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New Class of Fellows Announced for Sixth Year of The Dorothy
and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers
New York City, June 7, 2004 -- Paul LeClerc, President of The New York
Public Library, announced today the names of the sixth class of fellows appointed
to the Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
Among the topics and projects on which the fifteen new fellows will work during
the 2004-2005 academic year are: Robert Moses's urbanism, biographies of Edith
Wharton, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Dorothea Lange, gay politics, and Cuban New
Yorkers, as well as five ambitious novels. This is the first class for which
the Center's new Sue Ann and John Weinberg Director, Jean Strouse, has supervised
the selection process. Ms. Strouse, author of Morgan, American Financier
(1999) and Alice James, A Biography (1980), was appointed the Center's
Director in September, 2003.
The class will occupy the Cullman Center's quarters on the second floor of the
landmark Humanities and Social Sciences Library, at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.
The Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers offers a nine-month fellowship to
people whose work will benefit directly from access to the collections at the
Humanities and Social Sciences Library – including academics, independent
scholars, journalists, scientists engaged with the humanities, novelists, and
other creative writers. Each fellow receives a stipend, office space, use of
a computer, and full access to the Library's physical and electronic resources.
The Cullman Center plays a vital, distinguished role in New York's cultural
and intellectual life, providing public conversations based on the work of individual
Fellows in forums throughout the Library. In addition, Fellows routinely publish
their work in local and national publications during their time at the Center.
The fifteen new fellows, with a broad spectrum of interests and projects, were
chosen by a distinguished seven-member selection committee. The applicant pool
this year consisted of 384 candidates from 23 countries. The fifteen people
selected are: Hilary Ballon, Professor and Chair of Art History and Archaeology
at Columbia University, Englewood, NJ; Martha Biondi, Assistant Professor
in the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University, Chicago,
IL; George Chauncey, Professor of History at the University of Chicago,
IL; Jennifer Egan, fiction writer and journalist, Brooklyn, NY; Nathan
Englander, fiction writer, New York, NY; Linda Gordon, Professor
of History at New York University, New York, NY; Elizabeth Kendall, journalist
specializing in dance and culture, New York, NY; Stephen Kotkin, Professor
of European and Asian History at Princeton University, NJ; Hermione Lee,
the Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature and Fellow of New College at
Oxford University, UK; Colum McCann, fiction writer, New York, NY; Pankaj
Mishra, journalist, travel writer, literary critic, political commentator,
and novelist, New Delhi, India; Lisandro Perez, Professor of Sociology,
Director of the International Migration Initiative, and the founder and former
Director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University
in Miami, FL; Jose Manuel Prieto, Professor of History and editor of
Istor, Journal of International History, at the Centro de Investigacion
y Docencia Economicas in Mexico City, Mexico; Danzy Senna, holder of
the Jenks Chair of Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy
Cross in Worcester, MS; T. J. Stiles, biographer, New York, NY.
"A truly outstanding group of scholars and writers will be arriving in the fall,"
said Director Jean Strouse, "and I'm immensely looking forward to working with
them. My first year as Director of the Cullman Center has been such a pleasure
that I'm sorry the current fellows have to leave, but they'll join a growing
community of extraordinarily talented alumni and will, I hope, be very much
a part of the ongoing life of the Center. We're all enormously grateful to the
Cullmans and to Paul LeClerc for making these experiences possible." Paul LeClerc,
President of The New York Public Library, said, "Now that the Dorothy and
Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers is in its sixth year, it is
difficult to recall a time when we did not have our wonderful scholars adding
to the intellectual and creative life of the Library. In the beginning, the
Cullmans imagined a place within the Library where scholars would be given the
time and support to use our unparalleled collections as the inspiration for
a marvelous array of new scholarly and literary projects. This year, once again,
we have a remarkable class of fellows who make that dream a reality."
Four members of this year's class, Hilary Ballon, Jennifer Egan, Hermione Lee,
and Lisandro Perez have been named Mel and Lois Tukman Fellows. A fifth fellow,
T. J. Stiles, will be the Gilder Lehrman Fellow in American History, and a sixth,
Jose Manuel Prieto, will be the Margaret and Herman Sokol Fellow. All have been
named in recognition, respectively, of gifts from Mr. and Mrs. Mel Tukman, Richard
Gilder, and Mr. and Mrs. Herman Sokol to the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
for Scholars and Writers.
The Center for Scholars and Writers is 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, William
W. Karatz, and additional gifts from Mel and Lois Tukman, The Gilder Lehrman
Institute, and Margaret and Herman Sokol.
