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• Elijah Gaddis invited to Harvard faculty fellowship

Auburn professor joins Harvard faculty fellowship to research commemorative acts

Auburn University Hollifield Associate Professor of Southern History Elijah Gaddis is one of eight faculty invited to join Harvard University’s Warren Center Fellowship on Commemorative Acts.

The 2026-2027 Warren Center Faculty Fellowship will bring together historians, performance historians and American Studies scholars to examine how the country remembers its history through commemorative acts such as rituals, events, monuments and more.

The fellows’ work will inform research about who, what and why things are remembered, and how that process shapes the present.

“This fellowship is like being invited to sit, think and write with some of the smartest people in the world. I'm really honored to be a part of it,” Gaddis said. “What sets Warren Center fellowships apart from others is that everyone there is working on a related topic, everyone is breaking new ground and really pushing these broad themes in their own specific ways.”

Gaddis’ project focuses on how generations of the Baker-Datcher family have shaped how their history is told. In the 1820s, the Baker-Datchers were enslaved on land in Cresswell, Alabama, which they bought in the 1870s and continue to farm today.

For five generations, the Baker-Datcher family has actively preserved, interpreted and commemorated their own past. Lucy Baker collected photographs of formerly enslaved people following Emancipation, her daughter and granddaughter kept midwife records, and her great, great grandson built a museum in the family home.

For Gaddis, research on the Baker-Datchers' family tradition of historical commemoration pulls together his scholarly and public-facing work, as well as contributing to the full story of America as it celebrates 250 years.

“Really, our nation and its history have always been made up of people and places stretched across its borders,” Gaddis said. “This is both an important story in and of itself, and an important way to show how other communities — particularly but not exclusively rural Black ones — have made and told their own histories.”

The Warren Center Faculty Fellowship includes library privileges, office space for the upcoming academic year and stipends averaging $50,000.

At Auburn, Gaddis is an associate professor of history, co-director of Auburn’s Public History Program, co-director of the Community Histories Workshop and affiliate faculty in African American and Africana Studies. His teaching, research and outreach work focuses on public history, Southern studies and community engagement.

Gaddis said this latest opportunity will support his work inside and outside the Auburn classroom.

“I'm just thrilled to be a Warren Center fellow and really humbled,” Gaddis said. “I'll get to spend the year writing and thinking and know I'll come back to Auburn with more insight and energy to share with students and colleagues.” 

For more information about the public history program, visit the College of Liberal Arts website.

Tags: History Faculty Research