BEER HISTORY STUDIES FELLOWSHIP
Beer history studies are a nascent area of research and, like other industries or academic fields, people of color are severely underrepresented. Wanting to change that, the Beer Culture Center and the Newberry Library announced the creation of a groundbreaking fellowship in late 2024. The first of its kind, the Beer History Studies Fellowship is an opportunity open to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) MA students, PhD candidates, or post doctoral scholars engaged in a project focused on beer history and culture research. By financially and academically supporting this student, the ultimate goal is to help diversify the academic field of beer history studies and the adjacent beer industry in a new and dynamic way.
After months of accepting and reviewing applications, we selected our first ever scholar in the Spring of 2025. We are thrilled to share that, Onteya Zachary, a PhD candidate at the University of Minnesota is our inaugural Beer History Studies Fellow. Onteya spent August of 2025 researching, writing, and working on her project entitled Dark Debts: The Spatial Politics of Race and Beer in Chicago’s Landscape from the Great Migration to the Black Power Era. Stay tuned for future programming featuring Onteya and her research.
Dark Debts: The Spatial Politics of Race and Beer in Chicago’s Landscape from the Great Migration to the Black Power Era
Drawing on critical geography, Black studies, and geographies of alcohol, this project investigates how racialization, colonial legacies, and debt shape the roles of Black communities within the beer industry, from the Great Migration to the Black Power era. Central to the analysis is the concept of “unpayable debt” (Da Silva 2022), which frames racialized debt as a relational force extending beyond economics to shape political and social realities. Using archival materials, the project examines how colonial structures inform racial dynamics in the beer industry, while also considering the archive as a site of colonial power and erasure. By recovering marginalized histories, this project challenges colonial legacies embedded in historical narratives. Ultimately, this research contributes to critical scholarship on urban geography, race, and debt, offering new insights into the spatialization of Blackness in Chicago’s brewing history.
This pioneering initiative is a partnership between the Beer Culture Center, the world’s first cultural organization dedicated to beer studies and the Newberry Library, a major center of research since 1887.
The Newberry’s rich collections and long history of welcoming fellows for research make this an ideal partnership. Scholars of beer history can find specific items, such as The Western Brewer, but many other collections can offer clues about how beer has shaped human relations for centuries. Researchers will find papers on Chicago and the Midwest, genealogy, labor, travel and exploration, performing arts, religion, and one of the largest public collections of postcards in the United States. Visit the Newberry Library website to learn more about their core collection and about all of their short-term fellowships.
The Beer Culture Center is driven by a deep-rooted belief that beer is more than just a beverage. It is a dynamic cultural force with the ability to bring people together and the power to make change. As the world’s first non-profit dedicated to sharing stories of how beer has shaped humanity, past and present, the center has become the national entity and cultural authority focused on this effort.