2024 Catherine and Charles Freeburg Fellow

The purpose of the Catherine and Charles Freeburg Fellows Program is to encourage, facilitate, and highlight excellent research in the humanities and cognate disciplines at the University of Memphis. This program allows recipients to write and research in a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment alongside other research-active faculty members and advanced doctoral students. By supporting and showcasing the research being conducted by our faculty and students, these fellowships strengthen the ties between the university and local community and demonstrate the vital role played by the humanities in our culture. The program is named in honor of Catherine and Charles Freeburg, whose bequest funds it. The Freeburgs were involved with the University for many years. Catherine Freeburg received an MA in English in 1972 and taught in the department for a number of years. Charles and Catherine were both active members of the Memphis community and supported many organizations. The couple met when Catherine began working as a realtor for Freeburg and Hammond, Charles' real estate company. They lived on Tuckahoe, very near the UofM, their entire married lives.

Sarah Potter, Department of History

Dr. Sarah Potter has been a faculty member in the History Department at the University of Memphis since 2008, when she received her PhD from the University of Chicago. She is the current Interim and Associate Chair of the History Department. She has also served as the Director of the Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities (2016-2019).

Potter's research focuses on the history of marriage, family, and reproduction in the United States. Her first book, Everybody Else: Adoption and the Politics of Domestic Diversity in Postwar America (University of Georgia Press, 2014), uses adoption as a lens into how diverse men and women thought about marriage and parenthood during the post-World War II baby boom. She is currently editing a collected volume entitled New Directions in United States Family History (under contract with Routledge). She is also conducting an oral history project and is at work on a book project on reproductive justice in Memphis. Potter has published on and continues to write about the politics of adultery in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Her Freeburg Professorship will help support these projects.