CHICAGO (April 7, 2008) - The Newberry Library will honor noted historian and author Anthony Grafton on May 8, 2008, with The Newberry Library Award at the Newberry Library Spring Benefit.
"The Newberry is delighted to recognize Anthony Grafton, one of today's leading practitioners of the humanities," said David Spadafora, president and librarian of the Newberry Library. "In fact, our understanding of the humanities themselves has advanced substantially as a result of his impressive historical scholarship. His range, across the early modern period but also as far back as late antiquity and as far forward as the 19th century, is remarkable, and his work has revealed much about the relationship between intellectual practices and the ideas of the past."
As a graduate student in the early 1970s at the University of Chicago, Grafton did much research in the Newberry's deep collections of Renaissance materials. He continues to encourage graduate students at Princeton University, where he has taught European history since 1975, to use the Newberry either as Readers or as Fellows.
"In thinking about Professor Grafton's scholarly interests, it occurred to me that if the Newberry Library had existed 400 years ago, he would probably be studying us," explained Carla Zecher, director of the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry. "He would be looking to see what kinds of topics are pursued by readers at the Newberry; what kinds of documentation and technology the Library employs in the management of its collections; how staff and fellows at the Newberry use those collections to go about studying the past; how they cite sources; the sorts of professional correspondence they generate; the ways they go about networking with each other."
The Newberry Library Award, the highest honor the Library bestows, recognizes achievement in the humanities in the tradition of the Newberry Library, which has cultivated the life of the mind across more than a century. In conferring the award, the Newberry honors individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the humanities, particularly in fields of endeavor related to the Newberry's collections and activities. Recent past honorees include Richard M. Daley, Mayor, City of Chicago (2007) and Hanna H. Gray, President Emerita, University of Chicago (2006).
Grafton's special interest is the practices of scholarship and science: for example, the precise ways in which grammarians taught classical texts in Renaissance classrooms, tutors read politically charged histories with young men preparing for public careers, and scholars and scientists collaborated to establish the dates of events in ancient and medieval, Eastern and Western history. Grafton devoted 20 years to an intellectual biography of Joseph Scaliger, the great philologist and historian who prided himself, wrongly, on being the descendant of Italian princes-and who became as proverbial for erudition as Einstein would become, centuries later, for brilliance (Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship [1983-93]). And he has also studied the structures and methods of historical scholarship in such works as Forgers and Critics (1990), The Footnote: A Curious History (1997), Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, with Megan Williams (2006) and What Was History? (2007). Grafton earned his bachelors' and doctoral degrees at the University of Chicago, and he also studied at University College London, where he held a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. Grafton is the current Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University. He is also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Balzan Prize.
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ABOUT THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY
The Newberry Library, a preeminent humanities research and reference institution, is home to a world-class collection of books, manuscripts, maps, music, and other printed materials related to the history and culture of Western Europe and the Americas. The collections span many centuries and feature items such as illuminated medieval manuscripts, rare early maps, rich genealogical resources, and the personal papers of Midwest authors. The Newberry offers exhibits based on its collections, musical and theatrical performances, lectures and discussions with today's leading humanists, seminars and workshops, and teacher programs. Visit us online at www.newberry.org or in person at 60 W. Walton St., Chicago, IL.