News Releases
2012-2013
12/3/12 Award Turns First Manuscripts Into First-Rate Books
A scholar of "medieval media studies" and a historian of modern Europe have each won a 2012-13 First Book Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for the Humanities.
The annual award, funded by a short-term humanities grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, convenes an academic "dream team" of reviewers to help junior humanities faculty whip their first book-length manuscript into tip-top shape for publication....
10/18/12 "UW Prof's Award-Winning 'Slow Violence' Gives Voice to Global Struggle
The cover of Rob Nixon's new book features black smoke, drifting across a dreary cityscape.
The title, "Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor," hints at grim topics within: radiation contamination, toxic drift, the destruction of ecosystems and communities to make way for dams or mines.
But the book, which has just won the 2012 American Book Award, locates triumph and hope in the voices of those bearing witness to these dangers. By framing a discussion of "slow violence" - insidious, long-term threats to people and landscape - against a global body of literature, Nixon reveals the critical role of writer-activists in the fight for environmental justice around the world...
8/23/12 "Hacking" to Bridge a Divide
David Krakauer, director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID), explained to a roomful of humanities scholars that for too long, the disciplines of math and science have been growing apart from the study of art, music, philosophy and literature...
2011-2012
3/21/12 Prison reading groups liberate minds, UW grad students find.
Jose Vergara, a graduate student in the UW-Madison Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, remembers how the Oakhill Correctional Institution inmates in his reading and writing group reacted to a short story called "Blue Notebook #10," by Daniil Kharms...
2/7/12 First Book Award lends crucial support to junior faculty.
From the time they are hired, humanities faculty members begin working to turn the dissertation that earned them a Ph.D. into a book that will earn them tenure. But it’s not as easy as handing pages over to a publisher...
3/1/12 Communicating Danger Across 10,000 Years.
1/31/12 UW English professor urges environmental writers to "tell stories no one else can tell."
12/12/11 Public humanities project proves literacy isn’t limited to the page.
2/7/11 Panel explores WikiLeaks fallout.
9/29/11 UW humanities faculty, library share insights, ancient manuscripts with high school teachers.
10/19/11 Wisconsin Book Festival author is world traveler, UW-Madison dad.