Jillean McCommons, a University of Richmond assistant professor of history and Africana studies, has been awarded the Wilma Dykeman “Faces of Appalachia” Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship by the Appalachian Studies Association.

The fellowship, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Appalachian Studies Association, supports scholarship on gender, race and ethnicity in Appalachia. It honors Tennessee writer Wilma Dykeman Stokely.

McCommons will use the award to further her book project, “Black Appalachia: The Black Appalachian Commission and the Construction of a Black Regional Consciousness.” The work examines the history of the Black Appalachian Com- mission, a grassroots organization founded in 1969 to advocate for Black economic needs in the region.

“I am very grateful to the ASA for this award,” McCommons said. “Wilma Dykeman wrote so many field-defining books on Appalachia. She did what many of us aspire to do. I am pleased to be a part of that legacy.”

The fellowship will fund archival research and oral history collection from former commission members throughout Appalachia, with a focus on Black Appalachian women’s contributions.

McCommons joined the University of Richmond faculty in 2022 after completing a predoctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia’s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies.