Colgate professor awarded Guggenheim Fellowship

Back to All Stories

Hamilton, NY — Colgate University English professor Lynn Staley has received one of 184 Guggenheim Fellowships awarded in 2003. Staley, the Harrington and Shirley Drake Professor of humanities in the department of English, was selected from a pool of 3,200 applicants from colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. Her area of study is Chaucer, Richard II and the languages of power in 14th-century England.

The 2003 fellowship winners include writers, painters, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers, choreographers, physical and biological scientists, social scientists and scholars in the humanities. They are selected based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisors and on their exceptional promise for future accomplishment. A total of $6,750,000 was awarded to the 184 recipients, most of whom came from 89 institutions. Some recipients were not affiliated with a college or university. Scores of Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners and eminent scientists are among past fellowship recipients, including Ansel Adams, Aaron Copland, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, Linus Pauling, Martha Graham, and Eudora Welty.

Staley has been a member of the Colgate faculty since 1974. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University and her undergraduate degree from the University of Kentucky. Her teaching specialties are Chaucer, medieval literature and culture, Spenser, and early renaissance literature. Staley has published several books including ‘The Book of Margery Kempe,’ edited and translated (Norton Critical Editions, 2001); ‘The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Literature’ with David Aers (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), ‘The Book of Margery Kempe,’ complete text, modernized spelling, and notes, Middle English Text Series, TEAMS (The Medieval Institute, 1996) and ‘Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions’ (1994).

Founded in 1819, Colgate University is a nationally ranked, highly selective, residential, liberal arts college. Situated on a rolling 515-acre campus in central New York State, Colgate University attracts motivated students with diverse backgrounds, interests and talents.

###