The Rewards of Creative Thinking

Is it possible to measure creativity? The effort seems counterintuitive, as if creativity is a process that can be quantified. Yet, there is ample evidence that its spirit flourishes at New York’s independent colleges and universities.

Faculty and alumni have been recipients of thousands of prizes over the years, including the MacArthur “Genius” award, the Pulitzer Prize, Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships, and many other prestigious awards for literary and artistic achievements. Awards are but symbols, though; the real rewards are the creative works — poems, novels, books of nonfiction, music, scholarship — that enrich our campuses, and our society.

The stories are many; we share a few with our readers.

MacArthur Foundation Awards

The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits. Commonly referred to as the “Genius” awards, the program selects Fellows who show exceptional creativity and the promise for important future advances based on past record of accomplishment.

Joanna Scott
Joanna Scott is the Roswell Smith Burrows Professor of English at the University of Rochester. She is also a MacArthur Fellow (1992), a Pulitzer Prize finalist (1997) for her novel The Manikin, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Author of several award-winning novels (including Arrogance and Tourmaline) and a collection of short stories, Professor Scott teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in creative writing, contemporary literature, and Charles Dickens; she is also on the faculty at two famous writers’ institutes, including a summer writing program at New York University. Her newest novel, Liberation, will be published later this year.

At the University of Rochester, she initiated a series of free readings for the campus and community by Pulitzer Prize winners such as William Kennedy, Louis Glück, and Mark Strand.

Patricia Williams
One of the most provocative intellectuals in American law, Professor Patricia Williams of Columbia University was a 2000 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

Professor Williams, who joined the Columbia Law School faculty in 1991, has written essays and columns that challenge common cultural constructs of race and gender. Her first book, The Alchemy of Race and Rights: The Diary of a Law Professor, is an autobiographical work that illuminates some of America’s most complex problems.

In announcing her selection as a Fellow, the foundation stated that “Her voice has created a new form of legal writing and scholarship that integrates personal narrative, critical and literary theory, traditional legal doctrine, and empirical and sociological research.”

Pulitzer Prizes

Established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer through his 1904 will, the Pulitzer Prize was conceived as “an incentive to excellence.” The first awards were given in 1917 and are administered by Columbia University.

Mr. Pulitzer specified four awards in journalism, four in letters and drama, one in education, and four traveling scholarships. The Pulitzer Prize Board later expanded the number of prizes to include poetry, music, and photography.

Paul Moravec
Paul Moravec, composer and chair of the music department at Adelphi University, won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his “Tempest Fantasy”– a composition for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. The 30-minute, five-movement piece was first performed by the Adelphi University ensemble-in-residence, Trio Solisti, at a free campus concert.

Professor Moravec has composed more than 70 published orchestral, chamber, choral, and lyric compositions, as well as several film scores and electro-acoustic pieces. Of his music, he said, “I write the piece I would love to hear; I write for that part of myself that is a listener. I’m trying to write music that’s memorable...”

Dan Barry
A 1980 graduate of St. Bonaventure University, Dan Barry was part of an investigative team at the The Providence Journal that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for a series of articles that led to the indictment of the state’s chief judge.

Today, Mr. Barry is best known for his memoir, Pull Me Up, and, since 2003, for his column “About New York” for The New York Times. He joined the Times staff in 1995 and in 2005 won the Mike Berger Award for human interest reporting.

Funny, poignant, and always a keen observer, Mr. Barry reflects on issues that affect the lives of New Yorkers, with topics including the recent demise of Howard Johnson’s, the coming of spring, and the experience of earning a college degree in mid-life. His stories are sometimes light, sometimes dark, but always human.

Jane Smiley
When asked about her writing process, Jane Smiley, a 1971 alumna of Vassar College, says she is consistent. She never writes more than two hours a day, yet is the author of 10 books of fiction and numerous essays on politics, literature, farming, horses, and other topics.

She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for her novel, A Thousand Acres, which has been called by critics both “brilliant” and “powerful.” Ms. Smiley’s other works include The Greenlanders, Ordinary Love and Good Will, and The Age of Grief.

