Graduate student Kale Serrato Doyen has been awarded a 2026 Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art. The program is made possible by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation and administered by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).
Doyen is one of seven emerging scholars awarded for their promising doctoral research on the history of the visual arts in the United States. These awards are designed to promote emerging leaders and fund scholarship that advances and expands the field of art history. Each fellow receives $43,500 to support one year of research and writing as well as fellowship-related travel between July 2026 and May 2027.
Doyen’s fellowship will support her research on the photographic archive of Charles “Teenie” Harris--a twentieth-century photographer and photojournalist for the Black newspaper, "The Pittsburgh Courier." By digitally mapping of Harris’s historic photographs in conversation with the local communities he depicted, Doyen’s dissertation will visualize patterns of structural racism and resistance in Pittsburgh’s urban development.
Since 1992, the Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowships in American Art have supported more than 300 scholars in conducting research and writing dissertations on the history of the visual arts of the United States, including all facets of Native American art. These historians of American art are now some of the nation’s most distinguished college and university faculty, museum curators, and leaders in the cultural sector.
Read Kale's graduate student profile here: https://haa.pitt.edu/people/kale-serrato-doyen
Read the ACLS press release here: https://www.acls.org/news/acls-announces-2026-luce-acls-dissertation-fellows-in-american-art/
Read the announcement in the PittWire here: https://www.pittwire.pitt.edu/accolades-honors/2026/04/09/kale-serrato-doyen-luce-acls-fellowship