Three Guggenheim Fellows
April 2006
Three faculty members from the School of Arts and Sciences, David Christianson, Steven Feierman and Barbara Fuchs, are among 187 artists, scholars and scientists awarded fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The new fellows were chosen from among nearly 3,000 candidates from 78 fields in the United States and Canada. Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement and exceptional promise for future accomplishments.
"We are thrilled to see our faculty recognized in this way," said Dean Rebecca Bushnell. "The appointment of fellows from the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities reflects the range of excellence across the School of Arts and Sciences."
David Christianson, the Roy and Diana Vagelos Professor in Chemistry and Chemical Biology, is known for his work in biological chemistry. Using x-ray crystallography, he probes and engineers the structure and function of metal-requiring enzymes. In recent years, his research has illuminated complex molecular mechanisms in the biosynthesis of terpenes, a family of cyclic natural products that includes menthol, cholesterol and the anticancer drug Taxol. He has also discovered that arginase, a manganese-requiing enzyme, regulates the physiology of male and female sexual arousal. As a visiting fellow at Sidney Sussex College at the University of Cambridge in the fall, he will study the architecture and design of complexes between biological macromolecules and synthetic nanomolecules.
Steven Feierman is a professor of history and sociology of science. He holds advanced degrees in African history and social anthropology. He has also studied with, and been apprenticed to, traditional healers in east Africa. His areas of research include the history of health and healing in Africa, orally transmitted knowledge and its uses, and the place of knowledge about Africa in the social sciences. The best known of his books is Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania. He is finishing a book about how traditional ways of dealing with health problems in Africa have been re-shaped over the past 120 years.
Barbara Fuchs, an associate professor of Romance languages, is trained in comparative literature. She studies European cultural production from the late 15th through the 17th centuries with a special emphasis on literature and empire. Her books include Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities, Passing for Spain: Cervantes and the Fictions of Identity and Romance. She is investigating how 16th century Spain is imagined, both inside Spain and by other Europeans, in light of its relation to Al-Andalus.