Targoff wins Guggenheim award

Prof. Ramie Targoff (ENG), the Jehuda Reinharz director of the Mandel Center for Humanities, has been awarded a 2012 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

According to the Guggenheim website, “[the] fellowships are intended for men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.” The fellowship provides these individuals a year of academic leave to be covered by the Guggenheim. The year is to be spent pursuing personal artistic and academic ventures.

For her 2012-13 academic year of leave, Targoff will spend her time in Rome with her son, Harry, and Stephen Greenblatt, her husband and fellow Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, notes the Fellowship website.

During her time in Rome, Targoff will be working on her book titled Posthumous Love: Eros and the Afterlife in Renaissance England. This novel will touch on many aspects of love on earth as well as love beyond the grave. It looks to examine everything from Shakespeare and Elizabethan sonnets to an in-depth look at sermons on death and burial.

In an interview with the Justice regarding the application process for the Fellowship, Targoff described it as “elaborate.” She said it “requires you to give a very full account of the project you propose to do should you be given the grant but also asks you to summarize your academic work up to now. ... The fellowship application also asks for four letters of recommendation.”

When asked how being awarded the fellowship made her feel, Targoff answered, “I was thrilled to receive the Guggenheim—it is a huge honor and means a great deal to me.”

—Danielle Gross