Educational Studies doctoral candidate Kyle Smith is named a 2026 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow
The fellowship encourages a new generation of scholars from a wide range of disciplines and professional fields to undertake research relevant to the improvement of education.
Educational Studies doctoral candidate Kyle Smith has been named a 2026 National Academy of Education/Spencer
Foundation Dissertation Fellow. The fellowship supports candidates whose dissertation projects bring innovative and insightful approaches to the history, theory, analysis, or application of formal and informal education.
Through a comparative case study design, Smith’s dissertation interrogates how three English educators and their students each read and respond to one of the United States's most taught novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. He compares and contrasts how these classrooms, located within politically divergent regions of a divided Midwestern state, are responsive to their locales as they engage critical canon pedagogical practices in their learning.
With a particular emphasis on exploring the pedagogical possibilities of LGBTQ+ young adult literature to talk across differences, Smith’s research interrogates how race, religiosity, and nationhood are refracted through literary analysis and classroom conversation.
Smith is among 35 recipients selected for the prestigious 2026 NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, which annually identifies and supports the most exceptional researchers conducting dissertation studies relevant to education.