In 2011, she held a residential fellowship at the Newberry Library in Chicago, a world-renowned independent research library founded in 1887 and focused on the humanities. Barr, who specializes in the history of early America, the Spanish Borderlands, American Indians, and women and gender, was awarded the Newberry’s prestigious Lloyd Lewis Fellowship in American History in the 2010-2011 annual competition. The fellowship allows researchers to utilize the vast collection of the Newberry Library which has strengths in a number of fields, including primary source collections in native American history, European and Western Hemisphere history, and literature and culture since the late medieval period.