Michael Kammen
Author and editor of more than 20 books, Michael Kammen, Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture at Cornell University, is regarded as one of the nation’s most important cultural historians. Awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for his People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization, Professor Kammen teaches undergraduate courses and seminars in American Culture and Social Change and Cultural History. It has been said that “No other historian of [his] generation has such a broad and concrete grasp of American culture in all its manifestations, from constitutional law to formal painting and popular culture.”

He is currently researching a book about the struggle for superiority between art and culture in American history.

Guggenheim Fellowships

The Guggenheim awards are presented by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisers and approval by the foundation’s board of trustees. Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.

Phillip Lopate
Phillip Lopate, Professor of English at Hofstra University, is a central figure in the recent revival of the personal essay and editor of The Art of the Personal Essay. Mr. Lopate has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as a Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award,
and numerous other honors.

He is the author of three essay collections, Portrait of My Body, Against Joie de Vivre, and Bachelorhood; the novel The Rug Merchant; and a memoir of his teaching experiences, Being with Children. His latest works include Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan and Getting Personal: Selected Writings.

Peter Cameron
This 2003 Guggenheim Fellow, who since 1998 has taught a fiction workshop in the Master of Fine Arts program at Sarah Lawrence College, has an eye for emotional nuance and physical detail.

Mr. Cameron graduated from Hamilton College in 1982 and sold his first short story to The New Yorker in 1983. Ten more of his stories followed in the years ahead. He then focused on writing novels. His “exquisitely crafted” novel The Lost Weekend is set in New York City and the Hudson Valley. His fourth and latest novel, The City of Your Final Destination, is “a dream of a good read” according to author Gail Godwin. Merchant-Ivory Productions have an option on film rights for the book.

 

 

Creative thinkers.

Madeline Blais ‘69, The College of New Rochelle, won Pulitzer Prizes for feature writing in 1980 and 1981 for a story about playwright Tennessee Williams and another on a World War I conscientious objector.

Cornell University boasts many award winners on faculty including noted poet and author Alice Fulton; historian Walter LaFeber; historian and scholar of human development, Joan Jacobs Brumberg; poet and author Robert Morgan; A. R. Ammons, who won two National Book Awards, the National Book Critics Circle Award of Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship; Karel Husa, whose “String Quartet No. 3” received the 1969 Pulitzer Prize; Alison Lurie, who wrote 10 books of fiction and received a 1985 Pulitzer for her novel Foreign Affairs; Toni Morrison, MA ‘55 and professor at-large received the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature for her body of work including the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved.

Hartwick College writer in residence Carol Frost was selected as poetry editor of Pushcart Prize XXVIII, an anthology that features the best fiction, poetry, and essays published in 2003.

MacArthur Fellows from New York University include Harold Bloom, Professor of English and American Literature; Joan Breton Connelly, Associate Professor of Fine Arts; Galway Kinnell, Erich Maria Remarque Professor in Creative Writing; and Paule Marshall, Professor of English.

10 Pulitzer Prizes for excellence in photojournalism have been awarded to Rochester Institute of Technology alumni from 1979 to 1999.

Literary scholarship continues to flourish at Sarah Lawrence College, with 42 faculty members and dozens of alumni recipients of numerous awards for fiction, poetry, nonfiction writing, autobiography, playwriting, and magazine writing. Just a few of the college’s distinguished faculty include: poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar; fiction writer Melvin Jules Bukiet; fiction writer Carolyn Ferrell; Fulbright Fellow Arnold Krupat; fiction writer Mary LaChappelle; poet Thomas Lux; Spanish
literature scholar María Negroni; and poet Vijay Seshadri. Award-winning alumni include L. R. Berger, Allan Gurganus, Phillis Levin, Ann Patchett, Alice Walker, and Katayoon Zandvakili.

Vassar College has graduated many writers of distinction throughout the years, including Edna St. Vincent Millay ‘17, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Mary McCarthy ‘33, who was awarded the National Medal for Literature; Elizabeth Bishop ‘34, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and other awards. Professor of history James Merrell is only the fifth historian to win the Bancroft Prize twice. His Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier was also a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for History.