The Hiett Prize in the Humanities is an annual award aimed at identifying candidates who are in the early stages of careers devoted to the humanities and whose work shows extraordinary promise and has a significant public component related to contemporary culture.
The opposite of a lifetime achievement award, the Hiett Prize seeks to encourage future leaders in the humanities by 1) recognizing their early accomplishment and their potential and 2) assisting their ongoing work through a cash award of $50,000.
The Hiett Prize was endowed by Kim Hiett Jordan, a Lifetime Board Member of the Dallas Institute, to honor her parents, who inspired in her a lifelong love of learning.
1. A letter of recommendation from a person whose career in the humanities is well established;
2. A curriculum vitae of no more than four pages;
3. A narrative profile of accomplishments and published work;
4. A plan for future scholarship and/or projects in the humanities.
Note: All applicants must reside in the United States. For more information, contact Dr. Claudia Allums at 214.981.8813 or email her at callums@dallasinstitute.org.
Elizabeth Samet holds a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from Yale. Since 2007, she has been a full professor of English at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where she has taught in various capacities for more than fifteen years. Dr. Samet has written two books, Willing Obedience: Citizens, Soldiers and the Progress of Consent in America, 1776-1898 and Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest. She is currently awaiting the publication of another book, No Man's Land, and is working on Crimes of Odysseus: Imagining Postwar America with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Dr. Samet has also written articles and essays for numerous publications nationwide and has been a selected speaker at national and international conferences for more than ten years.
Diana Senechal holds a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures from Yale University, with a dissertation on Nikolai Gogol. Her translations of the Lithuanian poetry of Tomas Venclova have been published in two books: Winter Dialogue (1997) and The Junction (2008). Her next book, Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture , will be published in January 2012 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. A former New York City public school teacher, Dr. Senechal has written for American Educator, American Educational History Journal, Education Week, Educational Leadership, and numerous blogs. Her future projects include a study of the worship of change in American culture; an exploration of the teaching of Sophocles' Antigone from coast to coast; and an analysis of Gogol's stories for a general audience. In addition to writing and teaching, Dr. Senechal enjoys reading in various languages, playing cello, tackling unfamiliar subjects, rereading favorite literature, and memorizing poetry. She is currently a curriculum advisor at Columbia Secondary School in New York City. She lives in Brooklyn.
To hear her lecture from the 2011 Prize Luncheon, please follow this link. To learn more about Dr. Senechal, including information about her upcoming book, Republic of Noise, please visit her website.
Mark Oppenheimer is a freelance writer, an editor, a lecturer in the English and Political Science departments of Yale University, and a teacher of creative writing at Wellesley College. He earned his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Yale University in 2003, receiving the John Addison Porter Prize for Best Dissertation in the Humanities. Dr. Oppenheimer is author of three books: Knocking on Heaven's Door: American Religion in the Age of Counterculture, Thirteen and a Day: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah Across America, and, most recently, Wisenheimer: A Childhood Subject to Debate. He presently writes a biweekly "Beliefs" column for The New York Times and, in addition to publishing personal essays and book reviews, writes also for The New York Times Magazine, Slate, Mother Jones, Tablet, and many other publications. He is an editor of The New Haven Review, an occasional commentator on NPR, and the current coordinator of the Yale Journalism Initiative. His ongoing scholarly work is currently focused on three book projects: the dynamics of community in urban neighborhood settings, specifically his own neighborhood on West Rock Avenue in New Haven, Connecticut; a cultural study of Scientology; and a biography of English philosopher and just-war theorist G.E.M. Anscombe. Dr. Oppenheimer's New Haven household includes his wife, three daughters, dog, and two cats.
To read an article about Dr. Oppenheimer on the Wellesley College website, click here.
James E. McWilliams earned his Ph.D. in history at The Johns Hopkins University in 2001. He is Associate Professor of History at Texas State University-San Marcos and an Associate Fellow in the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University. His interests center on American history, with specializations in environmental, agricultural, and economic history. His books include A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America (Columbia University Press, 2005), Building the Bay Colony: Economy and Society in Early Massachusetts (University of Virginia Press, 2007), and American Pests: The Losing War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT (Columbia University Press, May 2008). In addition to writing academic books, McWilliams publishes frequently in the popular press, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, and is a contributing writer at The Texas Observer. Currently, Prof. McWilliams is writing a book tentatively titled Just Food: How Locavores Endanger the Future of Food and How We Truly Eat Ethically (Little, Brown), due out in Summer 2009. This project explores the viability of achieving a sustainable global diet for a world population expected to reach 8.9 billion by 2050. His permanent home is in Austin, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Leila Kempner, and two children.
