On April 8, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation selected Paige West, the Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College, to be a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. The prestigious honor recognizes “exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions.” This year, the foundation awarded fellowships to 184 of the nearly 3,000 applicants, which included American and Canadian scientists, scholars in the social sciences and humanities, and writers and artists of all kinds.
To date, the foundation has granted nearly $400 million in fellowship support to more than 18,000 individuals. Past recipients include 125+ Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors. Last year, five fellows won Pulitzer Prizes and four fellows won Nobel Prizes.
Professor West will use the fellowship support to continue her scholarship in anthropology and cultural studies.