The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has announced its 2026 class of fellows, and two philosophers are among them.

They are:

Corey Barnes (Northwestern University) for his project, “Race’s Shadowy Subjects: Conceptions of Race in Early Black Intellectual Thought”:

This project reconstructs early Black intellectuals’ contributions to the ontology and normativity of race, centering Martin R. Delany, Alexander Crummell, Anténor Firmin, Anna Julia Cooper, Pauline Hopkins, W.E.B. Du Bois, Druscilla Houston, and Alain Locke. It shows how they responded to White and Black race theorists, advancing diverse views on what race is, what we ought to do with the concept, and its political role. By treating their work as rigorous philosophy, the project corrects Eurocentric intellectual histories that marginalize Black thought. Further, it advances the view that race is historically contingent and shaped by political forces.

and

Rocío Zambrana (University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras) for her project, “Metamorphosis of Value: Epistemic Protocols of Capital in the Longue Durée”:

“Metamorphosis of Value” is the first philosophical contribution to emerging histories of the rise of capitalism in the early modern Iberian world. It engages debates about the relation between capitalism and slavery that center British and Dutch political economy in accounts of the birth of capitalism. Attention to Spanish and Portuguese articulation of the trade with captives beginning in the fifteenth century and spanning to the seventeenth century is crucial to understanding capitalism. Speculation, rather than labor, is its mark. The book studies speculative devices such as the “asiento de Negros,” the “pieza de Indias,” and maritime insurance theorized as epistemic protocols that posit value through the suspension of production. It also explores mare clausum and mare liberum doctrines as a site of primitive accumulation. It thereby transforms the idea that the “secret of capitalism is not the factory but the plantation,” as Sylvia Wynter writes, showing that the secret is not the organization of labor in the plantation or later in the factory but the speculative world of trade and finance.

ACLS Fellowships provide up to $60,000 to support scholars in the humanities and social sciences for six to twelve months of full-time research and writing. This year, 63 scholars were selected as fellows. You can view the full list of them here.