Two emeritus faculty members, Professor Emeritus of History Gordon Wood and Professor Emeritus of Classics and History Kurt Raaflaub, received Andrew W. Mellon Emeritus Fellowships in October. These grants of as much as $35,000 are provided to emeritus faculty at different institutions in order to fund research within the humanities. Only 30 scholars were chosen as recipients.
Fellowships such as this one are important to emeritus professors, Raaflaub wrote in an e-mail, because "as active professors we have access to University funds supporting research. When we retire, we … (lose) access to these funds." The Mellon fellowship encourages "continuing research by professors who have acquired a great deal of expertise," he wrote.
Wood said he is currently compiling selected writings of John Adams for the Library of America. Select writings from throughout all the Founding Fathers' lives have been collected in this series already, except for Adams, Wood said. Wood plans to finish compiling his work and release the volumes covering Adams from 1783 until his death. Wood will be using the grant to cover the salary of graduate students whose help he will employ in the task, he said.
Raaflaub plans to pursue two projects. The first will explore the relation between Greek political thought and that of its predecessors in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The second concerns Caesar's account of his war against Pompey and aims to create "a new edition of the Latin text and a historical and philological commentary on this important work," Raaflaub wrote. The grant will allow Raaflaub to travel to talk about his work with leaders in the field of Near Eastern studies and to meet with two other collaborators on his project on Caesar's text.
Raaflaub said the University's procurement of these grants "demonstrates Brown's strength in the humanities."
