English faculty member wins Guggenheim

University Park, Pa. — Linda Woodbridge, the Josephine Berry Weiss chair in the humanities and professor of English at Penn State, has been named as a 2008 recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, to pursue research in English revenge drama. Woodbridge is one of 190 named Fellows, chosen this year from a group of more than 2,600 applicants, to share in awards totaling $8.2 million.

Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of stellar achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment. One of the hallmarks of the Guggenheim Fellowship program is the diversity of its Fellows, not only in their fields of endeavor but in their geographic location and ages. In all, this year's Fellows represent 75 disciplines and 81 different academic institutions. They range in age from 31 to 98, and come from throughout the United States and Canada.

Woodbridge earned her bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees all from University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include English Renaissance literature; Renaissance women as subjects and authors of literature; orality and literacy; folklore; economic criticism and revenge. Her Guggenheim project is to finish writing the book "English Revenge Drama: Money, Resistance, Equality." The book seeks to account for the popularity of a large number of sensationalistic revenge plays of the 16th and 17th centuries in terms of their connections with money (double-entry bookkeeping, a culture of credit), with political resistance, and with growing egalitarianism within a socially-stratified society.

She has earned numerous awards, including the Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal in 2004, and the George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2002.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was established in 1925 by United States Senator Simon Guggenheim and his wife as a memorial to a son who died April 26, 1922. The Foundation offers Fellowships to further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color, or creed.