Awards and Honors

UCLA’s Justin Torres wins National Book Award for ‘Blackouts’

Justin Torres, a UCLA professor of English, has won the National Book Award for Fiction. The award was presented Wednesday evening in a New York City ceremony hosted by actor-director LeVar Burton and featuring a presentation by Oprah Winfrey. The National Book Foundation also presented honors for nonfiction, poetry, translated literature and young people’s literature. (Watch the full ceremony; Torres’ acceptance speech begins at about 2:08.00.) Torres was honored for “Blackouts,” a boldly experimental work that incorporates vignettes, imagery and poetry to present a dialogue between a twentysomething narrator and a much older man named Juan Gay, who is on…

Laure Murat wins Medicis Prize for nonfiction

Laure Murat, a UCLA distinguished professor of French and Francophone studies, has received the Medicis Prize in the “essay,” or nonfiction, category, one of France’s top literature awards. Murat was honored for “Proust and Me: A Family Romance” (“Proust, roman familial”), a genre-busting book that examines the influence of Marcel Proust’s work on Murat’s own life. The work blends nonfiction, autobiography, literary and sociological analysis in exploring the interrelationship between Proust’s seminal novel “In Search of Lost Time” (“À la recherche du temps perdu”), a seven-volume masterpiece published between 1913 and 1927, Murat’s family history and her own personal journey….

Professor emeritus receives Association for Asian American Studies lifetime achievement award

King-Kok Cheung, professor emeritus of English and Asian American studies at UCLA, received the Association for Asian American Studies lifetime achievement award late April for her contributions to the fields of Asian American and Pacific Islander studies. Cheung was born and raised in Hong Kong before coming to UC Berkeley to earn her Ph.D. in English. In 1984, Cheung was the first woman of color in the humanities division and the first faculty member of Asian descent to join the English department at UCLA. She is the author of “Articulate Silences” and “Chinese American Literature without Borders.” “I feel that…

Professor shares experience as Rome Prize recipient

Sarah Beckmann, an assistant professor of Roman archaeology in the classics department and a faculty member at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, has been named the 2023 Andrew Heiskell Rome Prize Fellow in ancient studies. “For over a century, the American Academy in Rome has awarded the Rome Prize to support innovative and cross-disciplinary work in the arts and humanities. Each year, the Rome Prize is awarded to about thirty artists and scholars who represent the highest standard of excellence,” according to the American Academy in Rome’s website. Beckmann received the award for her book project, “The Villa in Late…

Dive into the classical work of professor Alex Purves

Few forms can rival poetry for its power — through the enduring works of Homer, for example, the ancient world has remained vibrantly close to us for centuries. “I’m interested in early Greek poetry at a very fundamental level: the ways in which it can express aspects of our experience that other genres or art forms cannot,” says Alex Purves, professor and chair of the UCLA Department of Classics. “I like to think about the formalities and intricacies of poetic language in relation to the big-picture questions of space and time.” A recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, Purves is working…

Chancellor’s Council on the Arts looking for submissions to honor 2 students

The UCLA Chancellor’s Council on the Arts will honor two students – a graduate and an undergraduate student – as 2023 class artists. Winners will be featured in a UCLA commencement video and storytelling package on UCLA Newsroom along with receiving a $1500 honorarium each for their recognition. Students who are from academic units represented in Chancellor’s Council on the Arts are eligible to nominate themselves or one another. These include the School of the Arts and Architecture, Herb Alpert School of Music, School of Theater, Film & Television, Division of Humanities, and Division of Social Sciences. The submissions…

Harryette Mullen among 3 UCLA professors elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

In 1781, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were among the first members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies. This year, three UCLA faculty members were elected to join them. UCLA’s new members for 2023 are: Heather Maynard Maynard is UCLA’s Dr. Myung Ki Hong Professor of Polymer Science and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. A leader in the area of protein-polymer conjugates — important therapeutics for a variety of diseases — Maynard develops new synthetic methods to make the materials, invents new polymers to improve…

3 Humanities professors among 5 UCLA faculty to receive Guggenheim Fellowships

Five UCLA professors — including three from the UCLA Division of Humanities — are among the 171 Guggenheim Fellows for 2023. Presented annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the fellowships recognize the recipients’ prior achievements and exceptional promise. The grants, which vary in amount, are intended to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.” Representing the Humanities Division are professors Michael Berry (Asian Languages and Cultures), Alex Purves (Classics) and Michael Rothberg…

Dominic Thomas wins international Gutenberg Research Chair honor

Last November, Dominic Thomas, Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the UCLA Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies, won the Gutenberg Research Chair. As part of his prize, he will serve as lead investigator on a project, “Ecology and Propaganda.” “This honor is a testament to the remarkable timeliness, power and scope of Dominic Thomas’ work,” said Alexandra Minna Stern, dean of the UCLA Division of Humanities. “We are proud to have him representing our division, university and field on a global scale as he innovates new approaches to critically studying pressing environmental and ecological…

Professor Elizabeth DeLoughrey discusses Guggenheim Fellowship

Elizabeth DeLoughrey, a UCLA professor of English who also holds an appointment in the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, received a 2021 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in the category of literary criticism in recognition of her existing work and future potential. DeLoughrey teaches postcolonial literature courses on the environment, globalization, and the Anthropocene with a focus on the Caribbean and Pacific Islands. She has published several books, including her latest, “Allegories of the Anthropocene” (Duke University Press, 2019), and co-founded the UCLA Postcolonial Literature and Theory Colloquium. In addition to being honored with a Guggenheim, DeLoughrey has…