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Centre professor wins NEH Research Fellowship
RELEASED: Dec. 15, 2005
DANVILLE, KY—Jim Morrison, Cantrell Associate Professor of Classics at Centre College, has won a major research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the first Centre faculty member to win an NEH Fellowship since 1980.
The 12-month, $40,000 fellowship for 2006-07 will support the writing of Morrison's book Shipwrecks and the Re-invention of Self in Homer, Shakespeare, Defoe, and the Modern World.
"Professor Morrison is always working on topics that will interest a wide range of readers," says John Ward, vice president of academic affairs and dean of the College, "and his NEH grant to complete a book on shipwrecks and the re-invention of self is no exception. A talented classicist, Professor Morrison has published on modern Caribbean poetry and the Iliad and Odyssey, and is an expert commentator on Thucydides. The book that emerges from this year of research and writing will prove again Morrison's ability to comment on the full spectrum of modern culture and scholarship, from Homer to Derek Walcott to the current television series Lost."
"This book will be the first to present a typology of the shipwreck narrative," says Morrison, "and will serve as the first comparative study of literary shipwrecks in various forms (epic, drama, novel, poetry, science fiction, and film) covering a roughly 3,000-year period. Only by detailed analysis and juxtaposing model and modern adaptation can we appreciate the vitality of this archetypal scene: a shipwrecked survivor confronting the elements."
Morrison, who teaches courses in Greek and Latin language, history, literature, culture, and mythology, as well as freshman humanities, is the author of Homeric Misdirection: False Predictions in the Iliad (University of Michigan Press, 1992) as well as numerous other articles and reviews for academic journals. Prior to joining the Centre faculty, Morrison taught at Davidson College and Georgetown University on a visiting basis.
Morrison holds a B.A. in philosophy and history from Oberlin College, an M.A. in classics from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in classical studies from the University of Michigan.
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Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Centre alumni, known for their nation-leading loyalty in annual financial support, include two U.S. vice presidents and two Supreme Court justices. For more, visit http://www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech/
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