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Twelve faculty named Cabot Fellows

John Harvard Statue.

John Harvard Statue in Harvard Yard. Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

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Twelve professors in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences have been named 2023 Walter Channing Cabot Fellows. The annual awards honor faculty members for their distinguished accomplishments in the fields of literature, history or art, and for their notable publications.

The 2023 award recipients are:

  • Josiah Blackmore, Nancy Clark Smith Professor of the Language and Literature of Portugal; chair, Department of Romance Languages and Literature, “The Inner Sea: Maritime Literary Culture in Early Modern Portugal,” (University of Chicago Press, 2022).
  • Giuliana Bruno, Emmet Blakeney Gleason Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies, “Atmospheres of Projection: Environmentality in Art and Screen Media,” (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022).
  • Frank Dobbin, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences; chair, Department of Sociology, “Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn’t,” (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2022). This book was co-authored with Alexandra Kalev of Tel Aviv University.
  • Caroline Elkins, professor of history and of African and African American studies; Thomas Henry Carroll/Ford Foundation Professor of Business Administration, “Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire,” (New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2022).
  • William Kirby, T.M. Chang Professor of China Studies; Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration, “Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China,” (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2022).
  • Wai-yee Li, 1879 Professor of Chinese Literature, “The Promise and Peril of Things: Literature and Material Culture in Late Imperial China,” (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022)
  • Jamie Martin, assistant professor of history and of social studies, “The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance,” (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2022).
  • Jeffrey McDonough, professor of philosophy, “A Miracle Creed: The Principle of Optimality in Leibniz’s Physics and Philosophy,” (Oxford University Press, 2022).
  • Matt Saunders, professor of art, film, and visual studies, “Matt Saunders: Poems of Our Climate,” (New York: Dancing Foxes Press, 2022).
  • Tommie Shelby, Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy; chair, Department of African and African American Studies, “The Idea of Prison Abolition,” (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2022).
  • Kay Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and Professor of African and African American Studies, “Sing and Sing On: Sentinel Musicians and the Making of the Ethiopian American Diaspora,” (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022).
  • Yuhua Wang, professor of government, “The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State Development,” (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2022).