Featured Fellow, Spring 2012: Laurie Maffly-Kipp

By Ariana van den Akker (School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Class of 2012)

In the spring of 2012, Laurie Maffly-Kipp will join the Institute for the Arts and Humanities as the Associate Director of the Faculty Fellows program, and it’s really not difficult to understand why she was selected for this position. A self-described “IAH groupie,” she’s personable, she’s passionate, and her eyes light up when you ask her about her experiences as a Fellow. 

IAH Beginnings

When Maffly-Kipp, now chair of the Department of Religious Studies, first accepted her teaching position here at UNC, she was new to the area and seeking a sense of belonging to the community. It was her colleague, IAH founder Ruel Tyson, who encouraged her to apply for the Faculty Fellows program, which was in its first years.  The IAH accepted her as a Fellow that summer of 1990.

Since then, Maffly-Kipp has held two more fellowships, in spring 1998 and spring 2008, and was a Fellow in the Academic Leadership program in spring 2002. During her three fellowships, she researched the relationship between wealth and religion, wrote a book about African American religious history, and started a book about Mormonism. 

She cites the Fellows meetings as a great way to bounce ideas off a diverse group of people with a wide range of specialties. She says about her first fellowship, “It was great having people from anthropology and sociology who had different ideas about money and the economy because they gave me all kinds of great ideas for things to go to or things to read.” 

It was the different perspectives of faculty outside her department that she found immeasurably valuable to her research.

The Life of a Scholar

The value of the program, and a point that Maffly-Kipp stresses, is that it brings people together from different departments who may not otherwise meet. Fellows gather once a week to share a meal and to discuss their projects, current events at UNC, and what’s going on in the state, nation and world. 

But it’s more than just talking academically. Maffly-Kipp calls it “the life of a scholar.” It’s taking the time to have a cup of coffee or a meal with someone and to enjoy the conversations that make life more pleasurable and interesting. Every semester it’s a different composition of Fellows who create the dynamics of the group. Besides the basic structure of the program, no two semesters are alike. 

At one of the meetings during Maffly-Kipp’s second fellowship in 1998, it was her turn to present her research on African American religion. Instead of introducing her project, she asked each of the Fellows around the table to draw a conceptual map of what they thought about the relationship between religion and race. She asked each person to talk about his or her map and then she related it to her work. 

“The people who did the drawings didn’t necessarily need to know a lot about my work,” she said. “They were smart and just had ideas of their own that they could bring to the table, and it was a wonderful, wonderful exercise.”

New Leadership and Developing Communities

It is clear that Maffly-Kipp will bring both experience and energy to her new role as associate director. She wants to be the kind of leader who gently guides the flow of conversations, letting them meander and lead to unexpected results.

“There are such smart people here and they have such great things to contribute to each other’s work,” she explained.   “It's a fantastic place for conversation.”     

She believes that being a part of the Faculty Fellows program enriches one’s connection to the University. Although she always felt a commitment to her studies and to her department, her research was a solitary pursuit—as is traditionally the case with humanities scholarship—and she often felt isolated from her colleagues.

“If my own experience is any indication, the Fellows program does make people feel more invested in this place.  It helps to develop a greater sense of community at UNC and a sense of being part of a broader community of scholars, not just being in a department,” she said.

Maffly-Kipp will encourage new Fellows to think carefully and broadly about the work of the other Fellows in their cohort, but mostly she will encourage them to enjoy their semester as a Fellow, “to stop and pause and be out of the class and take the opportunity to think about their own work.” 

For Maffly-Kipp, the real value of an IAH fellowship is that it gives faculty the opportunity to focus on themselves as individuals, scholars and colleagues.

And as for her new role?  “I feel like this is a great opportunity to give back and to reciprocate all that I've been given from the Institute. On the other hand, I selfishly love to do it because there are no better conversations than the ones that go on in Hyde Hall among the Fellows.  It will be a pleasure to participate each semester; it's fun, and it’s also a way to reciprocate some of what I feel I’ve gained from being a part of the IAH.”