Professors Erin Benay and Maggie Popkin were awarded full-year fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities, as announced in December 2016.  These highly competitive awards will enable each of them to take a year off from teaching and service to work full time on their new book projects.  Erin Benay’s third book is tentatively titled Italy by Way of India: Routes of Devotional Knowledge in the Early Modern Period, and will consider the interaction of cultures through religion and trade in the early modern period.  Maggie Popkin’s second book will investigate the fascinating but often overlooked phenomenon of souvenirs, memorabilia, and miniatures in the Roman Empire.