Ashley E. Kim Duffey Awarded 2023 Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art

The Department of Art History is proud to announce that Ashley E. Kim Duffey has been awarded a 2023 Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art.

This program is made possible by a major grant from the Henry Luce Foundation and administered by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the leading representative of American scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.

Duffey has been recognized as one of seven exceptional doctoral candidates and their projects on American art and visual culture. The Luce/ACLS program supports early-career scholars as they pursue dissertations on the history of the visual arts of the United States, including all facets of Native American art, with a particular focus on elevating voices, perspectives, and subjects that have been historically underrepresented in the academy.

Duffey’s research explores the role of photography in the development and practice of U.S.-Korean adoption since its beginnings during the Korean War (1950–53) to the present. Using methods of visual and material culture studies; critical autoethnography; and critical race theory, the project argues that the popular press, bureaucratic, vernacular, and fine art photographies subtending and responding to transnational adoption have shaped not only the processes of adoption, but also American ideals of race, family, and citizenship by using varied media to examine the ways in which adoption has been produced as a means of humanitarian empire-building, a marketplace, a non-normative mode of kinship, and a site of identity negotiations.

“ACLS is proud to support this group of promising scholars of art through our continued partnership with the Luce Foundation,” said ACLS President Joy Connolly. “Their work, which connects the study of American art with disability studies, Indigenous studies, and Chicanx studies, among others, exemplifies how the study of art and visual culture can provide invaluable insights into American history and issues currently facing our society — as well as understanding of the ineffable impact of artworks on human beings.”

Each fellow will receive $42,000 to support one year of research and writing as well as fellowship-related travel between July 2023 and May 2025. The 2023 Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellows in American Art join a community of over 300 past awardees, including some of the country's most distinguished college and university faculty, museum professionals, and leaders in the cultural sector.