Culture, Climate, and the Cold War
Four BU Faculty Awarded Guggenheim Fellowships
By Jessica Ullian
CAS Professor Richard Primack studies climate change, funded in part with a Guggenheim grant.
Their research has taken them into the museums and universities of Afghanistan, the villages of West Bengal, and the hidden wilderness of Concord, Massachusetts. They have explored the political past, the cultural present, and the climatic future. And for the work they have completed and the work that remains, four BU faculty members have been selected as 2006 Guggenheim Fellows.
Guggenheim Fellowships are given to advanced professionals in any field (natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, creative arts) except the performing arts. They usually last a year and average about $35,000. Among the 187 U.S. and Canadian Fellows selected from nearly 3,000 applicants for 2006 were Thomas Barfield, a College of Arts and Sciences professor of anthropology and department chair, for his project titled Political Legitimacy in Afghanistan; Frank J. Korom, a CAS associate professor of religion and anthropology, for The Impact of Modernity on Traditional Bengali Scroll Painters and Singers; Richard Primack, a CAS professor of biology, for Climate Change in Thoreau's Concord; and Julian Zelizer, a CAS professor of history, for National Security Politics from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism.
Korom plans to take a leave of absence from the University to complete Singing Modernity, a book about how Bengali scroll painters and singers have adapted their industry to meet modern-day needs.
Julian Zelizer
Barfield, the director of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies, which is headquartered at BU, will use the Guggenheim grant to continue his research on Afghanistan. Civil war, he says, has disrupted the flow of international scholarship on the nation; the Institute hopes to "develop the long-term perspective on the country's history and culture."
Primack's work has long explored the impact of climate change on the arrival of migratory birds and the flowering times of plants. He focuses on Concord, Massachusetts, using sources that include Thoreau's flowering records of Concord. During his sabbatical year, he will use the fellowship to write a book on the subject and will also spend several months as a visiting professor at Tokyo University.
Zelizer, a political historian, will use the grant to continue work on a book exploring the history of national security politics from the Cold War era.