NY Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers Announces New Class of 15 Fellows for 2001-2002

Nine-Month Program Offers Well-Known Authors, Academics Time to Create

New York, April 6, 2001 -- The names of the third class of fifteen fellows appointed to The New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers, for the academic year 2001-2002, were announced today by Library President Paul LeClerc and Peter Gay, the Center's Director and Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University.

The group will take up residence on September 10 in the Center's beautifully renovated quarters in the landmark Humanities and Social Sciences Library, at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. The Center for Scholars and Writers offers a nine-month fellowship that allows novelists, poets, historians, scientists and others doing research in a variety of fields to draw on the vast resources in the Library’s collections.

Fellows receive a stipend and office space, and are encouraged to share ideas. Since it opened in 1999, the Center has established itself as a lively hub of intellectual discourse that sponsors a popular lecture series with each class of scholars as speakers. During their stint at the Center, fellows publish articles, stories and poetry. Several members of the class of 1999-2000 published books based on research conducted at the Center.

The year 2001-2002 appointees include three Director's Fellows named by Gay: Jeffery Renard Allen, associate professor in the English Department at Queens College, City University of New York; Maarten C. Brands, professor of modern German history, University of Amsterdam, Holland; and Laura Engelstein, professor of History at Princeton University in New Jersey.

A selection committee comprised of academics, creative writers and independent researchers chose the other 12 fellows. The 293 applicants from 25 countries reflected a broad spectrum of interests and projects.

"Under the masterful tutelage of Peter Gay, the Center for Scholars and Writers has quickly become a place with global outreach and appeal," said Library President LeClerc. "With next year’s marvelous class, we will, in only three years, have hosted scholars and writers from nine different countries. It is thrilling to contemplate the wonderful works of interpretation and creation that will emerge from these gifted scholars and writers."

The 12 fellows are: Andrea Barrett, novelist, Rochester, New York; Carmen Boullosa, writer, Mexico City; Claudine Cohen, associate professor, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris; Thadious Davis, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee; Mark Doty, professor, Creative Writing Program, English Department, University of Houston, Texas; A.M. Homes, novelist, New York City; Susan Jacoby, writer, New York City; Douglas Morris, associate attorney, Federal Defender Division, Legal Aid Society, Brooklyn, New York; Josip Novakovich, an associate professor of English, Pennsylvania State University; Carla Peterson, professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature Program, University of Maryland, College Park; David Waldstreicher, associate professor of history, University of Notre Dame, Indiana; and Mike Wallace, professor of history, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, New York City.

"The fellows who will be joining us in September for our third class are as delightfully varied as the two previous years have been," said Center Director Gay. "They are poets, novelists, professors and legal scholars. Their interests range from Benjamin Franklin to atheism in the United States, Latin American poetry to prehistoric women. Truly, as the name of this institution promises, a center for scholars and writers."

André Aciman, a writer who is in the current class of fellows, said of his experience at the Center: "Some of us would love to do this day in day out for the rest of our lives. We arrive as early as we can and leave as late as our families allow – and we come to do two things: to read and to write. Soon, however, we discover we've made lifelong friends among people who are as eager to share what they know as they are to learn."

The Center for Scholars and Writers was made possible by a generous endowment from Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman in honor of Brooke Russell Astor, with major support provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Estate of Charles J. Liebman, Sue Ann and John Weinberg, The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and an additional gift from Sandra Payson.

More information about the scholars and their areas of research.

Information on the Center can be found on the Library’s website.

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Contact: Juana Kennedy at 212-704-8600