Three College of Arts and Sciences faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder have won prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships.
Peter Knox, professor and chairman of the classics department; Donna Goldstein, assistant professor of anthropology; and Philip Deloria, assistant professor of history were recently notified of the $30,000 salary grants for 1998-99.
The fellowships were among 85 awarded across the country and were culled from 513 applications to the Fellowships for University Teachers program. Only six schools had as many as three faculty recommended for awards.
Arts and Sciences Dean Peter Spear said the awards reflect the outstanding faculty we have in the humanities -- both established faculty and rising stars.
Spear noted that while Knox is well-established in his career, Goldstein and Deloria are relatively new faculty members.
The fellowships allow professors a year off to pursue a research/writing project. They not only help to advance people in their fields, but also bring attention to CU and ultimately enrich teaching, Spear said. The college makes up the difference between the award amount and the faculty members current salary.
Following is a description of the winners and their grant projects:
Peter Knox will explore the last collection of writings by the Roman poet Ovid in his research project, Ovids Letters from the Black Sea. The poems, which are of literary as well as social-historical interest, were written after the Emperor Augustus exiled Ovid in 8 A.D.
Knox joined CUs faculty in the classics department in 1991, after holding teaching positions at Harvard and Columbia universities. A specialist in Latin language and literature, he has served as chair of the department since 1994.
He also received a faculty fellowship from the CU Graduate School this year, which will supplement his leave.
Donna Goldstein will look at sexuality and urban violence in a poor shantytown outside of Rio de Janeiro in Why are They Laughing? Womens Humor, Sexuality and Survival in a Brazilian Shantytown.
The project grew out of AIDS prevention work she did in the shantytown for her doctoral dissertation. It received a further boost in the form of a $1,500 research grant from CU-Boulders 20th Century Humanities Initiative in the fall of 1996.
Goldstein came to CU in 1994, after receiving her doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley.
She also received a Margaret Willard Award from the University Womens Club in 1996 for her scholarship and activism benefitting women in underdeveloped countries.
Philip Deloria will write a history of his ancestors in Three Indian/Non-Indian Lives in Twentieth Century America: Marriage, Scholarship and Regret.
Deloria describes the project as a series of counter-intuitive stories that begins when his grandfather -- Vine Deloria, Sr. -- leaves the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in the early part of the 20th Century. He plays college football at an Eastern school, becomes an Episcopalian minister and marries a white woman whose first exposure to Indian ways came as a Campfire Girl.
Deloria joined CUs history department in 1994, after receiving his doctorate in American Studies at Yale University.
His first book, Playing Indian, will be published in March by Yale University Press.