EMU Today

YPSILANTI – Eastern Michigan University faculty member Ashley Falzetti, an assistant professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, has been named one of ten Nancy Weiss Malkiel Scholars for 2017 at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

The Malkiel Scholars Award supports emerging junior faculty leaders whose research focuses on contemporary American history, politics, culture, and society, and who are committed to the creation of an inclusive campus community for underrepresented students and scholars. Each Malkiel Scholar will receive a 12-month award of $17,500 while working toward tenure. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funds the award.

Falzetti’s expertise includes indigenous feminisms, Algonquian language revitalization and the history of feminist thought. Her scholarship and teaching explores the ways that power structures are sustained through social change, how resistance is co-opted, and what society can do despite such dynamics.

In broad terms, her work navigates how we move forward, given the long histories of violence and systemic oppression that shape the worlds we inhabit. As a member of the Miami Nation of Indians of Indiana, her research is anchored to the comparative histories of race and settler-colonialism in the lower Great Lakes.  

Falzetti is currently working on two book projects. "Algonquian Grammars of Revitalization" explores using grammar as an anti-colonial tool to create multi-lingual, multi-tribal language revitalization projects. “Settling the Past: Epistemic Violence and Colonial History" considers the ways in which history making is used to normalize white settler belonging in the Midwest. Falzetti earned her Ph.D. at Rutgers University, her masters at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her bachelors at Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tenn.

The 2017 Malkiel Scholars also include faculty members at the University of Arkansas, California State University—Fullerton, Duke University, Indiana University, the University of Maryland, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Washington, Washington University in St. Louis, and the College of William & Mary. They have appointments in such departments as history and media, higher education, public policy, and women’s and gender studies.

The award is structured to free the time of junior faculty who have passed their midpoint tenure review—including those from underrepresented groups and others committed to eradicating disparities in their fields—so that they can both engage in and build support for systems, networks, and affinity groups that make their fields and campuses more inclusive.

“These are exceptional scholars, every one of them doing impressive work in a field related to 20th-century history, civil rights, and gender issues,” said Stephanie J. Hull, Ph.D., the program’s director and Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

“Yet all have faced the well-documented pressures that the academy places disproportionately on women and people of color—to serve on additional committees, mentor more students, and take on other kinds of service that, while important, may hinder their own work. This award is designed to assist them in balancing their commitments while continuing to progress toward tenure.”

Established in honor of Nancy Weiss Malkiel, the Malkiel Scholars Awards Program was created on the occasion of her 40th year of service on the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Board of Trustees, including 10 years as its Chair.

Malkiel, who in 1969 became the first woman to join the faculty of the Princeton University Department of History, is a leading scholar of civil rights and race relations in early and mid-20th-century America; she also served for a record 24 years as Princeton’s Dean of the College, the senior officer responsible for undergraduate education at the university. Malkiel is a 1965 Woodrow Wilson Fellow.

For more information on the Malkiel Scholars Award program and the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation, visit the program website.

About Eastern Michigan University

Founded in 1849, Eastern is the second oldest university in Michigan. It currently serves 22,000 students pursuing undergraduate, graduate, specialist, doctoral and certificate degrees in the arts, sciences and professions. In all, more than 300 majors, minors and concentrations are delivered through the University's Colleges of Arts and Sciences; Business; Education; Health and Human Services; Technology, and its graduate school. EMU is regularly recognized by national publications for its excellence, diversity, and commitment to applied education. For more information about Eastern Michigan University, visit the University's website.