Three Cornell Professors invited to NEH Seminars

MOUNT VERNON – Three Cornell College professors have been invited to participate in three prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminars for 2009.

Associate Professor of English Katy Stavreva, Professor of Music James Martin, and Assistant Professor of English Shannon Reed were all selected by the NEH to receive grants to travel and participate in their respective programs. Only 15 participants are invited to any given seminar.

Stavreva will travel to Prato, Italy to participate in the seminar “Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ and the Medieval World: Literature, History, Art,” which is designed to encourage new readings of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” using interdisciplinary perspectives.

“The NEH seminar will give me an opportunity to pursue my research in a completely new literary context,” said Stavreva. “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to study Dante immersed in the language, art, and landscape in which the Commedia was created.”

She added that she planned to use the seminar as a way to lay the groundwork for future Cornell courses taught in Tuscany, Italy.

Martin, who will be participating in his third NEH seminar, will examine “German Exile Culture in California: European Traditions and American Modernity,” at Stanford University. He said he’s excited for the opportunity to return to such an environment.

“Past experience from my previous two fellowships predicts that this will be a very stimulating, intellectual group of scholars,” said Martin. “I consider my fellowship times at Columbia and Princeton to be two of the highlights of my career.”

Reed is slated to attend “Anglo-Irish Identities,” hosted by The Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame. The seminar is designed to explore cultural, political and ideological identities of the Anglo-Irish over five weeks in June-July.

Reed will use the seminar to make progress on her sabbatical project, a history of reading and its connection to English nationalism. After the NEH seminar, Reed will travel to the Huntington and William Andrews Clark libraries in southern California to continue her research, where both institutions have granted her fellowships to continue her research.

Summer Seminars and Institutes for College and University Teachers are offered by the National Endowment for the Humanities to provide college and university faculty members and independent scholars with an opportunity to enrich and revitalize their understanding of significant humanities ideas, texts and topics.