NDSU Assistant Professor of English Amy Gore has been awarded the Reese Fellowship by the American Antiquarian Society (AAS). This Fellowship is designed to facilitate research in American bibliography and projects related to the history of the book in America. This funds short-term visiting research fellowship spanning one month and allows the recipient to take up residence at AAS in Worcester, Massachusetts. Fellows are selected based on the applicant's scholarly qualifications, the project's scholarly significance or importance, and the appropriateness of the proposed study to the Society's collections.

Gore will be conducting archival research on her project, “Bodies of Believers: Typography and Christian Embodiment in Samson Occom’s A Sermon and William Apess’s A Son of the Forest,” which takes up typography to examine the ways in which race and religious affiliation became embodied materially within Indigenous book history. During the late 1700s and early 1800s as ideas about race were forming, books like Occom’s Sermon (1772) and Apess’s Son of the Forest (1829) showed how Native Christians grappled with racial and religious conflicts. Despite facing racism and doubts about their authenticity, these authors stood up for Native Christianity. Their books not only told stories but also reflected changing ideas about race and religion through their design and text. Gore will argue that by looking at how these books were made and what they say, we can understand how perceptions of race and Christianity were shifting in early America. 

Gore commented about the impact of the award. “I’m thrilled to be the recipient of the Reese Fellowship and looking forward to working with the extensive archive at the American Antiquarian Society,” she said.

A national research library and learned society founded in 1812 by Revolutionary War patriot and printer Isaiah Thomas, AAS is located in Worcester, Massachusetts. The AAS library today houses the largest and most accessible collection of books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals, children's literature, music, and graphic arts material printed before the twentieth century in what is now the United States, as well as manuscripts and a substantial collection of secondary texts, bibliographies, and digital resources and reference works. AAS was presented with the 2013 National Humanities Medal by President Obama in a ceremony at the White House.

“This prestigious recognition of Dr. Gore’s scholarship provides national validation on how NDSU humanities researchers look to history, literature and beyond to address important and fundamental questions on the nature of who we are as humans”  said Colleen Fitzgerald, NDSU vice president of research and creative activity.