KU humanities faculty receive prestigious fellowships

LAWRENCE -- Eight University of Kansas humanities faculty members have won fellowships from four prestigious organizations: the American Council of Learned Societies; the National Endowment for the Humanities; the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation; and the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.

The awards included four ACLS fellowships, an unprecedented number for KU faculty. In fiscal year 2002, KU received the same number of fellowships as Harvard and Princeton, and only Notre Dame did better, with five. Only 87 scholars from a pool of 925 applicants won the awards for research periods of six months to one year.

"To follow last year's haul of five NEH fellowships with four ACLS fellowships is a remarkable achievement," said Victor Bailey, Hall Center director. "It testifies to the caliber of KU's humanities faculty and to their determination and capacity to succeed in these prestigious national competitions."

KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway added, "Kudos to the humanities faculty and to the fine work of the Hall Center for the Humanities."

The four ACLS fellowship winners are:

Arienne Dwyer, assistant professor of anthropology and linguistics. Her award will allow her to develop an interactive CD-ROM of historical and modern dialect materials for Uyghur, the native language of 9 million people in China and Kazakhstan.

Maryemma Graham, professor of English. Graham will examine newly available materials on the poet, novelist and critic Margaret Walker (1915-1998) to produce the first full-length study of the author's life and work.

Margaret Rausch, assistant professor of religious studies. Moroccan women's religious expression is the focus of Rausch's project. Part of her fellowship will fund fieldwork in Morocco, where she will concentrate on the communal rituals and prayer and study meetings of a mystical female Islamic association.

Daniel Stevenson, associate professor of religious studies. He will complete a book-length study on the Buddhist Pure Land cult during China's Song Dynasty (960-1279).

Only two applications per institution are allowed for the NEH Summer Stipends, and both KU applicants won this highly competitive award. Walter Clark, associate professor of music and dance, is writing a biography of the Spaniard (Catalan) Enrique Granados (1867-1916), whose works for piano, voice and stage established a national style of concert music in Spain at the turn of the century that remains popular today. Tamara Falicov, assistant professor of theatre and film, is working on a project on Argentine film that traces the changing relationship between the Argentine state and the national film industry.

Catherine Preston, associate professor of theatre and film, received a Postdoctoral Research Leave fellowship from the AAUW. Her fellowship will allow her to collect the data she requires to complete her study of "The Visual Culture of Adolescent Girls." The study will investigate the relationship between adolescent girls' identity construction and the visual media that surround them.

Katherine Clark, assistant professor of history and western civilization and humanities, received both the William M. Keck Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon fellowship and the British Academy fellowship, through the Huntington Library. Clark's two awards will allow her to complete research at the Huntington Library in California and at archives in England for her book on author Daniel Defoe. Her study also is an exploration of the political, religious, economic and social changes taking place in early modern Britain.

Each of these projects enhances KU's status in national and international scholarly research. KU supports faculty efforts through the Humanities Grant Development Office at the Hall Center for the Humanities.