2021 Guggenheim Fellows Announced
New York: Today, the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation approved the awarding for Guggenheim Fellowships to a diverse group of 184 artists, writers, scholars, and scientists. These exceptional candidates were chosen through a rigorous peer-review process from almost 3,000 applicants.
Created in 1925 by Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon Guggenheim, the Foundation has offered fellowships to exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions.
“I am thrilled to announce this new group of Guggenheim Fellows,” said Edward Hirsch, President of the Foundation, “especially since this has been a devastating year in so many ways. A Guggenheim Fellowship has always been meaningful, but this year we know it will be a lifeline for many of the new Fellows at a time of great hardship, a survival tool as well as a creative one. The work supported by the Fellowship will help us understand more deeply what we are enduring individually and collectively, and it is an honor for the Foundation to help the Fellows do what they were meant to do.”
Contributions by friends, Trustees, and former Fellows are supporting the following Fellowships:
- The Fellowship in Fine Arts for the painter Peter B. Williams is underwritten by Robert De Niro in honor of his father Robert De Niro, Sr., a painter and a Guggenheim Fellow in 1968;
- Ian Frazier’s Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction is underwritten by Wendy Belzberg and Strauss Zelnick in honor of the writer Stacy Schiff, a Guggenheim Fellow in 1996;
- Art historian Marisa Anne Bass of Yale University has received the inaugural Fellowship in Early Modern Studies, underwritten through gifts by five former Fellows;
- The Fellowship in Constitutional Studies, to be held by Amalia D. Kessler of Stanford University, is underwritten by the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation;
- A Fellowship in Engineering for engineer and biomedical scientist John A. Rogers of Northwestern University is underwritten by Anthony Roberts;
- The estate of Philip Roth, a Fellow in 1959, provides partial support for writers.
- Fellows in the creative arts are partially supported by the Joel Conarroe Fund, named for the former President of the Foundation who was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1977.
The great range of backgrounds, fields of study, and accomplishments of Guggenheim Fellows is a unique characteristic of the Fellowship program. In all, 49 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 73 different academic institutions, 28 states and 2 Canadian provinces are represented in this year’s class of Fellows, who range in age from 31 to 85. Close to 60 Fellows have no full-time college or university affiliation.
Since its establishment in 1925, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has granted nearly $400 million in Fellowships to over 18,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors.
For more information on the 2021 Fellows, please visit the Foundation’s website at www.gf.org.
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
2021 Fellows – United States and Canada
NATURAL SCIENCES
Applied Mathematics
Oscar E. Fernandez, Simi Valley, CA
Astronomy–Astrophysics
Arjun Dey, Tucson, AZ
