Faculty Members Receive Kellet Mid-Career Awards
Eight UW–Madison faculty have been honored for their research with Kellett Mid-Career Awards.
The awards are given annually by the Graduate School. They recognize faculty with five to 20 years of work beyond their first promotion to a tenured position. Supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), the awards are named for William R. Kellett, a former president of the WARF board of trustees and retired president of Kimberly-Clark Corp.
This year’s honorees are:
- Russ Castronovo, Professor, Department of English
Russ Castronovo is one of the most influential scholars of American Studies, in the nation and throughout the world. In the fifteen years since receiving his Ph.D. he has published three books and two edited collections, become a leading voice at the Dartmouth Institute for American Studies, and has formed here at UW-Madison, a faculty research group devoted to American Studies. His three books—Fathering the Nation, Necro-Citizenship, and Beautiful Democracy--taken together as a kind of trilogy, deliver nothing less than a critical history of symptomatic U. S. literary and cultural forms from the early national era to the dawn of modernism. Within the department he has become the leader of the Americanists, and invaluable mentor of junior faculty in American literature.
- Jorge Escalante-Semerena, Professor, Department of Bacteriology
Jorge Escalante-Semerena’s research focuses on studies of bacterial cell physiology and metabolism. Escalante-Semerena’s work has helped reveal how cells assemble complex vitamins, identified new metabolic routes for energy generation, and contributed to our understanding of the control of gene expression and enzyme activity in response to the energy status of the cell.
- Jeffrey D. Hardin, Professor, Department of Zoology
Jeff Hardin is internationally recognized for his research, using C. elegans, on how cells move and adhere to one another in embryos. He is also a leader in biology education on and off campus. He is Chair of Zoology, and Director of the Biocore Program, a four-semester honors biology program.
- Lea Jacobs, Professor, Department of Communication Arts
Lea Jacobs is an international expert on early film and theater, censorship in Hollywood, and American film in the 1920s. Her current book project chronicles changes in film style during the transition to sound. Jacobs teaches courses in the history of the Hollywood studio system, film analysis, silent cinema, and animation. She is director of the UW Cinematheque.
- Kirin Narayan, Professor, Department of Anthropology
Kirin Narayan is known for her research on narrative, award-winning ethnographic writing, and exploration of cultural insights through fiction and memoir. She has undertaken fieldwork in Northern India and in the South Asian American diasporic community. She teaches courses relating to South Asia, narrative, folklore, life history, diaspora, and ethnographic writing.
- Ronald Raines, Professor, Department of Biochemistry
Ron Raines has made notable contributions to chemical biology. He has provided fundamental insight on the stability of collagen and other proteins, discovered an RNA-cleaving enzyme that is a clinical anti-cancer agent, and developed processes to synthesize proteins and convert biomass into fuels and chemicals. Nearly half of his 32 former doctoral students are themselves in academia.
- John Karl Scholz, Professor, Department of Economics
John Karl Scholz studies factors affecting household wealth accumulation, public policy and household saving, and public policy affecting disadvantaged workers. In 1997-98 he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department, and from 1990-91 he was a senior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisors. He directed the Institute for Research on Poverty at UW–Madison from 2000-2004.
- Aili Tripp, Professor, Department of Political Science and Department of Gender and Women’s Studies
Aili Tripp has pioneered a wide range of issues relating to gender and politics in Africa and globally in her scholarship. Her work has been recognized through numerous awards, among them the Victoria Schuck Award from the American Political Science Association for the best book on women and politics. She is co-editor of the journal, Politics and Gender and of the University of Wisconsin Press book series, Women in Africa and the Diaspora. She is also director of the Women’s Studies Research Center.
