FACULTY RECOGNITION
Franco Baldasso (above left), assistant professor of Italian and director of the Italian Studies Program, Artist in Residence Adriane Colburn (above center), and James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics and Director of the Classical Studies Program James Romm (above right) were awarded 2021 Franklin Research Grants from the American Philosophical Society. Baldasso’s grant will allow him to finalize Against Redemption: Literature, Democracy and Memory in Post-Fascist Italy, the first book to distinguish, analyze, and theorize early postwar literary practices as a main vehicle for intellectual dissent. Colburn’s grant supports The Divining Forest, a suite of artworks that will explore the poetics of scientific fieldwork being conducted in the dense and biodiverse environment of the Rincón de la Vieja, a volcano in Costa Rica where high levels of CO2 have been emitted through fissures in the volcanic crust for thousands of years. Romm’s new book, The Sacred Band, focuses on the Theban hegemony (379–362 BCE), in which Thebes played a leading role in central Greek affairs and defeated the army of Sparta by deploying a corps made up of 300 male lovers, the Sacred Band of Thebes. Romm’s grant will fund research on a set of notebooks, recently uncovered, detailing the skeletal remains found in the Sacred Band’s mass grave.
Christopher H. Gibbs, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music, was named a spring 2022 Berlin Prize Fellow by the American Academy in Berlin. The Berlin Prize is awarded annually to American or U.S.-based scholars, writers, composers, and artists who represent the highest standards of excellence in their fields.
Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature Valeria Luiselli was named winner of the Dublin Literary Award, which promotes excellence in world literature and is one of the world’s richest prizes for a novel published in English (€100,000/$122,000), for Lost Children Archive. The award is sponsored by Dublin City Council and administered by Dublin City Libraries. Nominations are made by libraries around the world.
Valeria Luiselli, photo by James Higgins
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ON AND OFF CAMPUS
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