Douglas Flowe, an associate professor of history in WashU Arts & Sciences, has been awarded a 2026-27 Residential Fellowship from the National Humanities Center, one of the world’s leading institutes for advanced study in the humanities.
The author of the award-winning book “Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York” (2020), Flowe studies the intersections of race, class and manhood in relation to urban space and the carceral state. The fellowship will support his ongoing book project, “American Darkness: Black Men in New York’s Jim Crow Prisons,” which examines the lives of Black men navigating the criminal legal system in the the 20th century.
“It is an honor to join the community of fellows at the National Humanities Center,” Flowe said. “My current book project asks how early 20th-century prison reform movements shaped the experiences of Black men, and how they navigated and responded to those conditions. The fellowship offers a rare opportunity to think, write and engage these questions in a sustained way, and I’m grateful for the time and support to complete this work.”
Located in Durham, N.C., the National Humanities Center is a private, residential institute for advanced study in fields including art history, classics, history, languages and literature, musicology and philosophy. Since 1978, the center has awarded fellowships to scholars of demonstrated achievement and to promising younger scholars. Flowe is one of 29 fellows selected for the 2026-27 academic year from a pool of more than 450 applicants.
