Newsmakers

Olupona to accept prestigious Nigerian National Order of Merit

Professor of African and African American Studies Jacob Olupona has been awarded the Nigerian National Order of Merit prize for 2007. The president of Nigeria, Umaru Yar’Adua, will confer the award in the nation’s capital city of Abuja today (Dec. 6). The National Order of Merit is regarded as Nigeria’s highest prize for intellectual achievement and is given in recognition of unique and outstanding contributions to scholarship, research, and the field of humanities.

Olupona, who is also a professor of African religious traditions at Harvard, is a noted scholar of indigenous religions of the continent and of the religious practices of African émigrés in the United States.
Julie Buckler’s ‘Mapping St. Petersburg’ wins Scaglione Prize

The Modern Language Association of America has named Julie A. Buckler, professor of Slavic languages and literatures, the recipient of its seventh Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures. Buckler received the prize for her book “Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape.”

The prize is awarded biennially for an outstanding scholarly work on the linguistics or literatures of the Slavic languages. It consists of a $2,000 check and a certificate, and will be presented Dec. 28 at the association’s annual convention, held this year in Chicago.

“Julie A. Buckler’s ‘Mapping St. Petersburg’ provides fresh and insightful analysis of the role of St. Petersburg in the Russian cultural imagination,” reads an excerpt from the committee’s citation for the winning book. Established in 1883, the Modern Language Association of America exists to advance literary and linguistic studies.