Congratulations to all Massachusetts artists and scholars who received 2010 Guggenheim Fellowships! We note in particular: Shelby Lee Adams of Pittsfield (photographer), Paul Harding of Georgetown (writer), Salvatore Scibona of Provincetown (writer), and Steven Kazuo Takasugi of Waban (composer).
Stray notes/observations:
- According to the Guggenheim website, the average fellowship grant in 2008 was was approximately $43,200.
- Though a resident Western Mass., Shelby Lee Adams is best known for photographing another region: Appalachia.
- Yes, it’s the same Paul Harding that emerged from relative obscurity to win that major American prize that rhymes with Schmulitzer this year. Also, if you’re an alternative-rock-circa-1990s fan, he’s the same Paul Harding who played drums for this band that you rocked out to, 15-20 years ago.
- Steven Kazuo Takasugi’s composition for the award will be a virtual string quartet: four loudspeakers on four chairs.
- And we humbly note that Salvatore, along with receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship, is on a winning streak (he’s also won a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Young Lions Award, and was a National Book Award finalist) that began with an MCC Artist Fellowship, in 2006.
Here’s the full list of Massachusetts scholars and artists who received Guggenheim Fellowships in 2010:
Mr. Shelby Lee Adams, Photographer, Pittsfield, Massachusetts: Photography.
Ms. Arachu Castro, Assistant Professor of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School Women and AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Ms. Caroline Elkins, Professor of History and African and African American Studies, Harvard University: The end of the British Empire after the Second World War.
Mr. Paul Harding, Writer, Georgetown, Massachusetts; Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Iowa: Fiction.
Mr. Jonathan Harr, Writer, Northampton, Massachusetts: Humanitarian workers in conflict situations.
Ms. Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard University: A comparative study of nature-culture relations.
Mr. Walter Johnson, Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University: Slavery, capitalism, and imperialism in the Mississippi Valley’s Cotton Kingdom.
Ms. Elizabeth Kolbert, Writer, Williamstown, Massachusetts: Extinction and the history of life.
Mr. Tomasz S. Mrowka, Simons Professor of Mathematics, MIT: Applications of gauge theory and low dimensional topology.
Mr. Salvatore Scibona, Writer, Provincetown, Massachusetts; Writing Coordinator, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown: Fiction.
Ms. Sarah Stanbury, Professor of English, College of the Holy Cross: The social construction of manmade things from Chaucer to Lydgate.
Mr. Steven Kazuo Takasugi, Composer, Waban, Massachusetts; Associate of the Music Department, Harvard University: Music composition.
Mr. Gordon Teskey, Professor of English, Harvard University: Myth and metaphysics in early modern poetry, 1590-1674.
Image: Cover art for THE END by Salvatore Scibona (Riverhead Books 2009).
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