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By Melissa Fassel
Betsy
Klimasmith, assistant professor of English at UMass Boston, recently
received an individual research fellowship from the National Endowment
for the Humanities (NEH). NEH is an independent grant-making agency
whose aim is to support research, education, and public programs in
the humanities. This year, NEH gave out 171 grants across the United
States. Klimasmith was one of only nineteen Massachusetts academics
to receive an individual research fellowship.
The $40,000 year-long fellowship will allow Klimasmith to work on her book At Home in the City: Urban Domesticity and the Modern Subject in American Literature and Culture, 1850-1930. As people moved from spacious farms in the country to crowded tenements, social and physical outlooks changed and were reflected in literature. Klimasmith will explore how the novel functions as an extension of how people viewed the city as a home, the boundaries between public and private space diminished, and people adapted to living in close proximity with their multi-cultural neighbors.
This book is an extension of Klimasmith’s interest in the literature of urban settings. She currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in which she focuses on photographs, literature, and architecture from 1850 to 1930. Klimasmith especially enjoys teaching urban literature because it appeals to the university’s diverse population. “It’s a very fun topic to be teaching at UMass Boston because people can relate to it,” she says, mentioning that Boston still has much of the 1850 to 1930 era’s architecture intact.