Distinguished Achievement Awards

(Nominations by Invitation)

Purpose

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Awards were established with two objectives: to enable notable scholars in the humanities to work under especially favorable conditions and to underscore the decisive contributions the humanities make to the nation's intellectual life. Amounting to as much as $1.5 million each, the awards are intended for individuals whose past scholarship has had a creative effect in their disciplines and on their own students, has affected the thinking of scholars in other fields, and whose current work promises to make significant new contributions through both teaching and research. Candidates should also have standing and influence in their fields and in the humanities at large.

Recipients of the awards need not be US citizens but must hold tenured appointments at US institutions of higher education.

The awards will provide the recipients and their institutions with resources to deepen and extend humanistic studies. In contrast to other notable academic award programs that benefit individual scholars exclusively, the Distinguished Achievement Awards are designed to recognize the interdependence of scholars and their institutions. Accordingly, while this grant program honors the achievements of individuals, the grants themselves will support specific institutional programs of activities that will enhance both research and teaching.

It is anticipated that three or four awards will be made each year, with recipients chosen from such fields as classics, history, history of art, musicology, philosophy, religious studies, and all areas of literary studies including the study of foreign literatures. The disciplinary distribution of the awards will depend on the merits of the candidates.

A panel of distinguished scholars makes the final selection after an intensive process of nomination and review. The panel's recommendations are then put before the Foundation's Board of Trustees for its approval.

Recipients

2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001

2007

Peter Brooks, Mellon Visiting Professor, Princeton University
William V. Harris, William R. Shepherd Professor of History, Columbia University
Thomas W. Laqueur, Helen Fawcett Professor of History, University of California at Berkeley

2006

Ellen Rosand, Professor of Music History, Yale University
Peter Schäfer, Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religion, Princeton University
Eric Sundquist, UCLA Foundation Professor of Literature, University of California at Los Angeles
Richard White, Margaret Byrne Professor of American History, Stanford University

2005

Timothy J. Clark, George C. and Helen N. Pardee Chair and Professor of Modern Art, University of California at Berkeley
Thomas Nagel, University Professor, New York University
Stephen Owen, James Bryant Conant University Professor, Harvard University
Joseph Roach, Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Theater and Professor of English and African American Studies, Yale University

2004

John Dower, Ford International Professor of History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Michael Fried, James R. Herbert Boone Professor of Humanities and Professor of the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University
Philip Gossett, Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor of Music, University of Chicago
Christine Korsgaard, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University

2003

Roger S. Bagnall, Professor of Classics and History, Columbia University
Robert B. Brandom, Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh
Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History, Princeton University
Christopher Ricks, Warren Professor of the Humanities, Boston University

2002

Michael Cook, Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor in Modern Russian History, University of Chicago
Michael McCormick, Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History, Harvard University
Jerome McGann, John Stewart Bryan Professor of English, University of Virginia
Susan Wolf, Edna J. Koury Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2001

Peter Brown, Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, Princeton University
Stephen Greenblatt, John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
Sabine MacCormack, Mary Ann and Charles R. Walgreen, Jr. Professor for the Study of Human Understanding, Professor of History, and Professor of Classical Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Alexander Nehamas, Edmund N. Carpenter II Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature, Princeton University
Robert Pippin, Raymond W. and Martha Hilpert Gruner Distinguished Service Professor, Committee on Social Thought, Department of Philosophy, and the College, University of Chicago

Press Releases

2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001