Madeline Dierauf, a Davidson College senior and professional fiddler, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship Saturday, making her one of 32 Americans selected this year for one of the most prestigious – and most competitive – graduate scholarships in the world.
Dierauf is Davidson’s 24th Rhodes Scholar, succeeding in a competition open to students from around the globe with only 103 scholarships awarded overall each year. The roster of past winners is packed with world leaders, scientists, artists and scholars. Those who are selected pursue graduate degrees at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.
Dierauf, pronounced DEER-off, received the news in Atlanta, where she completed final interviews with the Rhodes committee and described her selection as “very surreal.”
“Potentially this will change the trajectory of my whole career, possibly more toward academia,” she said Saturday. “It will help me in anything I end up doing.”
As a Rhodes Scholar, she plans to pursue master’s degrees in American Studies and Philosophical Theology at Oxford. A daughter of Appalachia, she ultimately plans to wield her experience working and living in the politically diverse region to explore the burning question that drives her: How can we bridge divides and cultivate connections with each other despite our differences?
“Madeline is a truly remarkable individual,” Davidson College President Doug Hicks '90 said, “A gifted scholar and accomplished musician, she will be be an influential leader in cultural preservation and artistic expression. Davidson College is extraordinarily proud of her.”
Dierauf, from Brevard, North Carolina, is a songwriter and musician who keeps up touring and recording while maintaining a 4.0 GPA. She has played Merlefest, one of the largest music festivals in the U.S., and hiked the entire 2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail. Her scholarly work combines literary and archival research with folk traditions. She has conducted research at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, in Baltimore, and studied folk music traditions across Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Dierauf was also Davidson’s second finalist in two years for the prestigious Marshall Scholarship, which supports graduate study at any institution in the United Kingdom.
In his letter endorsing Dierauf for the Rhodes Scholarship, Hicks wrote about how she interviewed with Davidson’s nominating committee by Zoom on her laptop from Pendleton, South Carolina, last August after finishing a performance with her bluegrass trio, The Wilder Flower.
All of Madeline’s solo and group-performed music can be accessed from Spotify’s “Madeline Dierauf Complete Collection” playlist.
“Her enthusiasm was infectious,” Hicks wrote, “and her reasons for studying at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar precise and clear.”
Mountains, Forest and Melodies
Madeline developed her interest in music and preserving Appalachian traditions while growing up in Brevard, southwest of Asheville and home to The Steep Canyon Rangers, a bluegrass band and early influence with whom she has played. Her father, Roland Dierauf, is a DJ for WNCW radio, and her mother, Beth Dierauf, was a beloved, long-time assistant district attorney until she passed away in the fall of 2023. A fiddle player at church inspired Madeline’s start in music. She took lessons and attended the Mountain School of Strings. She was twice the South Carolina state fiddling champion, a competition where she met her future bandmates in The Wilder Flower – guitarist Danielle Yother and Molly Johnson, on banjo.
They formed the trio in 2021, and Dierauf transferred from the University of Virginia to Davidson in order to be closer and to benefit from Davidson’s academic programs. The trio’s performances and recording increased dramatically last year. Over the summer of 2024, The Wilder Flower played in Virginia, Florida and Colorado. The pace of gigs picked up this fall with the band playing nearly every weekend.
The band members’ backgrounds and songwriting styles differ, but they arrange songs together.
“They’re both incredible musicians and creatives,” Dierauf said. “They’re very rooted and introspective, and that artistry is why we really clicked.”
The band’s songwriting and performing has helped Dierauf develop consensus-building skills: listening, diplomatically articulating her values and navigating tension.
“They aim to create spaces where people are comfortable being together,” Hicks wrote in his letter. “While performing, the band explains the origins of certain sounds or why someone tunes an instrument differently, and they linger after shows talking with audience members.”
Dierauf overcame intense nervousness to get comfortable with performing.
“We tell little jokes and insider info to the crowd,” she said. “I really like signing CDs. I’m always surprised to see that we have fans we don’t know personally. I love little side-stage interactions. I love when kids want to come talk and dance.”
“I really want to be merging these dual spaces I’m in,” Dierauf said Saturday. “I’m driving over to Western North Carolina, playing folk music and, then, coming back to Davidson and studying 20th century British novels.”
Appalachia Across the Pond
Dierauf’s professors describe her as courageous in the intellectual risks she takes in papers and projects. Her honors thesis incorporates the work of Scottish novelist Muriel Spark, who a retired Davidson professor described as “one of the most elusive, challenging writers in the English language.”
Her Rhodes proposal includes studying Appalachia’s cultural heritage at Oxford, tying her past studies and commitment to advancing Appalachian traditions through scholarship, music and teaching with the Rhodes criteria of “devotion to duty.”
“Her energy and dedication to her community are unmatched,” said Gaylena Merritt, Davidson’s director of fellowships. “She is an incredible representative of an individual with humane instincts and a disciplined and creative mind.”
Hicks emphasized the deep skills of analysis and critical thinking that Dierauf applies across her varied endeavors.
“Madeline thinks capaciously about literature, music, religion, and folk art,” he wrote, “which reflects her understanding that the very problem she wishes to solve – the loss of connection and empathy despite shared cultural roots – is best informed by many ways of knowing. She is one of Davidson’s finest.”
