Carole McAlpine Watson is an American academic who served twice as acting Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, first in 2009 and again in 2013 to 2014.

Her academic work investigated the history of novels published by Black women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Reflecting on the work, Watson noted that many of the novels reflected the social structure of the era: "I found that most of the novels weren’t any good—they were written to put a positive face on African-American life for white audiences or to serve as exemplars for African-American readers.

In collaboration with the Library of Congress, the agency is digitizing a hundred years of reportage: every article published by an American newspaper between 1836 and 1922.

[7] In 2014, Watson organized Standing Together, an NEH funding initiative that aims to "help Americans understand the experiences of service members as they return to civilian life.