Georgia State Geographer Earns American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship

ATLANTA — Carrie R. Freshour, an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences at Georgia State University, has been named a 2024 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellow.

The ACLS Fellowship Program supports scholars who are poised to make original and significant contributions to knowledge in any field of the humanities or interpretive social sciences. This year, the program will award more than $3.6 million to 60 early career scholars.

The funding will support Freshour’s project titled “Making Life Work: Racial Capitalism, Black Families, and the Poultry Capital of the World.” Her book will center the experiences of Black women, their families and broader place-based communities in northeast Georgia who remain the basis for the global production of low-cost chicken.

“I am extremely grateful to receive support from the ACLS and to join this incredible cohort of junior scholars,” Freshour said. “With the support of my department and the College of Arts & Sciences, the ACLS fellowship allows me the time to complete this book, which has been a labor of love for nearly 10 years.”

In collaboration with Black artists and activists in northeast Georgia, Freshour is also creating a documentary short film featuring poultry worker families’ placemaking activities in spite of their experiences of persistent exploitation at the poultry plant.

Katherine Hankins, chair of the Department of Geosciences, said Freshour deserves this recognition.

“Dr. Freshour is examining some of the most pressing questions of our day about racial difference and the future of work. Dr. Freshour’s research is simultaneously innovative and careful, as she works closely in and with the communities she seeks to better understand,” Hankins said.

Freshour is eager to shine a light on the poultry processing workers, labor organizers, artists and others she has met.

“I hope this book will have meaning in the world for the people I’ve learned from and whose experiences and knowledge profoundly shape the arguments I develop in ‘Making Life Work,’” Freshour said.

The ACLS is a private, nonprofit federation of 80 national scholarly organizations, and is the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences. The organization has been providing fellowships for more than a century.

Learn more about Freshour’s “Making Life Work” project at cfreshour.com/makinglifework.

For more information about the ACLS, visit acls.org.