 scholars "poised to make original and significant contributions to their field."
Erika Valdivieso, Assistant Professor of Classics, has been awarded a 2026 ACLS Fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies.
Valdivieso is one of 63 scholars receiving a 2026 ACLS Fellowship in recognition of their excellence in humanities and social science research. The fellowships provide up to $60,000 in financial support for scholars who are “poised to make original and significant contributions to their field.”
Valdivieso specializes in Latin poetry and the legacies of classical humanism in the Americas. As part of her ACLS Fellowship, she will utilize a multilingual poetic archive from the British, Portuguese, and Spanish Atlantic to understand how an ancient poem, the Georgics, lent itself to meditations on, and challenges to, chattel slavery in the Americas.
“We are proud to award ACLS Fellowships to 63 outstanding scholars across a range of fields,” said ACLS President Joy Connolly. “Deep understanding of humanity and human endeavor doesn’t come out of thin air: it rests on the work of generations of scholars who need time to do research and develop their arguments. We salute the new fellows’ contributions to knowledge and to society, and we celebrate their expertise and dedication.”
Valdivieso will investigate how poets wrote about the slave-driven economies of the Americas from the 17th to 19th century: “From Brazilian sugar mills to Mexican mines, from Barbadian plantations to Carolina rice fields, planter poets took up their pens to write about cash crops, profit margins, and chattel slavery in the manner of Virgil’s Georgics.”
"The Atlantic georgics project is an idea I had a few years ago, but which I didn’t have time to develop," Valdivieso said of her plans for the fellowship. "The ACLS fellowship is an opportunity to set that project in motion and I am grateful for their support.”