Dexter Thomas awarded ACLS Emerging Voices Fellowship
Alumnus EAP fellow, 2020 Ph.D., Fulbright-Hayes fellow, and more.
Congratulations Dexter. We are proud to share that Dexter Thomas, 2020 Ph.D. in Asian Literature, Religion, & Culture, has been named an Emerging Voices Fellow by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). This postdoctoral fellowship program “identifies and assists a vanguard of scholars whose voices, perspectives and broad visions will strengthen institutions of higher education and humanistic disciplines in the years to come,” according to an ACLS press release.
During his Cornell graduate career, Dexter has been an EAP fellow with an R.J. Smith Fellowship in Japanese Studies, an EAP and Einaudi Center Research Travel Grant awardee, and a Fulbright-Hayes Research Fellow, all for his research in Japan on underground Japanese hip-hop cultures and the paradox of affinity and xenophobia toward Black cultures and histories. His dissertation work, by examining what “blackness” means in Japan, challenges assumptions about what “black” music means everywhere.
Dexter has also been an award-winning reporter for the LA Times and Vice Media (check out his great Vice News Tonight segment on labor in AI technology industry in China). This past year Dexter joined us on the EAP Mapping Area, Figuring Race and Ethnicity panel, presenting a complex story of Black liberation themes in a long-running Japanese manga.
He will use the award to join the faculty of the Humanities Council at Princeton as a postdoctoral research associate.