University of Chicago Classicist, Danielle Allen, Wins MacArthur Fellowship

Describing her as combining “the classicist’s careful attention to texts and language with the political theorist’s sophisticated and informed engagement,” the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation today named Danielle Allen a recipient of its unique $500,000 fellowships. Allen, Associate Professor in Classical Languages and Literatures, Political Science, the Committee on Social Thought and the College at the University of Chicago, was one of 23 MacArthur fellows named this year. She has written The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens and the forthcoming Democratic Entanglements: Rhetoric, Distrust and Sacrifice. She is currently working on a commentary and political analysis of Aristotle’s Rhetoric and coordinating a series on contemporary poetry, “Poem Present.”

The MacArthur award is unusual in both its methods and its generosity: “talent scouts” from the program secretly nominate candidates, who can work in any field, from Chemistry to nursery school teaching to avant-garde jazz. Popularly known as “genius grants,” the awards are given for: “exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.” The award is to be paid out over five years, with no restrictions on its use.

A recent address to new University of Chicago students, reprinted in the Chicago Tribune Magazine, exemplifies Allen’s combination of attentiveness and engagement: it developed from an attempt to teach a class on Thucydides on September 11. Initially leery of discussing ancient Greek wars in the face of the worst terrorist attack in history, Allen was told by her mentor that “If we really believe that studying these old books is of any use, then now is surely the time to test that proposition.” Allen found their value confirmed; she writes that she had “entered that classroom bereft of thought. But in the midst of my paralysis, I had begun to ask questions again. In the midst of my confusion, I began to think. Despite my grief, my mind was not numb. For an hour, by discussing Thucydides, a small group of us escaped paralysis; in fact, I think, we put it behind us. We began to figure out what questions were relevant to understanding our present situation.”

Allen has produced detailed textual studies that span the gap from Aristotle to Ralph Ellison. In addition to specialized articles on time and imprisonment in ancient Athens, Allen has recently completed a book comparing the views of Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes and Ralph Ellison on distrust, rhetoric, and civic friendship; she has also written on Franz Kafka and the 18^th-century doctor, political theorist and fabulist Bernard Mandeville.

Allen prepared for her cross-disciplinary studies with an unusual program of training. She earned a B.A. from Princeton in Classics (with a political theory minor) and there won the Samuel D. Atkins Thesis Prize. She went on to earn an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Classics from King’s College, Cambridge, winning the Hare Prize in Ancient Greek History for her dissertation. She immediately began work in political theory in Harvard’s Government department, earning an M.A. in 1998 and a Ph.D. in March of this year. She came to the University of Chicago in 1997 as an Assistant Professor of Classics, and in 2000 was hired as an Associate Professor.

Allen’s breadth extends from the subjects she explores to the places in which she teaches. In addition to pursuing her own research, she also coordinates an ongoing series in contemporary poetry, “Poem Present.” And she says that her greatest pedagogical lessons came from students on Chicago’s West Side, where she taught in the Illinois Humanities Council’s Odyssey Project, a one-year course in the humanities for people between the ages of 18 and 35 at or below poverty income. Allen described them as the frankest group of students she has ever taught. “They gave me back a certain directness that I had lost,” she said. “They would tell me if they thought something was just hogwash, or if they were completely dissatisfied by an answer——or even by a question.” When she tried to bring these students’ straightforward approach to her classes at the University, her Chicago students were immediately receptive. “On the first day of class, a student asked me, ‘First of all, why should we be taking the Social Sciences core?’ and then, ‘What do you think society is, anyway?’ The mere fact that I walked out of that class alive counts as a victory,” Allen’s respect for students’ questions and her approach to teaching as a conversation among friends were reflected in her receipt of a Quantrell award for Undergraduate Teaching in 2001.

High-resolution photos of Allen are available at http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/photos/allen/

Danielle Allen on crisis, stasis
“The thinking citizen”

Oct. 21, 2001

Previous MacArthur Winners:
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/macarthur/