Ariela Marcus-Sells wins prestigious national fellowship

The assistant professor of religious studies will use the support from the National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to support her work on a book manuscript. 

Ariela Marcus-Sells, assistant professor of religious studies and Distinguished Emerging Scholar at Elon, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency created in 1965 to provide funding to support projects across the Humanities. Proposals are evaluated by panels of independent, external reviewers and funds go to a wide range of individuals, groups, and institutions through the United States. 

The NEH has announced the receipients for 253 new awards for 2019, representing 8 percent of the total applications received. Of the NEH Fellowships offered this year, only six went to recipients in North Carolina, one of which was to Marcus-Sells.  

The Fellowship will provide seven months of funding for June through December 2019 to support full-time work by Marcus-Sells on a book manuscript titled, “What is Magic? Debating Science, Sorcery, and Secrets in West African Sufi Texts.”