FARMINGTON — The University of Maine at Farmington is proud to announce that Michael Schoeppner, UMF associate professor of history, has been awarded a 2025 Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. The ACLS is a national fellowship program known for supporting outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.
Schoeppner has been recognized as one of 62 outstanding scholars from a pool of over 2,300 applicants through a multi-stage peer review process.
“We congratulate Professor Schoeppner on his selection for this outstanding fellowship and look forward to the cutting-edge scholarship he will be bringing to the classroom,” said Joseph McDonnell, UMF president.
Schoeppner, an expert in American legal history and the history of race, came to UMF in 2013. He teaches classes on colonial America, the American Revolution, the Civil War and American legal history. He was also selected as the upcoming UMF Trustee Professor, a recognition established in 1998 by the University of Maine System to promote excellence in academic programs.
An Andrew W. Mellon Fellow with the Massachusetts Historical Society, Schoeppner also serves UMF as a pre-law advisor, helping guide students interested in a law career with course selections, career options and the law school application process.
“I am honored to be a recipient of an ACLS Fellowship. So many important projects only came to fruition thanks to the funding provided by the ACLS,” said Schoeppner.
Schoeppner’s fellowship will allow him to write his second book, “Living Illegally,” which tells the stories of free Black people whose illicit migrations belie the oft-told story of America’s open borders in the era before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
