Four Weissman School faculty members have been recognized with prestigious fellowships and awards for 2018–19. Esther Allen, PhD, in the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature, and Alison Griffiths, PhD, of Communication Studies, were awarded Guggenheim Fellowships. Thomas Desch-Obi, PhD, in History, and Barbara Katz-Rothman, PhD, in Sociology and Anthropology, received Fulbright awards.
Dr. Allen, named a Guggenheim Fellow for translation, will complete the translation of two novels by the Argentinian writer Antonio Di Benedetto (1922–86): The Silentiary and The Suicides. She has already translated Di Benedetto’s Zama, today considered a classic. Dr. Griffiths, named a Guggenheim Fellow for film, video, and new media studies, is using her fellowship to write a book titled Nomadic Cinema: A Cultural Geography of the Expedition Film, which examines expedition filmmaking in the early 20th century. Dr. Desch-Obi received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant to support his research on the history of endangered Afro-Colombian martial arts known collectively as grima. Beginning January 2019, he will spend seven months in Colombia, conducting archival and ethnographic research, and will continue work on the monograph Hombres Históricos: Grima and the Afro-Colombian Struggle. Dr. Katz-Rothman received a Fulbright-Saastamoinen Foundation Distinguished Chair in Health Sciences Award, which provides an American scholar with the opportunity to conduct research at the University of Eastern Finland. She is studying the history of the inherited metabolic disorders known as “the heritage diseases.”