Two Washington University faculty members have been named Guggenheim Fellows for the 1997-98 academic year.
The recipients are Carl Phillips, associate professor of English and of African and Afro-American studies, and director of the Creative Writing Program in Arts and Sciences; and Barbara A. Schaal, Ph.D., professor of biology and chair of the Department of Biology in Arts and Sciences, and professor of genetics at the School of Medicine.
Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of unusually distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.
"I am delighted that these two fine faculty members have received this richly deserved recognition," said Edward S. Macias, Ph.D., executive vice chancellor and dean of Arts and Sciences. "In addition to their outstanding research and creative endeavors, both Barbara and Carl are excellent classroom teachers and hard-working, effective Arts and Sciences leaders. We are all enriched by their presence here."
Phillips is an award-winning poet and teacher who has published two books of poems: "In the Blood," the recipient of the 1992 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize; and "Cortege," a finalist for a 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award. A third collection, "From the Devotions," is slated for publication next January.
Phillips writes of dreams and desires, relationships and redemption. His work has been described as inventive and homoerotic, infused with a classical richness.
Robert Pinsky, the U.S. poet laureate, called Phillips "a tremendously gifted poet" with the "unmistakable voice and subject, rhythm and cadence of an original writer."
The Guggenheim award will allow Phillips some course release time to research the roles of poets in relation to their works, particularly in the light of divine visitation claimed by the ancient poets.
"Seamus Heaney speaks of poets as those who have one foot in the heavens, another in the soil," explained Phillips, citing Virgil's "Georgics" as well as Hesiod's "Theogony" and "Works and Days."
Phillips also will revisit and translate poems by ancient writers -- Archilochus in particular -- who may not consciously have explored the vatic-secular relationship in their work but in which this connection is clearly operative.
Schaal has studied hosts of plant species ranging from oak trees to Mead's milkweed, a Midwestern prairie plant. She applies molecular genetic techniques such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), DNA sequencing and DNA fingerprinting to the study of plant evolution, with special emphasis on native (non-crop) species, some of them endangered.
Schaal will take a sabbatical year's leave of absence to study evolutionary genetics in the plant, Manihot, a neo-tropical genus of some 98 described species. Her research will focus on the tempo and mode of evolution at species boundaries and the nature and course of domestication of cassava, a cultivated Manihot. Schaal and her colleagues will employ powerful molecular techniques new to plant analysis such as microsatellite loci and coalescence theory, both highly sophisticated methods of population analysis.
Schaal will travel to Brazil and Colombia to collect plants and to collaborate with colleagues. Part of her time will be spent at Washington University working on the project with graduate students.
Phillips and Schaal are among 167 artists, scholars and scientists selected from 2,876 applicants. Fellowship awards for 1997 total $4,890,000. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation marks its 73rd year of sponsoring the annual competition.
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