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Manchester resident Valerie Traub wins Guggenheim award

Manchester resident and University of Michigan professor Valerie Traub is one of five faculty members who were recently awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, which is given to scholars for their distinguished achievement and exceptional promise for future accomplishments.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded Fellowships to a diverse group of 178 scholars, artists, and scientists in its 92nd annual competition for the United States and Canada. Other U-M fellows are: Victor Caston, Charles R. Doering, Mark Newman, and Derek R. Peterson. The fellows, who are in the U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, were among the scholars, artists and scientists chosen from a group of nearly 3,000 applicants. U-M had three fellows in 2015.

“This is a high honor both for the individual faculty members whose work has been judged to be exceptional and for the institution,” said U-M Provost Martha Pollack. “We are so pleased to have the outstanding scholarship of our faculty recognized in this way. “

For her project, Traub, Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of English and Women’s Studies, explores the pre-history of the concept of normality as it is applied to human bodies. She shows how illustrations of the human body in 16th and 17th century natural history, anatomy texts, costume books, and maps enabled a medieval style of reasoning governed by appeals to nature to be gradually overtaken by a modern reasoning based on norms.

“I’m thrilled to have been given this time to focus on my work and gratified that the history of race, gender, and sexuality has been granted this kind of acknowledgment,” she said.

by Marsha Chartrand

Marsha Johnson Chartrand, a founder, writer, and copy editor with the Manchester Mirror, is a 50-year resident of Manchester. She has a long history of volunteer and community involvement.