Scott Kenworthy, Professor of Comparative Religion, has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University to complete a book entitled “Patriarch Tikhon Bellavin and the Orthodox Church in Revolutionary Russia.”

The book will be the first critical biography of Patriarch Tikhon, who became head of the Russian Orthodox Church shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.  Tikhon faced a militantly atheist regime that sought to destroy the authority of the largest church in Russia. Kenworthy's research has taken him to a dozen archives in five countries and has developed a wealth of new resources, including documents from the Russian secret police archives only recently made public.

Kenworthy credited three Humanities Center Scholarly Publishing Program for his recent success. “The Book Proposal Workshop," he noted, "helped me prepare a proposal that was accepted by Oxford University Press.” Professor Kenworthy has also taken part in the center's Writing for the Public Workshop, which helped him place articles in national publications such as The Conversation. Kenworthy won his recent grants shortly after the Humanities Center's Grant Development Workshop offered him one-on-one guidance from a former NEH program officer.

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