Five faculty members from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign-four of them from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences-have been awarded prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships for 2006.
This is the sixth time in 40 years that the U. of I. has won five Guggenheims in one year. Only New York University, with seven recipients, topped the U. of I. in the number of honorees from one campus in 2006. The University of Michigan also had five recipients.
The winners of this year's Guggenheims include the following four LAS scholars:
Brigit Pegeen Kelly, professor of English. Kelly is working on a book of poetry.
Harriet Murav, professor of comparative and world literature and the head of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Murav will be working on the story of Russian-Jewish and Soviet-Yiddish literature in the Twentieth Century, which "remains largely untold." As she puts it, "An entire literature remains unknown to the English-speaking reader."
Diane Koenker, professor of history. Koenker will explore how choices of leisure travel in the Soviet Union reinforced social distinctions. She will begin with the Stalin period and continue to the eras of Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
Robert Yelle, professor in the Department of Religion. Yelle will scrutinize the secularization of modern society, examining it through the history of language and linguistics.
The fifth U. of I. winner was Schuyler S. Korban, professor of molecular genetics and biotechnology in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. Korban will expand his current work on plant-based vaccines-"essentially using plants as production and delivery vehicles for vaccines."
Guggenheim Fellowships are appointed "on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishments," announced the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. A total of 187 artists, scholars, and scientists received fellowships, selected from nearly 3,000 applicants for awards totaling $7.5 million.
"On behalf of the institution, I am enormously pleased at this recognition and proud of these scholars," said Richard Herman, chancellor of the U. of I. Urbana campus. "For many years now, the awarding of a Guggenheim has been one of the true marks of excellence-a sign of a distinguished career and a promise of much more to come."