The 2009 Hiett Gala Award Celebration Featured Keynote Stephen Sondheim.
David Greenberg is Assistant Professor of Journalism & Media Studies and of History at Rutgers University, specializing in American political and cultural history. His first book, Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image, won the Washington Monthly Political Book Award, the American Journalism History Book Award, and, in dissertation form, Columbia University's Bancroft Dissertation Award. In 2006 he published two books: Calvin Coolidge, a biography in the American Presidents Series edited by the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and Presidential Doodles. He is currently at work on a book for Norton about the history of presidents and spin. He has been recognized with awards and fellowship from other organizations, including the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the White House Historical Association, and the Mrs. Giles R. Whiting Foundation. He holds a BA, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Yale University and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University.
The 2008 Hiett Gala Award Celebration Featured Keynote David Mamet.
Tiya Miles received her A.B. in Afro-American Studies from Harvard University (1992), her M.A. in Women's Studies from Emory University (1995), and her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota (2000). She taught in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley before moving to the University of Michigan in 2002. Miles' research and creative interests include African American and Native American histories and literatures, and how they relate to each other; African American women's history; and the histories, feminist theories, and life experiences of women of color in the United States. Miles is the author of Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom (University of California Press, 2005). She is the co-editor with Sharon P. Holland of Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country, essay collection (Duke University Press, 2006).
The 2007 Hiett Gala Award Celebration Featured Keynote Ken Burns.
Dr. Hilaire Kallendorf is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. She was a postdoctoral research fellow at UCLA and an ACLS/Andrew W. Mellon Junior Faculty Fellow. She was recently awarded a Howard Foundation Mid-Career Fellowship from Brown University. Her research and teaching deal with many aspects of religious experience, especially as belief relates to literature and culture. She is the author of two books, Exorcism and Its Texts: Subjectivity in Early Modern Literature of England and Spain (University of Toronto Press, 2003) and Conscience on Stage: The Comedia as Casuistry in Early Modern Spain (University of Toronto Press, 2007) (in press). She has also published over a dozen scholarly articles on such topics as self-exorcism, piety and pornography, ghosts, Taíno religious ceremonies, and Christian humanism in the Renaissance. Currently she is working on her third book, Sin and Sensibility: Moral Economies of Early Modern Spain, and gathering material for her fourth book, The Mark of Cain: Guilty Conscience and Confessional Culture, which will foreground a spiritual critique of postmodernism. She is also working with other faculty and administrators at Texas A&M and in Mexico on a large-scale digitalization project to rescue the bibliographical patrimony of Mexico, where she was recently offered a visiting professorship.
The 2006 Hiett Gala Award Celebration Featured Keynote Jim Lehrer.
Dr. Brad Stephan Gregory is Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He has also taught at Harvard and Stanford Universities. He holds a Ph.D. degree in history from Princeton University. He has received a large number of awards for both his scholarly work and his teaching. In 1999 he published Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe, which won several awards and wide praise. In addition, he has published numerous articles and is under contract with Harvard University Press for another book, Storming Heaven: Christianity in the Reformation Era. He lectures for the Teaching Company on the history of Christianity in the Reformation Era. His future plans include a study of the transformation of Western beliefs, value, institutions, and practices between the early Reformation and the American Constitution.
The 2005 Hiett Gala Award Celebration Featured Keynote David McCullough.
J. LARRY ALLUMS
Executive Director, The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture
VICTOR BAILEY
Director, Hall Center for the Humanities, University of Kansas
RANDY D. GORDON
Partner, Professional Development and Trial-Antitrust, Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP, Dallas, Texas
SALLY HOGLUND
Dallas Community Leader
KIM HIETT JORDAN
Board Member, Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture
DOROTHY KOSINSKI
Director, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
THOMAS K. LINDSAY
President, Shimer College, Chicago, Illinois
RICHARD WARCH
Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin
For more information:
Contact Dr. Claudia Allums
214 981-8813
callums@dallasinstitute.org