At the Cutting Edge of Culture: New School Faculty Honored by Guggenheim Foundation and AAAS
From illustrators to novelists, poets to historians–and some individuals who are all of the above–the 2012 roster of Guggenheim Fellows reads as a list of the world’s most innovative scholars and artists. That is why it should come as no surprise that this year’s fellows includes four New School faculty members among the 181 honorees (chosen from nearly 3,000 nominees):
Lauren Redniss, assistant professor of illustration, Parsons The New School for Design, has also been awarded a General Nonfiction fellowship. Rendess’s graphic work Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award for non-fiction.
Shimon Dotan is a faculty member at The New School for Public Engagement’s Media Studies program. Dotan has received a fellowship in Film and Video. He has produced, directed or written 13 feature films, many of which won leading international awards, such as the Special Jury Prize at Sundance (Hot House), the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival (The Smile of the Lamb), numerous Israeli Academy Awards, including Best Film and Best Director (Repeat Dive; The Smile of the Lamb).
Benjamin Taylor, is on the faculty of Creative Writing at The New School. Taylor, whose fellowship is in General Nonfiction, has written novels including Tales Out of School and The Book of Getting Even. His work has earned him the 2009 Barnes and Noble Discover Award and a Ferro-Grumley Prize.
Chitra Ganesh, who serves on the fine arts faculty at Parsons, has been granted a Fine Arts fellowship. Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally and is included in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, San Jose Museum of Art, Devi Art Foundation, Deutsche Bank, the Saatchi Collection. This summer the Gotenburg Kunstalle in Sweden will feature Ganesh in a solo show.
In addition, Creative Writing faculty member Brenda Wineapple has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Wineapple, a former Guggenheim Fellow herself, has written acclaimed literary biographies including White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Genêt: A Biography of Janet Flanner. Her cohort of 2012 Academy members includes luminaries from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to playwright Neil Simon to artist William Kentridge.