Two Columbia Professors Named 2018 Guggenheim Fellows

Saidiya Hartman, a professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, and Branden Joseph, the Frank Gallipoli Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, were named recipients of prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships for 2018.

Hartman's research focuses on African American literature and cultural history. "I'm delighted, it's a great honor," she said.

She will spend her fellowship year completing her latest book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, which examines the social upheaval and radical transformation of everyday life that took place in the emergent black ghetto in the early 20th century. It will be published by W.W. Norton & Co.

Hartman's previous books include Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-making in Nineteenth Century America (Oxford University Press, 1997) and Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).

Joseph's specialty is the art of the 1950s to present day, particularly from North American and European artists whose work challenged traditional boundaries. He is the author of five books, including Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde (2003), Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage (2008), The Roh and the Cooked: Tony Conrad and Beverly Grant in Europe (2012), and Experimentations: John Cage in Music, Art, and Architecture (2016).

His current project, tentatively titled Forms of Life, examines the works of punk poet Kathy Acker, underground filmmaker Jack Smith, conceptual artist Lee Lozano, and visual artist Carolee Schneemann.