Richard Pierce, John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C., Associate Professor of History and chair of the Department of Africana Studies, has been named the recipient of the Sheedy Award for Excellence in Teaching in the College of Arts and Letters.
Established by an anonymous donor, the award has been given annually since 1970 in memory of Rev. Charles E. Sheedy, C.S.C., former dean of the college.
Pierce specializes in social and political protest in urban environments. He is the author of Polite Protest: The Political Economy of Race in Indianapolis, 1920-1970, which chronicles the protest methods used by blacks in Indianapolis which set the city apart from Chicago, Milwaukee, and Detroit.
A member of the Notre Dame faculty since 1996, Pierce also is a fellow of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the recipient of a Kaneb teaching award. He was a primary architect in the development of the Erskine A. Peters Dissertation Fellowship Program.
Read Pierce's acceptance speech here.