English Department Chair Jed Esty (top left), Fine Arts professor Michelle Lopez (top right), Anthropology professor Adriana Petryna (bottom left), and Creative Writing Artist-in-Residence Carmen Maria Machado (bottom right) were named 2019 Guggenheim Fellows.
Four Penn faculty members were named 2019 Guggenheim Fellows. The professors were among 168 scholars, writers, and artists to receive the prestigious award.
The fellowship, awarded by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, provides funding for academics and artists across the United States and Canada to pursue a project for six to 12 months. The award recognizes exceptional work in natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and the creative arts.
English Department Chair Jed Esty, Fine Arts assistant professor Michelle Lopez, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in Anthropology Adriana Petryna, and Creative Writing Artist in Residence Carmen Maria Machado were named 2019 Guggenheim Fellows.
Esty received the literary and criticism fellowship for a book he is writing called "Cold War Victorians: How the British Imagination shaped American Power." His work focuses on analyzing how popular narrative forms such as detective stories, science fiction, and treasure quests traveled from Victorian England to the United States.
Lopez was awarded a fellowship in fine arts for her work as an installation artist and interdisciplinary sculptor. She uses an experimental approach to incorporate industrial materials into her art, exploring the boundaries of cultural construction.
Petryana received a Guggenheim Fellowship for anthropology and cultural studies. She plans to use the grant to complete a manuscript on the challenges and implications of abrupt environmental shifts such as wildfires, according to the Guggenheim website.
Named as a fine arts fellow, Machado is known for her short story collection “Her Body and Other Parties," which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has also written a memoir, "In the Dream House," which will be published in October 2019.
This is not the first time that members of the Penn community have been named Guggenheim Fellows.
In 2017, English professor Rita Copeland, Chemistry professor Daniel Mindiola, History of Science professor Robert Aronowitz, and History professor Daniel Richter received the prestigious award.
And in 2015, History professor Kathleen Brown and Constitutional Law professor Sally Gordon were named Guggenheim scholars.
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