From News of the National Humanities Center, Spring 2008

NOTED: News from Fellows, Trustees, and Staff

JOHN AGRESTO (Fellow 1978-79) has recently published a book on postwar Iraq titled Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions (Encounter, 2007).

PHILIP BENEDICT (Fellow 1993-94) has published two new books: Graphic History: The Wars, Massacres, and Troubles of Tortorel and Perrissin, Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance (Geneva: Librarie Droz, 2007), and La Réforme en France et Italie. Contacts, Comparaisons, Contrastes, edited by Philip Benedict, Silvana Seidel Menchi, and Alain Tallon (Ecole Française de Rome, 2007).

THERESA BRAUNSCHNEIDER (Fellow 2005-06) has been awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor of English at Washington & Lee University. Also, her book Our Coquettes: Capacious Desire In The Eighteenth Century (forthcoming from University of Virginia Press) is the winner of the 2007 Walker Cowen Manuscript Prize, awarded annually to the author of an outstanding scholarly book-length manuscript in eighteenth-century studies, including the Americas and Atlantic world.

WILLIAM BRUMFIELD (Fellow 1992-93) has recently published the sixth in a series of books dedicated to documenting lesser-known corners of Russia and their architectural history, in English and Russian versions. This volume, Kargopol: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (Moscow: Tri Kvadrata, 2008), joins others dedicated to Totma, Irkutsk, Tobolsk, Solikamsk, and Cherdyn, all published with the support of the Kennan Institute. Brumfield has also recently published two large volumes devoted to the architectural heritage of Vologda province, in Russian only.

ROGER CHICKERING (Fellow 2004-05) will spend next year (2008-09) in residence at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin.

JUDITH FARQUHAR (Fellow 2007-08) has been named the Max Palevsky Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.

EUGENE GOODHEART (Fellow 1987-88) has recently published a new volume in response to neo-Darwinist approaches to the arts entitled Darwinian Misadventures in the Humanities (Transaction, 2007).

BRIJ EN N. GOSWAMY (Fellow 1986- 87) has been awarded the Padma Bhushan, which is the second highest civilian honor in India, in recognition of his contributions to learning. Goswamy is professor emeritus at Panjab University in Chandigarh.

Last spring, MITCHELL S. GREEN (Fellow 2001-02) was appointed as the Cavalier’s Distinguished Teaching Professor for 2007-09 at the University of Virginia. He has also recently published three volumes, including Engaging Philosophy: A Brief Introduction (Hackett, 2006); Moore's Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality and the First Person (Oxford University Press, 2007), a collection of essays he edited with John Williams; and Self- Expression (Oxford University Press, 2007), which resulted from his work at the Center.

On April 4, 2008, former students and colleagues at the University of Toronto presented PAUL F. GRENDLER (Fellow 1988-89-90) with a Festschrift: The Renaissance in the Streets, Schools, and Studies: Essays in Honour of Paul F. Grendler, edited by Konrad Eisenbichler and Nicholas Terpstra (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2008).

DANIEL HOROWITZ (Fellow 1984-85), the Mary Huggins Gamble Professor of American Studies at Smith College, has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship as he pursues his research on contemporary writers and their shift from viewing culture as “a source of moral degradation to . . . a focus of pleasure and social communication.”

ALICE KESSLER-HARRIS (Fellow 2006- 07) has been selected as vice-president of the Organization of American Historians (OAH). This honor precedes her succession to the OAH presidency in 2011.

KATHERINE J. P. LOWE (Fellow 2000-01) has been appointed professor of Renaissance history at Queen Mary, University of London.

ASSAD MEYMANDI (Trustee) has pledged $150,000 for naming rights to Burning Coal Theatre Company’s new home in the former Murphey School auditorium. The exact name will be chosen before the start of the company’s next season. The theater will join other arts facilities in Raleigh that have been named in honor of the Meymandi family, including the concert hall at the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts and a new exhibition hall at the North Carolina Museum of Art that is currently under construction.

ANNABEL PATTERSON (Fellow 1991-92), Sterling Professor Emerita of English at Yale, presented the Tanner Lectures on Human Values on April 8 and 9 at the University of California Berkeley. Tanner Lecturers are appointed to recognize uncommon achievement and outstanding ability in the field of human values.

JEREMY POPKIN (Fellow 2000-01) has recently published a new book on the memoirs of colonial slaveowners entitled Facing Racial Revolution: Eyewitness Accounts of the Haitian Insurrection (University of Chicago Press, 2007).

PETER STRUCK (Fellow 2002-03) has won the 2007 C. J. Goodwin Award of Merit from the American Philological Association for his book Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Text (Princeton University Press, 2004).

JOAN THIRSK (Fellow 1986-87) has published two new books, Food in Early Modern England: Phases, Fads, Fashions, 1500–1760 (Continuum, 2007), and, as editor and author with others, Hadlow: Life Land and People in a Wealden Parish, 1460–1600 (Kent Archaeological Society, 2007).

Filming is set to begin this summer on an adaptation of Blood Done Sign My Name, the popular book by TIMOTHY TYSON (Fellow 2004-05) about race relations in rural North Carolina in the 1970s. Tyson is coproducing the independent film with fellow North Carolinian Jeb Stuart who will direct. Earlier this spring, Tyson was the recipient of the Leadership Triangle’s Goodmon Award for his exemplary thinking and action in the Research Triangle area.

PAULINE YU (Trustee) has been named vice-chair of Harvard University’s Board of Overseers. As a Harvard Overseer, Yu has been a member of the board’s executive committee since 2006 and chairs its standing committee on humanities and arts.





From News of the National Humanities Center, Spring 2008
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