The American Council of Learned Societies has announced it has awarded Dr. Julia Young, Associate Professor of History, a Luce/ACLS Program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs fellowship. The program aims to deepen public understanding of religion by advancing innovative scholarship on religion in international contexts and by equipping individual scholars and institutions of higher education with the capacities to connect their work to journalism and the media and to engage audiences beyond the academy. The program is made possible by a grant from The Henry Luce Foundation.
The fellowship will support research for Professor Young’s second book project, “The Revolution is Afraid: Mexican Catholic Nationalism and the Unión Nacional Sinarquista.” It provides a stipend, travel and research funding, and media training for its recipients.
“The Revolution Is Afraid” analyzes the transnational development of the Unión Nacional Sinarquista, a Mexican Catholic political organization that has attracted adherents both in Mexico and within Mexican immigrant communities since its founding in 1937. In doing so, it explores the critical role of religion in Mexican far-right politics, as well as the reasons that integralist Catholic nationalism appealed to so many Mexicans on both sides of the border. This project engages scholars of the history of Mexico and Mexican migration, as well as wider audiences interested in transnational Catholic nationalist, integralist, and authoritarian political movements.
The fellowship will allow Professor Young to complete archival research for the book, and to complete a full manuscript draft. She will also write articles for the media on issues related to the themes she explores in the book. It is one of two ACLS humanities fellowships to be awarded this year to Catholic University faculty: more on the awards to Dr. Young and to Dr. Chelsea Stieber, Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies, here.
“I’m extremely grateful to have won this award,” says Dr. Young. “This was a fascinating period in Mexican history, and I hope my work will contribute to the growing and exciting scholarship on the history of the Catholic right in the Americas.”