Two University English professors, Jahan Ramazani and Katharine Maus, were recently honored by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for their outstanding work in English literature.
Ramazani and Maus are two of 182 scholars - and two out of only four recipients in the field of English literature - to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship. Each will receive about $34,862 as a stipend to aid in their research.
Faculty Senate Chairman David T. Gies, a 1983 recipient of the Guggenheim fellowship, said the distinction is cherished by those in the academic world.
The awards "confer some sort of intangible blessing on you," Gies said. "These are enormously prestigious awards" that bring a great amount of honor to their recipients.
He said the presence of two Guggenheim recipients "says something huge about the quality of the University faculty."
Ramazani, a scholar of modern poetry and former Faculty Senate chairman, said he will use the fellowship to aid in the completion of his book, "The Hybrid Muse: Post-colonial Poetry in English," which focuses on the use of language in poetry from nations that formerly were part of the British empire.
"The text is centered on how writers in the de-colonized world hybridized local traditions with the traditions of the language of the British Empire," he added. "It examines how writers on the receiving end of empire have remade the English language with their native culture."
Ramazani said the grant money will aid him in focusing on his research.
"In recent years, I had devoted a great deal of energy to the University and to my teaching and developing new ideas for the book, but there was no time to complete the project," he said.
He added that he also feels it will aid his future students through the new insights he can bring to the classroom from the research.
"Research revitalizes one's teaching and fuels the classroom," Ramazani said.
Ramazani will be on academic leave during the next academic year to work on the project.
During his term as Faculty Senate chairman, Ramazani began a University-wide debate on the development of an "intellectual community" and was a vocal supporter of moving fraternity and sorority rush to the spring semester.
Maus, a fellow recipient of the fellowship, is an authority on the English Renaissance and plans to use the fellowship to write a history of English literature during the period of 1603-1660 for the Oxford University Press's English literary history series.
Maus's text will examine what English Renaissance authors thought of their work, who their audiences were and how local places became popular subjects of their works.
Advanced professionals in the fields of natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and the creative arts are eligible for the fellowship.
The application requires a brief narrative of the applicant's career, a list of publications, a description of how the recipient proposes to use the funds and four references from fellow scholars.
United States Sen. Simon Guggenheim and his wife established the fellowship in 1925 as a memorial to their son, John Simon, who died April 26, 1922.
There were 2,927 applicants for the year 2000 fellowships.
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