Guggenheim Fellowships awarded to three faculty, 16 alumni

Three Yale faculty members and 16 alumni have been awarded 2015 fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Three Yale faculty members and 16 alumni have been awarded 2015 fellowships from the  John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Guggenheim grants provide support to exceptional mid-career scholars, scientists, and artists, giving them the opportunity to work on projects with complete creative freedom anywhere in the world.

Faculty fellowship recipents

The faculty members who received fellowships are Marla Geha, professor of astronomy and physics and director of Yale Telescope Resources; Maurice Samuels, the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French and director of the Yale Program on Antisemitism; and Gideon Yaffe, professor of law, philosophy, and psychology.

Marla Geha focuses her research on the formation, evolution, and destruction of dwarf galaxies, ranging from gas-rich dwarf galaxies in isolation, to the least luminous and most dark matter-dominated galaxies in orbit around the Milky Way. The goal of her research group is to use these objects to answer fundamental questions in astrophysics and cosmology. Among her numerous awards and honors are fellowships from the Kavli Frontiers of Science, Whitney Humanities Center, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and recognition by the University of California-Santa Cruz as a 45+5 “Prominent and Influential Alumni” and as one of Popular Science Magazine’s “Brilliant 10″ (2009). Geha will use her fellowship to search for the Milky Way’s “siblings.”

Marla Geha

Maurice Samuels specializes in the literature and culture of 19th-century France and in Jewish studies. He has published on diverse topics including romanticism and realism, aesthetic theory, representations of the Crimean War, and boulevard culture. He is the author of two award-winning books: “The Spectacular Past: Popular History and the Novel in 19th-Century France,” which was recognized with the MacMillan Center’s Gaddis Smith International Book Prize, and “Inventing the Israelite: Jewish Fiction in 19th-Century France, which was awarded the Scaglione Prize, given by the Modern Language Association for the best book in French studies. He co-edited the 19th-Century Jewish Literature Reader, which includes his original translations of 19th-century French Jewish fiction. As a Guggenheim Fellow, he will pursue research on a project on French universalism and the Jews, from the French revolution to the present.

Maurice Samuels

Gideon Yaffe focuses his research on  the philosophy of law, particularly criminal law; the study of metaphysics including causation, free will and personal identity; and the study of intention and the theory of action. He has also written about the history of early modern philosophy. Yaffee is a member of the MacArthur Foundation’s Law and Neuroscience Project and collaborates with several neuroscientists to devise experiments that aim to be of legal and philosophical significance. His 2010 book. “Attempts,” concerns the philosophical foundations of the law governing attempted crimes. Yaffe’s grant will enable him to research the criminal responsibility of adolescents

Gideon Yaffe

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Alumni fellowship recipients

The alumni who received Guggenheim Fellowships, their professional affiliations, and the projects they will pursue are:

  • Matthew Barnson ’07 M.M., ’08 M.M.A., ’12 D.M.A., composer, Brooklyn, New York; assistant professor of composition, Stony Brook University, SUNY: Music composition.
  • Anthony Cerulli ’99 M.A.R., assistant professor of religious studies and Asian studies, Hobart and William Smith Colleges: “Sanskrit Medical Classics in Crisis: Language Politics and the Reinvention of a Medical Tradition in India”
  • Thomas Christensen ’82 M.Phil., ’85 Ph.D Music, the Avalon Foundation Professor of Music and the Humanities, University of Chicago: “Fetis and the Tonal Imagination: Discourses of Tonality in Nineteenth-Century France”
  • Jeff Dolven ’90 B.A., associate professor of English, Princeton University: “Already”
  • Brent Hayes Edwards ’90 B.A., professor of English and comparative literature, Columbia University: “Art of the Lecture”
  • Timothy J. Kehoe’77 M.A., ’79 Ph.D., professor of economics, University of Minnesota: “The Impact of Trade Liberalization: Lessons from NAFTA”
  • George E. Lewis ’74 B.A., composer, New York City; Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music, Columbia University: Music composition.
  • Susan Lipper ’83 M.F.A., photographer, New York City: Photography
  • Monica Prasad ’91 B.A., professor of sociology, Northwestern University: “Starving the Beast: The Origins of the American Antitax Movement”
  • Jonathan Rieder ’79 Ph.D., professor of sociology, Barnard College and Columbia University: “Crossing Over: Black-White Encounters in the Transition from Rhythm and Blues to Soul and Rock”
  • Beryl Satter ’89 M.Phil., ’92 Ph.D., professor of history, Rutgers University, Newark: “ShoreBank, Development, and the Fight Against Black Economic Marginalization”
  • Kyle Staver ’87 M.F.A., artist, Brooklyn, New York: Fine arts
  • Sarah Barringer Gordon ’86 J.D., ’86 M.A.R., ’87M.A.R., the Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and professor of history, University of Pennsylvania: “Freedom’s Holy Light: Disestablishment in America, 1776-1876”
  • Laurence T. Maloney ’70 B.A., professor of psychology and neural science, New York University: “The Statistical Brain”
  • Brenda E. Stevenson ’84 M.Phil., ’84 M.A., ’90 Ph.D., professor of history, University of California, Los Angeles: “Fanny’s World of Women: Generations of Enslaved Black Women in North America”
  • Michael Willrich ’87 B.A., the Leff Families Professor of History, Brandeis University: “The Anarchist’s Advocate: War, Terror, and the Origins of America’s Surveillance State”

Guggenheim Foundation

United States Senator Simon Guggenheim and his wife established the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1925 as a memorial to a son who died April 26, 1922. The foundation offers fellowships to further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color, or creed.

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