History scholar Kantrowitz awarded Andrew Carnegie Fellowship

“History scholar Kantrowitz awarded Andrew Carnegie Fellowship Kantrowitz is one of 24 scholars the Carnegie Corporation of New York selected from among 381 nominations across the country. ​By Greg Bump ​ May 5, 2026 ​ Share this article Professor Stephen Kantrowitz Kantrowitz will use the award — intended to be used to explore the causes of political polarization and to identify possible solutions — to research and write his fourth book, “Who is an American? The Contested History of U.S. Citizenship.” Photo: Jeff Miller / UW–Madison Stephen Kantrowitz , a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has been awarded a prestigious Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. He is one of 24 scholars the Carnegie Corporation of New York selected from among 381 nominations across the country. Kantrowitz will use the $200,000 award — intended to be used to explore the causes of political polarization and to identify possible solutions — to research and write his fourth book, “Who is an American? The Contested History of U.S. Citizenship,”and create a companion website designed to help people reason with one another across differences of experience and perspective. The work will interpret the history of incorporation, exclusion, rights and belonging and will explain why the concept of citizenship is understood in such varied ways. “Who is an American?” will offer a guide to the histories that lie behind those understandings. Carnegie says it “prioritized originality and promise, the potential for impact on the field and the applicant’s plans for communicating the research findings to a broad audience.” The funding allows scholars to take a sabbatical of up to two years and devote themselves to their work. “Stephen is a leading and renowned historian of race and citizenship, slavery and emancipation, and Native-settler relations in American history and I am tremendously pleased that he has been named a Carnegie Fellow,” says UW–Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin. “His impressive scholarly work attests to the breadth of his research expertise and his parallel commitment to making these subjects accessible to many people.” Kantrowitz, the UW–Madison Linda and Stanley Sher Professor of History and faculty affiliate in African American Studies, has been a member of the faculty for 31 years. His wide-ranging research focuses on questions of citizenship and belonging, primarily in the 19th-century United States, and his most recent work explores the transformations of American citizenship in the Civil War era through the experiences of the Ho-Chunk people. “I am extremely honored to be chosen by the selection committee for this fellowship,” Kantrowitz says. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and talking about these questions, and I can’t wait to start putting those ideas down on paper. This fellowship is a gift of time to do just that.” Kantrowitz’s first book, “ Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy ,” analyzes the ideological and political strategies that overthrew Reconstruction and consolidated Jim Crow. His second book, “More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic,” explores the Civil War era from the standpoint of free Black Northerners and their struggles for equality. His most recent book, “ Citizens of a Stolen Land: A Ho-Chunk History of the 19th-Century United States ,” reconsiders the history of citizenship from the standpoint of Native resistance to American claims. Kantrowitz received his master’s degree and doctorate from Princeton University and his bachelor’s degree from Yale University. He has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2002-03), a Fulbright Distinguished Professor at the University of Southern Demark (2016-17) and an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer (2008-present). In 2025, Kantrowitz received an honorary doctorate from the University of Southern Denmark. Carnegie awards the fellowships to provide distinguished scholars in the social sciences and humanities the support they need to complete important research in their fields. This year marked “the third cohort focused on developing a body of rigorous, evidence-based research about what can be done to strengthen the forces of cohesion in the United States, an overarching priority for the foundation’s grantmaking,” Carnegie says. “Andrew Carnegie saw it as his mission to encourage, in the broadest and most liberal manner, investigations, research and discovery, and the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind,” says Dame Louise Richardson, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York and chair of the Andrew Carnegie Fellows jury. “Through support of our fellows, we are continuing that mission and seeking to harness the insights of scholars of all ages, stages and disciplines to help us understand the nature of political polarization in the United States today and to devise a means of mitigating its impact on American society.”

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