Vicky Kalogera, Wilmette, IL
Biology
Priyanga Amarasekare, Los Angeles, CA
Adriana Darielle Mejía Briscoe, Irvine, CA
Chemistry
Christopher J. Chang, Berkeley, CA
Eugenia Kumacheva, Toronto, ON, Canada
- Akif Tezcan, La Jolla, CA
Computer Science
Jason Nieh, New York, NY
Earth Science
Sidney R. Hemming, New York, NY
Engineering
Suhas Diggavi, Los Angeles, CA
John A. Rogers, Evanston, IL
Neuroscience
Steven Phelps, Austin, TX
Physics
William Bialek, New York, NY
Alexandre Blais, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Anthropology & Cultural Studies
Keith L. Camacho, Los Angeles, CA
Kamari Clarke, Maple, ON, Canada
Kevin Lewis O’Neill, Toronto, ON, Canada
Laurence Ralph, Princeton, NJ
Paige West, New York, NY
Constitutional Studies
Amalia D. Kessler, Los Altos, CA
Economics
Ufuk Akcigit, Chicago, IL
Atif Mian, Princeton, NJ
Education
Guanglei Hong, Chicago, IL
Geography & Environmental Studies
Lenore Fahrig, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Reece Jones, Honolulu, HI
Eric W. Sanderson, Bronx, NY
Law
Julia Rudolph, Durham, NC
Michael Tonry, Minneapolis, MN
Political Science
Isabela Mares, New Haven, CT
Jonathan A. Rodden, Stanford, CA
Psychology
Mesmin Destin, Chicago, IL
Seth D. Pollak, Madison, WI
Sociology
Geneviève Zubrzycki, Ann Arbor, MI
HUMANITIES
American Literature
Joshua Bennett, Braintree, MA
Raúl Coronado, San Francisco, CA
Architecture, Planning, & Design
Peter Hewitt Christensen, Rochester, NY
Classics
Paul J. Kosmin, Cambridge, MA
Early Modern Studies
Marisa Anne Bass, Guilford, CT
East Asian Studies
Joan Judge, Toronto, ON, Canada
English Literature
John S. Garrison, Grinnell, IA
Laura Otis, Atlanta, GA
European & Latin American History
Emily Joan Greble, Nashville, TN
Bianca Premo, South Miami, FL
Todd David Shepard, New York, NY
Tara Zahra, Chicago, IL
European & Latin American Literature
Debarati Sanyal, Berkeley, CA
Film, Video, & New Media Studies
Susan Murray, New York, NY
James Tweedie, Seattle, WA
Fine Arts Research
Julie Nelson Davis, Philadelphia, PA
Chon Noriega, Los Angeles, CA
Lisa Pon, Los Angeles, CA
History of Science, Technology, & Economics
Lochlann Jain, San Francisco, CA
Intellectual & Cultural History
Michael Gubser, Manassas, VA
Seth Koven, Havertown, PA
Imani Perry, Glenside, PA
Linguistics
David Goldstein, Los Angeles, CA
Patrick C M Wong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong
Literary Criticism
Robyn Creswell, New York, NY
Elizabeth Mary DeLoughrey, Los Angeles, CA
Tarek El-Ariss, Hanover, NH
Medieval & Renaissance History
Vincent Barletta, Palo Alto, CA
Simon Doubleday, Astoria, NY
Philosophy
- Lanier Anderson, Mountain View, CA
Jennifer Lackey, Evanston, IL
Roslyn Weiss, Oradell, NJ
Religion
Steven P. Hopkins, Swarthmore, PA
Amira Mittermaier, Toronto, ON, Canada
Tisa Wenger, Hamden, CT
South & Southeast Asian Studies
Ali Anooshahr, Sebastopol, CA
Ronit Ricci, Mevasseret Zion, Israel
Theatre Arts & Performance Studies
- M. Bogad, Berkeley, CA
Rebecca Schneider, Warwick, RI
Translation
Jessica Cohen, Denver, CO
Edward Gauvin, Sacramento, CA
United States History
Cindy Hahamovitch, Athens, GA
Kevin J. Mumford, Chicago, IL
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Philadelphia, PA
Heather Ann Thompson, Detroit, MI
CREATIVE ARTS
Biography
Victoria Johnson, New York, NY
