Four University of Pennsylvania faculty members have received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
They are among 168 scholars, artists, and scientists chosen as 2019 Guggenheim Fellows in the United States and Canada based on “prior achievement and exceptional promise.” Each award is designed to support a project lasting six to 12 months.
For literary criticism: Jed Esty, the Vartan Gregorian Professor of English and chair of the English Department in the School of Arts and Sciences. Esty’s fellowship project, “Cold War Victorians: How the British Imagination Shaped American Power,” surveys trans-Atlantic trade in popular narrative forms, motivated by the belief that the cultural life of the superpowers remains a pressing matter.
For fine arts: Michelle Lopez, assistant professor of fine arts in Penn’s Weitzman School of Design. Lopez is an interdisciplinary sculptor and installation artist known for her conceptual practice and experimental approach to process and material. Her artwork examines abject collapsed structures within industrial design, pop culture, and the architectural environment.
For fiction: Carmen Maria Machado, a writer-in-residence through the English Department’s Creative Writing Program. She is the author of the short story collection “Her Body and Other Parties” and the forthcoming memoir “In the Dream House.”
For anthropology and cultural studies: Adriana Petryna, the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in Anthropology in the School of Arts and Sciences. With the fellowship, Petryna plans to complete a manuscript about abrupt environmental shifts and the challenges facing emergency response, especially to wildfire.
