Professors win Guggenheim Fellowships

Narrowed from 3,000 applicants, three IU professors are among the 180 recipients of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for 2011.

The purpose of the award is to provide recipients funding for blocks of time in which they can work with as much creative freedom as possible, according to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation website.

The three professors, who are all in the College of Arts and Sciences, increase the number of Guggenheim Fellows for IU-Bloomington to 136.

GEORGE HUTCHINSON
Hutchinson is the Booth Tarkington professor of literary studies and is an adjunct professor of American studies and African American and African Diaspora studies. He is beginning work on a book tentatively titled “In a Dark Time: American literature and culture in the 1940s.” 

“I’m working on a book on American literature and culture in the 1940s, which is a remarkably neglected period in American literary history despite the fact that it was really transformational and a period of major achievements,” he said.
The fellowship allows Hutchinson to not teach for a year so he is able to focus on his interests and writing.

“I’m interested in the rise of the prestige and popularity of modernism and of American literature itself, and in how the literature tried to give shape to experience in the midst of epochal events,” Hutchinson said. “Why the ’40s has been a sort of black hole in American literary history also interests me.”

Hutchinson said he was pleased when he received the email with an attached letter from the president of the Guggenheim Foundation.

“I knew I had made it past the first round of cuts, but the Guggenheim competition is very, very stiff, so it was really exciting to get the nod,” he said.

MAURICE MANNING

Manning, associate director of creative writing in the Department of English, has already authored four books of poetry and will use the fellowship to complete his fifth, “The Gone and the Going Away.”

“I am the type of person who needs long periods of unencumbered time to work on my poetry, and this is an opportunity to do just that,” he said.

During his leave of absence from teaching duties, Manning will still advise graduate students and one undergraduate honors student.

Manning said receiving the fellowship was a relief because the application process was so drawn out.

“I was delighted,” he said. “I was surprised, pleasantly so.”

Manning was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his book on poetry, “The Common Man,” published in 2010.

“I just about jumped through the roof,” he said. “It was quite a surprise, and I had no idea it was even a possibility.”

OLAF SPORNS

Sporns, professor and associate chairman of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, received his fellowship for his project called “The Human Connectome,” which refers to a project to create a complete map of the connections of the human brain.

“I will use this time to write a book that will review cutting-edge research on the human brain, specifically on how the brain is functioning as a connected network,” he said.

Sporns said when he received the email he thought at first it would be bad news.

“I was very surprised and also very happy,” he said. “Most importantly, it is a great honor to be named a Guggenheim Fellow and to join what can only be described as an extremely accomplished group of scholars and artists. I think it is wonderful that Indiana University managed to win three of these awards in one year. It shows once again what an excellent university this
really is.”