Stewart wins prestigious $280,000 MacArthur Foundation genius award

Former Temple English Professor and distinguished writer of poetry and prose will assume Penn's Regan Chair in English Literature in the fall. Poet, academic and literary critic Susan Stewart -- who will join the University faculty as Regan Chair of English literature in the fall -- received a prestigious "genius" award worth $280,000 from the MacArthur Foundation. The 45-year old Stewart was one of 23 award recipients announced on Tuesday. Winners receive grants ranging from $190,000 to $335,000 dispensed over five years with no strings attached. Stewart -- who has taught English at Temple University for several years -- is currently in Rome, where she has spent the past few summers on the faculty of Temple's cultural studies program. Her extensive work in both poetry and prose integrates history, literature, folklore, anthropology and aesthetics. The MacArthur Foundation called her efforts "pathbreaking." "Investigating themes such as miniaturization, giganticism, plagiarism, forgery, the souvenir and the collection, Stewart often makes strange and disorienting that which we usually take to be familiar and of common sense," the foundation said. In addition to her three volumes of verse, her growing body of prose work explores manifestations of nonsense, desire and, most recently, the idea of representation in art. Her work has already earned her a $50,000 fellowship from the Pew Foundation and a $105,000 Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writer's Award in the past two years. She has used funds from the Lila Wallace award to establish a poetry program for GED students at local libraries. She has also started two new books. One is a study of the five senses and the history of the lyric, and the other is a new volume of poetry. "She is so unpretentious and so knowledgeable about so many things," the MacArthur Foundation said. "To be a wonderful writer and so incredibly lovely as a human being is a remarkable combination."

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