Jennie Grillo, assistant professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School, has been awarded two fellowships—one for a book project on the biblical book of Daniel and the other to train in conducting advanced research in bibliographical studies within the humanities.

Grillo received a 2015-16 fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies for her book project, The Additions to Daniel in the History of Interpretation: Martyrdom, Idolatry, Liturgy. A federation of 72 national scholarly organizations, the council is the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences. Last year, the council granted 65 awards out of 1,121 fellowship applications nationwide to fund a leave from teaching to produce a major piece of scholarly work.

Grillo’s project focuses on the “apocryphal” version of the Old Testament book of Daniel as a prime example of how deutero-canonical scriptural texts have shaped the church and Western culture. Her work will trace the history of this book’s reception from earliest Christian art to 17th century theater and from rabbinic martyrdoms to Anglo-Saxon poetry.

In addition, Grillo has been selected for the 2015-17 Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography, a three-year program at the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. The fellowship aims to reinvigorate bibliographical studies within the humanities by introducing junior scholars to specialized skills, methods, and professional networks for conducting advanced research with material texts, through summer seminars in the history of the book, bibliographical field schools, and symposia at fellows’ home institutions.

A professor at the Divinity School since 2013, Grillo teaches courses in Old Testament and has particular interests in wisdom literature, prayer in the Bible, and the reception of biblical texts. Her first book, The Story of Israel in the Book of Qohelet: Ecclesiastes as Cultural Memory, was published in 2012.