A Celebration of Excellence: SAS Faculty Members Receive Top Honors
May 20, 2004
The 2002-2003 academic year brought with it numerous accolades for Arts and Sciences faculty, who received notable research fellowships, were welcomed into the nation’s most respected scholarly societies, wrote books that were heralded as the best of the year, and took top prizes in their disciplines.
“The many prestigious awards conferred on our professors this year bring honor to the entire Arts and Sciences faculty,” said SAS Dean Samuel H. Preston. “These various forms of recognition, taken as a whole, let the world know what we already know ourselves: that by any measure, the School of Arts and Sciences faculty is one of the most distinguished collections of scholars of its kind.”
This distinction is evidenced by the School’s six new Guggenheim fellows, its largest number in nine years. They include professor of English Joan Dayan, associate professor of religious studies Talya Fishman, professor of history and sociology of science M. Susan Lindee, Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities Peter Stallybrass, Ruth Meltzer Professor of Classical Hebrew Literature David Stern, and Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History Margo Todd. These fellowships, for which there were more than 3,200 applicants, are awarded annually for distinguished scholarly achievement and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. SAS now has 92 Guggenheim fellows on its faculty.
Several professors were elected to prestigious learned societies in 2003-2004. For example, Bruce Kuklick, the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History, has been elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society. The members of the APS, which was founded in 1743, have included such luminaries as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Louis Pasteur, and Marie Curie. The election of Professor Kuklick, who is a scholar of the political, diplomatic, and intellectual history of the United States as well as the philosophy of history, brings to 12 the number of APS members on the faculty.
Also significant was the election of anthropology professor Robert Sharer and political science professor Rogers Smith to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Membership in the academy, which has included Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein, and Winston Churchill, is considered one of the highest academic honors in the United States. There are now 36 academy members on the faculty. Professor Sharer, who holds the Sally and Alvin V. Shoemaker Chair in Anthropology, is internationally recognized for his research on ancient Maya civilization, while Professor Smith, the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science and chair of that department, is a scholar of constitutional law, American political thought, and modern legal and political theory.
Faculty received prizes for top books in fields such as American history, poetry, Romance languages, Jewish studies, Scottish history, and Indus civilization, indicating the tremendous breadth of scholarship within the School. History professor Steven Hahn received the Pulitzer Prize for Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South From Slavery to the Great Migration. Professor Hahn, who is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History, also received both Columbia University’s Bancroft Prize and the Organization of American Historians Merle Curti Prize for his book. Professor Hahn is a scholar of American history, with interests in Southern politics and the comparative history of slavery and emancipation.
In addition, two members of the English faculty received the National Book Critics Circle award. Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and its Legacy, by senior lecturer in creative writing Paul Hendrickson, won the prize for best nonfiction book of 2003. Columbarium, by Donald T. Regan Professor of English Susan Stewart, was named the year’s best book of poetry. Mr. Hendrickson, a prize-winning feature writer for the Washington Post for more than 20 years, teaches nonfiction writing, while Professor Stewart teaches the history of lyric poetry, aesthetics, and the philosophy of literature and cultural studies.
Professor of Romance languages Joan DeJean received awards for two books. The Reinvention of Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France received the Modern Language Association of America’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Literary Studies, while Against Marriage: The Correspondence of the Grande Mademoiselle was named the best translation/teaching edition published in 2002 by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.
A number of faculty members also received top prizes in their academic disciplines. Most notably, research professor of physics Raymond Davis received the Enrico Fermi Award for his pioneering work in neutrino physics. This presidential honor recognizes lifetime achievement in the field of nuclear energy. It is one of the oldest and most prestigious science awards given by the United States government. Professor Davis also received the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics.