Faculty books in the humanities recognized
Three members of the faculty at the University of Colorado have won 2009 Kayden Book Awards, which are CU awards that celebrate and disseminate excellent published scholarship in the humanities.
The winners are:
- In the category of art history, Claire Farago, professor of art and art history, for 鈥淭ransforming Images: New Mexican Santos In-Between Worlds, published by Pennsylvania State University Press in 2006.
- In the category of history, Scott Bruce, associate professor of history, for 鈥淪ilence and Sign Language in Medieval Monasticism,鈥 published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. Honorable mention went to Susan Kent, professor of history, for 鈥淎ftershocks: Politics and Trauma in Britain, 1918-1931,鈥 published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2009.
- In the category of creative writing, Stephen Graham Jones, professor of English, for 鈥淟edfeather,鈥 published by
Fiction Collective 2 in 2008. Honorable mention went to Jeffrey Deshell, associate professor of English, for 鈥淭he Trouble With Being Born,鈥 published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2008.
The winners will each receive a $1,000 research fund, and their departments will each receive $4,000 to host a one-day Author Meets Critics symposium.
The Kayden Book Awards are named after Eugene M. Kayden, who was born in Russia in 1886, came to the United States at the age of 16, enrolled at CU in 1908, and graduated in 1912 with a bachelor鈥檚 degree in economics.
To improve his English while attending CU, Kayden translated Russian plays, poems and other literary works into English. Kayden continued with the advanced study of economics at Princeton and Harvard and embarked on a distinguished career as a scholar and teacher of economics, serving on the faculty of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., from 1923-1955.
Kayden believed that the best way to understand Russia was through its literature, and that cultural understanding was basic to world peace. Kayden maintained a lifelong attachment and loyalty to the University of Colorado, the place where his interest in Russian translation began. His gifts to his alma mater resulted in the creation of the Eugene M. Kayden Fund, the income from which is used for the advancement of the humanities.
The Kayden Book Awards are made by a committee of CU faculty members from the humanities.