![\"Pflugrad-Jackisch\"](\"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Pflugrad-Jackisch.jpg\")
<\/a>Pflugrad-Jackisch<\/p><\/div>The free, public event will feature the research she\u2019s conducted on Mary Willing Byrd, the owner of Westover Plantation in Virginia during the American Revolution era, for her manuscript, \u201cThe World of Westover: Mary Willing Byrd and Revolutionary Virginia,\u201d as part of the Humanities Institute Faculty Fellowship she was awarded this year by the UT Humanities Institute. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am so grateful for this fellowship, because of the time and the funding it has offered me for my scholarly endeavors,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s given me a great opportunity to continue researching.\u201d <\/p>\n
Pflugrad-Jackisch will elaborate on Byrd\u2019s story as a widowed woman running a plantation \u2014 a unique concept for the time period \u2014 when Gen. Benedict Arnold and Lord Charles Cornwallis overtook Westover. However, this talk will focus on Byrd\u2019s interaction with her slaves, 49 of which escaped during the British invasion of her plantation during the Revolutionary War. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m focusing on her role as a slave holder and her attempts to recover her lost slaves,\u201d Pflugrad-Jackisch said. \u201cShe writes letters to anyone who will hear her to try to receive compensation for the loss of those slaves or get them returned if she can. I think this part of her life illustrates well both the limitations and the privileges of white women\u2019s authority in an 18-century slave society like Virginia.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Humanities Institute in the College of Languages, Literature and Social Sciences serves as an advocate and support for the study of human culture at UT. The institute\u2019s fellowship program was created to assist individual tenured faculty in humanities fields to make substantive progress on a project. Recipients receive a release from teaching one course and a $3,000 research grant to be used during their fellowship. <\/p>\n
With the remainder of her time and funds, Pflugrad-Jackisch said she plans to visit the Library of Virginia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where she will study firsthand documents relating to Byrd. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Humanities Institute Faculty Fellowship was created to help tenured faculty researchers in the humanities re-energize research that might have stalled because of the greater service burden that tenured faculty shoulder,\u201d said Dr. Christina Fitzgerald, director of the institute and English professor. <\/p>\n
The program is especially designed to help associate professors produce work that will qualify them for promotion to full professor, and to help both associate and full professors re-engage in professional activity. Fellows are then obliged to present their research. <\/p>\n
\u201cDr. Pflugrad-Jackisch held her fellowship in the fall semester, so, in return, she is giving a public talk this semester on the research she completed,\u201d Fitzgerald said. \u201cHer work on Mary Willing Byrd and her world in Revolutionary America exemplifies the quality, relevance and importance of humanities research at UT, and I’m pleased she’s our first Fellow.\u201d<\/p>\n