Announcements

Distinguished Achievement Award Recipients Named

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has named the first five recipients of its new Distinguished Achievement Awards for scholars in the humanities:

Peter Brown, Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University. Beginning with his broadly influential biography of St. Augustine, Professor Brown has demonstrated a remarkable range of talent. He is credited with having created the study of late antiquity, that crucial historical period in which paganism yielded to Christianity, and with opening up other new fields of inquiry. His own studies have been remarkably diverse, covering such subjects as the cult of saints, conceptions of the body, rhetoric and power, sexuality, and the rise of Christendom. In the process, his writings have illuminated distinctive features of late antiquity, while shaping the studies of successive generations of classical and medieval scholars.

Stephen Greenblatt, John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. Widely considered the foremost interpreter of Renaissance English literature, Professor Greenblatt has returned time and again to Shakespeare’s works and their larger literary and social contexts. Closely associated with the “New Historicism,” and the value of sustained engagement with disciplines as different as anthropology, medicine, theology, and history, Professor Greenblatt has been instrumental in broadening the state of current literary criticism while remaining a superb close reader of texts. His numerous works have examined Renaissance literature broadly conceived, including its reach into the New World, and are distinguished by their scope, flexibility, and nuance. A master teacher, Professor Greenblatt continues to captivate and inspire his students.

Sabine MacCormack, Mary Ann and Charles R. Walgreen, Jr. Professor for the Study of Human Understanding, Professor of History, and Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. An exceptionally wide-ranging comparative historian of religious and social institutions and attitudes, Professor MacCormack is equally at home in classical poetry, the culture of late antiquity, and colonial Latin America. This scholarly multidexterity has enabled her, for example, to comprehend the conquest of the New World both from the perspectives of the Incas and from that of the European colonizers whose thinking was shaped by the classical and late-antique sources she has studied in great depth. Professor MacCormack deploys her tremendous erudition and scholarly energy not only in bringing together disparate texts, such as in her recent study of Virgil and Augustine, but also in assisting colleagues and students in the many fields in which she works.

Alexander Nehamas, Edmund N. Carpenter II Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. Professor Nehamas has made major contributions in classics and ancient philosophy, especially the study of Plato. But he has written also on Nietzsche and Foucault, as well as on “modern anxieties” and the aesthetics of popular culture. By placing interpretation at the center of his work, he has sustained philosophy as a discipline that is once again relevant to other fields such as art history, literary criticism, and religious studies. At Princeton, he has overseen its Humanities Council since 1994, and continued to excel as a teacher.

Robert Pippin, Raymond W. and Martha Hilpert Gruner Distinguished Service Professor, Committee on Social Thought, Department of Philosophy, and the College at the University of Chicago. Professor Pippin’s work on Hegel’s philosophy has recast Hegel studies in the US and is viewed by philosophical colleagues in Germany as providing a compelling reading of the greatest of German idealists. He has since expanded his reading of Hegel into a capacious and profound reinterpretation of the conceptual bases of modern thought generally. It is particularly noteworthy that Pippin succeeds so well in mediating between the Continental and Anglo-American traditions of philosophy. Most recently, with his study of the moral dimension of Henry James’s fiction, Pippin has provided a model of productive engagement between philosophy and literary studies while also exemplifying the intellectual breadth of the University of Chicago’s famed Committee on Social Thought.

The Distinguished Achievement Awards have two objectives: to enable notable scholars in the humanities to pursue their work under especially favorable conditions and to underscore the decisive contributions the humanities make to the nation’s intellectual life. The awards are intended for those who have made major contributions to their own disciplines, whose influence may well have extended more broadly to other fields, and whose current work promises to make significant new advances through both teaching and research. Amounting to as much as $1.5 million each, the awards will provide the recipients and their institutions with enlarged opportunities to deepen and extend humanistic research. As such, they should benefit not only the individual scholar, but also their institutions and scholarship more broadly.

The Awards are for three years, with funds being granted to, and overseen by, the institutions with which the recipients are affiliated. They will be structured so as to meet recipients’ particular scholarly needs. The funds will underwrite salaries, research assistance and expenses, and support for colleagues engaged in collaboration with the awardees. The awardees will be expected to spend at least two of the three years on their home campuses. Distinguished Achievement Awards may not be held concurrently with other similar awards.

The recipients of the Awards were selected through an intensive process of nomination and review. Final selection was made by a panel of distinguished scholars led by the Foundation’s Chairman, Hanna H. Gray, President Emeritus and Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Chicago. The selection panel consisted also of Bernard Bailyn, Adams University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University; J. Paul Hunter, Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Professor Emeritus, Department of English Language and Literature and the College at the University of Chicago; Jerome B. Schneewind, Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University; John Shearman, Adams University Professor at Harvard University; and Patricia Meyer Spacks, Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Professor Gray observed that “The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has, from its inception, been dedicated to enabling first rate scholars and institutions to cultivate and to advance humanistic learning and understanding. These new awards are made in recognition of individuals who have excelled in that mission and whose work and influence continue to enrich the broader community of humanistic studies.”

In each of the next two years, the Foundation plans to make another four to six awards, 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. Recipients of the awards must hold tenured appointments at US institutions of higher education.