Cowie named Guggenheim Fellow

The Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the appointment of 188 Guggenheim Fellowships to a distinguished and diverse group of culture creators working across 52 disciplines. Jefferson Cowie, the James G. Stahlman Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, was named to this 99th class of Guggenheim Fellows. 

Chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of almost 3,000 applicants, the Class of 2024 Guggenheim Fellows was selected for their career achievement and exceptional promise.  

Cowie’s work in social and political history focuses on how class, race and labor shape American politics and culture. His most recent book, Freedom’s Dominion (Basic Books, 2022), won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2023. 

Created and initially funded in 1925 by U.S. Sen. Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has sought to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.” 

Since its establishment, the foundation has granted more than $400 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award and other internationally recognized honors. The broad range of fields of study is a unique characteristic of the fellowship program. 

Cowie is an author and historian who has been at Vanderbilt since 2015. He has been the recipient of several prestigious fellowships and has been published in The New York Times, Politico, The New Republic and other notable outlets. He earned his bachelor’s degree at UC-Berkeley and his Ph.D. at UNC-Chapel Hill.