Olivia Wolf, PhD, Assistant Professor of Art History in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Loyola University Chicago, has been awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the organization announced in April.  

The ACLS Fellowship Program supports scholars who are poised to make original and significant contributions to knowledge in any field of the humanities or interpretive social sciences. In 2024, the program will award more than $3.6 million to 60 exceptional early-career scholars selected from a pool of 1,100 applicants through a rigorous, multi-stage peer review process.   

"Congratulations to Dr. Wolf on receiving this prestigious external award which will be supporting her original scholarship on the impact of Arab art and architecture in Latin America,” said Peter J. Schraeder, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “Faculty within the College are highly productive when it comes to obtaining external awards to support their scholarly work, and Dr. Wolf has been exemplary in that pursuit.” 

“I am deeply honored and humbled to be named an ACLS fellow, which will greatly assist me on the path to becoming part of a larger dialogue and cohort of international scholars, in addition to providing me with valuable time for research and writing,” said Wolf. 

Wolf was also awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship earlier this year. 

The ACLS fellowship was awarded to Wolf for her book project entitled, Migrant Constructions: Transnational Art and Architecture of the Arab Diaspora in Modern Argentina. The project examines the art and architecture of the Arab diaspora in modern Argentina as a powerful vehicle for transnational self-representation. The abstract of the project is below. 

“This fellowship will play an important role in the development of my book project, providing me with a research leave to draft a significant portion of my scholarly manuscript,” said Wolf. “The ACLS fellowship also offers the opportunity to partner with the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), an international organization of interdisciplinary research centers, to spend a portion of the fellowship in residence at select host institutions where I can share research in progress while receiving feedback from an expanded community of scholars.” 

Wolf's teaching and research focuses on art and architecture from a global perspective, with emphasis on Latin America, the Middle East and Islamic world, and diasporic South-South connections. 

“The applications we received this year were nothing short of inspiring – a powerful reminder of the capacity of humanistic research to illuminate and deepen understanding of the workings of our world” said John Paul Christy, ACLS Senior Director of US Programs, in reference to the 2024 ACLS Fellows. “As scholars face increasing challenges to pursuing and disseminating their research, we remain committed to advancing their vital work.” 

ABSTRACT: Migrant Constructions: Transnational Art and Architecture of the Arab Diaspora in Modern Argentina 

Argentina experienced one of the largest waves of mass migration in Latin America in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, ushering in diverse diaspora communities including Syrian and Lebanese immigrants from the Eastern Mediterranean. Syrian and Lebanese patrons in prominent Argentine cities from the capital to the provinces actively sponsored public monuments, social clubs, religious buildings and even hospitals over the course of the twentieth century. These sites, along with key artworks associated with them, are illustrated in this study as “migrant constructions”, which problematized and reconfigured nationalist debates and styles while contributing to the crafting of modernism. By tracing patterns of architectural patronage, transnational artistic networks, and stylistic modes of self-representation, the modern art and architecture sponsored by Arab-Argentine patrons and institutions is revealed as a critical tool for multiple forms of mobility in a proudly Euro-centric nation where Syrian and Lebanese migration was first contested.

Learn more about Wolf’s work and the 2024 ACLS Fellowship.  

About the College of Arts and Sciences

The College of Arts and Sciences is the oldest of Loyola University Chicago’s 15 schools, colleges, and institutes. More than 150 years since its founding, the College is home to 20 academic departments and 37 interdisciplinary programs and centers, more than 450 full-time faculty, and nearly 8,000 students. The 2,000+ classes that we offer each semester span an array of intellectual pursuits, ranging from the natural sciences and computational sciences to the humanities, the social sciences, and the fine and performing arts. Our students and faculty are engaged internationally at our campus in Rome, Italy, as well as at dozens of University-sponsored study abroad and research sites around the world. Home to the departments that anchor the University’s Core Curriculum, the College seeks to prepare all of Loyola’s students to think critically, to engage the world of the 21st century at ever deepening levels, and to become caring and compassionate individuals. Our faculty, staff, and students view service to others not just as one option among many, but as a constitutive dimension of their very being. In the truest sense of the Jesuit ideal, our graduates strive to be “individuals for others.”