John Louis Lucaites will receive the 2016 Tracy M. Sonneborn Award, an award given for outstanding research and creative teaching.
After receiving this honor, Lucaites will present the annual Sonneborn Lecture this fall, according to an IU press release. The Sonneborn award and lecture are named after Tracy M. Sonneborn, a late IU biologist and geneticist known for his teaching.
Lucaites is an English professor and associate dean for the arts and humanities and undergraduate education in the College of Arts and Sciences. He proposed and chaired the college’s Themester program for the 2010-11 school year, called “Making War, Making Peace.”
Lucaites has directed 26 dissertations to completion, has served on eight dissertation committees and has chaired another six of these committees, according to the release. He has also co-authored the book “No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy,” which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
He is also co-author of the books “Crafting Equality: America’s Anglo-African Word,” and “The Public Image: Photography and Civic Spectatorship,” which will be released later this year.
No Caption Needed, a blog Lucaites co-hosts, focuses on the relationship between public culture and photography.
Lucaites and three other IU-Bloomington faculty members will be honored as Provost Professors at the fall Sonneborn lecture.
“It will be a pleasure to honor John Lucaites, Michael Adams, Jane Adams, Jane McLeod and Gregory Waller on behalf of the entire campus,” Provost Lauren Robel said in the release. “All are renowned scholars in their respective fields, as well as venerable teachers and mentors. They exemplify all that is great about our faculty.”
Provost Professors are faculty designated positions for those who have achieved local, national and international distinction in research and teaching. Originally created in 1996, the position was once called Chancellor’s Professor.
The Sonneborn Award carries a $3,500 cash award and $1,000 grant to support a student’s research or creative activity, according to the release. Provost Professors receive a $5,000 grant for a project demonstrating how teaching and research reinforce one another, in addition to an annual $2,500 award given for three years.
Adams, a historian of English words and language, is a lexicographer and has a strong interest in slang and jargon, especially in the language of television and invented languages, according to the release.
Adams has created and taught graduate courses in literature and lexicography, as well as undergraduate courses about both slang and aspects of popular culture.
As an editor of the Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America for several years, Adams has worked on dictionary projects and is currently writing two books entitled “Dictionary of American English” and “The Server’s Lexicon.”
Adams has also authored three other books, including “From Elvish to Klingon,” which is the first academic survey of invented language, according to the release. His book, “In Praise of Poetry,” will be published this summer.
McLeod, a mentor and teacher of medical sociology, sociology of mental health and research methods, focuses her work in the exploration of social disparities in the mental and physical health of children, as well as stress models for mental health research.
McLeod has co-edited the volumes “Mental Health, Social Mirror” and “Handbook of the Social Psychology of Inequality,” used for graduate courses, and has been published in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology and Social Forces.
She has received the Leonard I. Pearlin Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociological Student of Mental Health from the American Sociological Association, according to the release.
As a teacher and film historian, Waller chaired IU’s Department of Communication and Culture from 2003 to 2010 and the director search committee for the IU Cinema, as well as a faculty advisory board that vets programming ideas.
Waller helped plan renovation to the IU Cinema and has written two books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Main Street Amusements: Movie and Commercial Entertainment in a Southern City, 1896-1930.”
“Professors Lucaites, Adams, McLead and Waller have demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to excellence in teaching and research,” Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs Eliza Pavalko said in the release. “They are truly deserving of this recognition.”
Carley Lanich