Choreography
Tommie-Waheed Evans, Philadelphia, PA
Maureen Fleming, New York, NY
Christopher L. Huggins, New York, NY
José Ome Navarrete Mazatl, Oakland, CA
Helen Simoneau, Brooklyn, NY
Christopher Williams, New York, NY
Drama & Performance Art
Mike Lew, Brooklyn, NY
Kaneza Schaal, Brooklyn, NY
Sarah Cameron Sunde, New York, NY
Fiction
Kaitlyn Greenidge, Westborough, MA
Mitchell S. Jackson, Chicago, IL
Tayari Jones, Atlanta, GA
Daniel Mason, Palo Alto, CA
Laura van den Berg, Sanford, FL
Paul Yoon, Sanford, FL
Film-Video
Ephraim Asili, Hudson, NY
Keren Cytter, Elmhurst, NY
Faren Humes, Miami, FL
Richard Kraft, Coxsackie, NY
Irene E. Lusztig, Ben Lomond, CA
Jill Magid, Brooklyn, NY
Alison McAlpine, Montreal, QC, Canada
Alexandre Moratto, Santa Clara, CA
Annie Silverstein, Austin, TX
Cauleen Smith, Los Angeles, CA
Annie Sprinkle, San Francisco, CA
Beth Stephens, San Francisco, CA
Jorge Thielen Armand, London, ON, Canada
Tourmaline, Brooklyn, NY
Jake Yuzna, Minneapolis, MN
Fine Arts
Amy Adler, Los Angeles, CA
Brandon Ballengée, Arnaudville, LA
Lisa Beck, Brooklyn, NY
Dara Birnbaum, New York, NY
- K. Burns, Stone Ridge, NY
Crystal Z Campbell, Oklahoma City, OK
Enrique Chagoya, San Francisco, CA
William Cordova, North Miami Beach, FL
Luba Drozd, Brooklyn, NY
Emil Ferris, Evanston, IL
Eve Fowler, Los Angeles, CA
Lilian Garcia-Roig, Tallahassee, FL
Michelle Grabner, Fox Point, WI
Diana Guerrero-Maciá, Chicago, IL
Josephine Halvorson, Mill River, MA
Sung Hwan Kim, New York, NY
Jesse Krimes, Philadelphia, PA
Karen Lofgren, Los Angeles, CA
Elizabeth Malaska, Portland, OR
Pepón Osorio, Philadelphia, PA
Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Brooklyn, NY
Dread Scott, Brooklyn, NY
James Siena, New York, NY
Jane South, Brooklyn, NY
Melissa Thorne, Troy, NY
Peter B. Williams, Wilmington, DE
General Nonfiction
Alexander Chee, Hanover, NH
Ian Frazier, Montclair, NJ
William Giraldi, Cambridge, MA
Farah Jasmine Griffin, New York, NY
Helen Molesworth, Los Angeles, CA
George Prochnik, London, United Kingdom
Wendell Steavenson, London, United Kingdom
Robert Sullivan, Philadelphia, PA
Michelle Tea, Glendale, CA
Kate Zambreno, Brooklyn, NY
Music Composition
Rez Abbasi, New York, NY
Ashkan Behzadi, Toronto, ON, Canada
Donnacha Dennehy, Princeton, NJ
Zosha Di Castri, New York, NY
Sky Macklay, Paris, France
Miya Masaoka, New York, NY
Nkeiru Okoye, New Paltz, NY
Igor Santos, Evanston, IL
Helen Sung, Forest Hills, NY
Ming Tsao, Berlin, Germany
Elio Villafranca, Bronx, NY
Katherine Young, Decatur, GA
Nina C. Young, New York, NY
Photography
Sama Alshaibi, Tucson, AZ
Suzanne Bloom, Houston, TX
Richard Allen Frishman, Langley, WA
Ed Hill, Houston, TX
Zig Jackson, Savannah, GA
Michael Jang, San Francisco, CA
Ken Light, Orinda, CA
Stephen Marc, Tempe, AZ
Tamara Reynolds, Nashville, TN
Jono Rotman, San Francisco, CA
Victoria Sambunaris, Stottville, NY
Bill Sullivan, New York, NY
Ron Tarver, Elkins Park, PA
Rodrigo Valenzuela, Los Angeles, CA
Chris Verene, Brooklyn, NY
Poetry
Ellen Bass, Santa Cruz, CA
Don Mee Choi, Seattle, WA
Andrea Cohen, Watertown, MA
Stephen Kuusisto, Syracuse, NY
Sandra Lim, Cambridge, MA
Tracie Morris, Brooklyn, NY
Craig Morgan Teicher, Verona, NJ
Roberto José Tejada, Houston, TX
Connie Voisine, Las Cruces, NM
Mark Wunderlich, Catskill, NY