FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

April 5, 2007
GUGGENHEIM FELLOWSHIP AWARDS, 2007

Results of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation’s eighty-third annual United States and Canadian competition have been announced by Foundation president Edward Hirsch.  The 2007 Fellowship winners include 189 artists, scholars, and scientists selected from almost 2,800 applicants for awards totaling $7,600,000.  Decisions are based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisors and are approved by the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, which includes six members who are themselves past Fellows of the Foundation – Joel Conarroe, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard A. Rifkind, Charles Ryskamp, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and Edward Hirsch.

Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. The diversity of the 2007 Fellows is worth noting.  They range from the 30-year-old fiction writer Daniel Alarcón of Oakland, California, and the 29-year-old video and sound artist Kalup Linzy of Brooklyn, New York, to the 75-year-old medieval and Renaissance historian, Meredith Parsons Lillich, of Syracuse, New York.  The 189 new Fellows range not only in age but also in their interests, as the following samples show:   Jane Ira Bloom’s musical composition based on Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams; Warwick Anderson’s research on the science of race mixing in the twentieth century; Rennan Barkana’s study of gas and stars in the early universe; Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi’s literary research on Jerusalem and the poetics of return; Timothy Beach’s scholarly work related to the environmental history of the Maya lowlands; William Ferris’ historical research regarding the Mississippi blues; and Dina Rizk Khoury’s study of war and remembrance in Iraq.

Our new Fellows also include Neil Foley, who is studying civil rights in Texas and the Southwest, 1940-1965; David Frankfurter of Durham, New Hampshire, who is researching Christianization in late antique Egypt; the poet, Erica Funkhouser, who is a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ann Gale, a painter from Seattle, Washington; Enrique García Santo-Tomás, who is studying fiction by war veterans in early modern Spanish literature, 1550-1680; Melissa James Gibson, a playwright from Brooklyn, New York, who is interested in the architecture of memory; Ed Folsom’s study of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass; Susan Ashbrook Harvey’s research on Biblical women and women’s choirs in Syriac tradition; Carola Hein’s scholarly studies on the global architecture of oil; Gail Hershatter’s research on rural women and China’s collective past; Paul Kroll of Denver, Colorado, who is studying High Tang verse; the poet, Dana Levin, of Santa Fe, New Mexico; the artist and photographer, Michael Light, of San Francisco, California; Samuel Nigro, a sculptor from Brooklyn, New York; Richard Owen Prum’s research on the biology of feathers; Kay Kaufman Shelemay’s study of Ethiopian music and musicians in the United States; David Treuer’s work on contemporary reservation life; Michael Wachtel’s studies of Pushkin’s lyric poetry;  Dava Sobel, a science writer, working on Copernicus; and Julie Stone Peters’ research on theatrical censorship, obscenity, and the modern drama.

What distinguishes the Guggenheim Fellowship program from all others is the wide range in interest, age, geography, and institution of those it selects as it considers applications in 78 different fields, from the natural sciences to the creative arts.  The new Fellows include writers, playwrights, painters, sculptors, photographers, film makers, choreographers, physical and biological scientists, social scientists, and scholars in the humanities.  Many of these individuals hold appointments in colleges and universities with 77 institutions being represented by one or more Fellows.  It is also worth noting that 51 of the new Fellows have no affiliation with academic institutions or hold only adjunct positions in them. 

Since 1925, according to Mr. Hirsch, the Foundation has granted over $256 million in Fellowships to more than 16,250 individuals.  The Foundation’s scores of advisory panels make recommendations to the Committee of Selection, whose members this year are Roger D. Abrahams, Hum Rosen Professor Emeritus of Folklore and Folklife, University of Pennsylvania; John I. Brauman, J. G. Jackson - C. J. Wood Professor of Chemistry, Stanford University; Lynn A. Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History, University of California, Los Angeles; Jack Miles, Distinguished Professor of English and Religious Studies, University of California, Irvine; Peter H. Raven, President, Missouri Botanical Garden and George Engelmann Professor of Botany, Washington University; and committee chair Neil J. Smelser, Director Emeritus, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California.

In a time of decreased funding for individuals in the arts, humanities, and sciences, the Guggenheim Fellowship program has assumed a greatly increased importance, and the Foundation is successfully raising funds to enable the appointment of a larger number of Fellows each year.  Scores of Nobel, Pulitzer, and other prize winners appear on the roll of Fellows, which includes Ansel Adams, W. H. Auden, Aaron Copland,  Martha Graham, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, Vladimir Nabokov, Isamu Noguchi, Linus Pauling, Philip Roth, Paul Samuelson, Wendy Wasserstein, Derek Walcott, James Watson, and Eudora Welty.

The full list of 2007 Fellows may be viewed at http://www.gf.org.

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