Four faculty members from Indiana University have been awarded fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, according to an April 16 announcement. The new fellows are Christoph Irmscher and David Polly from IU Bloomington, and Edward Curtis and Gerard Magliocca from IU Indianapolis. Curtis and Magliocca are the first recipients of this honor from IU Indianapolis, with Magliocca also receiving the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies.
The recognition highlights the university’s role in advancing research and scholarship across disciplines. The foundation’s 101st class includes 223 fellows representing 55 fields of study, each receiving a stipend to support their ongoing work.
“The Guggenheim Fellowship represents one of the highest distinctions in research excellence,” said Pamela Whitten, president of Indiana University. “Congratulations to Professors Curtis, Irmscher, Magliocca and Polly. Their work elevates discourse, challenges conventional thinking and betters our understanding of the world, affirming IU’s role as a place where scholarship shapes the future for the greater good.”
Curtis is recognized for his community-engaged scholarship on Black, Muslim and Arab American history. He has authored or edited fifteen books and founded the journal Arab Americana. With his fellowship support, he plans to research religious life among Arabic-speaking Americans during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Irmscher is a Distinguished Professor who specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature with interests in ecocriticism. His works include studies on John James Audubon as well as biographies such as “Longfellow Redux.” Polly chairs IU Bloomington’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences; he studies how environmental changes affect animals over millions of years using fossil records.
Magliocca holds distinguished professorships at IU Indianapolis’ law school with six books on constitutional law published so far; his latest focuses on Justice Robert H. Jackson’s concurring opinion in a landmark Supreme Court case. He will use his fellowship to write about U.S. Senator Birch Bayh’s constitutional legacy.
Indiana University Bloomington functions as a public research university according to its official website. It draws students from all fifty states and more than one hundred fifty countries according to its official website while contributing significantly to Indiana’s economy and cultural life according to its official website. The campus features historic limestone architecture according to its official website.
Since it was established in 1925, nearly $450 million has been awarded by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation through fellowships given out to more than nineteen thousand individuals.
