Congratulations to American Studies faculty Jen Brody and Fred Turner on winning Guggenheims!

Jennifer DeVere Brody(Image credit: Lava Thomas)

Jennifer DeVere Brody is a professor in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences and works closely with the program in African and African American Studies. Her research and teaching focus includes performance, aesthetics, politics, race, and subjectivity. Her books include Impossible Purities (Duke University Press, 1998) on Black feminist theory and Victorian culture and Punctuation: Art, Politics and Play (Duke University Press, 2008) on Black queer studies and contemporary cultural studies. She co-edited a re-publication of James Baldwin’s illustrated book, Little Man, Little Man (Duke University Press, 2018). After a decade of prioritizing university service as Chair and Director where she worked to expand race studies at Stanford, she looks forward to having more time to focus on her scholarship.

“I am grateful to the Guggenheim Foundation for its long-standing support of artists, academics, and independent researchers. I am excited to join this community that has recognized individuals such as Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston whose work has influenced my scholarship, said Brody. “During the fellowship, I will write about the Afro-Native neo-classical sculptor, Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907), whose image graces the most recent Black Heritage postage stamp.”

Fred Turner(Image credit: Mareike Foecking)

Fred Turner is the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor in the Department of Communication in the School of Humanities and Sciences. He is also a professor, by courtesy, in the Departments of History and Art & Art History. In 2012, he was appointed the Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang University Fellow in Undergraduate Education in honor of his commitment to undergraduate teaching.

Turner’s research and writing explore media, technology, and American cultural history. His books examine how emerging media have shaped American life since World War II and his essays have tackled topics ranging from the rise of reality crime television to the role of the Burning Man festival in contemporary new media industries.

“I’m thrilled to have received a Guggenheim Fellowship and I’m very grateful to my colleagues, mentors, and students for doing so much to shape my research and writing,” said Turner.

“As a fellow, I’ll be working on a book about media and the politics of difference in 1980s America. Between the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and rise of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, Americans witnessed a now-forgotten explosion in new media technologies (think cable TV, the Walkman, the VCR) and a simultaneous turn toward identity-centered politics on both the left and the right. The book aims to explore how these events shaped one another and to argue that when they did, they helped set the stage for the polarized, hyper-individuated world we inhabit today.”