SMU historian Ariel Ron is one of 20 recipients of a $800,000 “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation. Ron received the funding for his research exploring how Northern agriculture affected economic growth and the expansion of federal power in the 19th-century U.S.
MacArthur Fellows are chosen based on exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments, and the potential for the Fellowship to enable or facilitate subsequent creative work.
“It was a big surprise to hear about the award, and of course it’s a great honor,” said Ron, the Glenn M. Linden Associate Professor of the U.S. Civil War Era at SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences and director of the Clements Center for Southwest Studies. “This will certainly help me set aside time to finish the book I’m currently researching and writing. I hope people will see the prize as reflecting not only my own scholarship but the work of my wonderful colleagues.”
SMU said in a press release that Ron’s research, shared in his book Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic, offered new insight into American division leading up to the Civil War, and the emergence of governmental institutions to support education, research, and technological advances.
“A MacArthur Fellowship is an extraordinary recognition of Ariel’s creativity and the significance of his scholarship,” SMU President Jay Hartzell said. “His work is expanding our understanding of American history in fascinating and important ways, and this honor reflects the caliber of faculty and research that define SMU’s growing impact as a leading research university. We are incredibly proud to have Ariel as part of our community.”
The Fellows include writers, scientists, scholars, and entrepreneurs who each receive an $800,000 award paid over five years that’s meant to support their pursuit of their work.
“Ariel’s scholarship is a wonderful example of what ambitious research can do: take something we think we understand and help us see it in an entirely new way,” SMU Executive Vice President and Provost Rachel Mersey said. “By examining agriculture as a force that shaped American politics, economic development and government institutions, he is bringing new perspective to some of the most consequential periods in our nation’s history. This recognition is richly deserved.”
Ron joined SMU’s Department of History in 2016 and has been the director of the Clements Center for Southwest Studies since 2024.
He’s held fellowships at the Cornell Society for the Humanities, the Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions, the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress and the Library Company of Philadelphia. His work has been published in journals including the History of Political Economy, Agricultural History, the American Historical Review, and the Journal of American History.
Author
