Brian Horrigan, adjunct professor of history in Hamline University's College of Liberal Arts, has been awarded a major fellowship by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The $50,000 grant will enable Horrigan to complete research for his book about Minnesota native and iconic aviator, Charles Lindbergh.

“I was pretty stunned when I heard the news,” Horrigan said. “I was very pleased because I know there’s a good book there. Lindbergh was a very complex person.”

Along with teaching at Hamline, Horrigan serves as an exhibit curator at the Minnesota Historical Society. There, he received a Flandrau Fellowship in 2001 to pursue his initial research on Lindbergh and later a Minnesota Humanities Commission grant to continue that work. Horrigan intends to use Lindbergh’s life story as a way to explore American culture in the 20th Century.

“At one point, he was the most famous and photographed person in history,” Horrigan said. “I’m not trying to do another biography; I’m really doing a book about American culture with Lindbergh as the fulcrum.”

The National Endowment for the Humanities grant will allow Horrigan to delve back into his research over the next year and continue developing his book entitled Lindbergh and 20th-Century American Culture. Horrigan will return to Hamline in the fall to continue teaching.