AAR Welcomes 2023–24 Rome Prize Winners and Italian Fellows

The Academy is grateful to reopen this month for yet another season, and to welcome our new class of Rome Prize winners and Italian Fellows to the Eternal City. Their projects will build on the Academy’s commitment to the global impact of artists, scholars, writers, and thinkers.

The highly competitive Rome Prize Fellowships support advanced independent work and research in the arts and humanities. This year, the gift of “time and space to think and work” was awarded to thirty-six Americans and three Italians. Each will receive a stipend, workspace, and room and board at the Academy’s eleven-acre campus on the Janiculum Hill in Rome, starting this month.

A full list of the 2023–24 Rome Prize winners and Italian Fellows is below.

Ancient Studies

Andrew Heiskell Rome Prize  
Kate Meng Brassel  
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania  
Autopsy of a Satirist: Book and Body in the Satires of Persius

Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Rome Prize  
Mary C. Danisi  
PhD Candidate, Department of Classics, Cornell University  
Rovings: Wool and the Ancient Ecology of a Cosmic Medium

Arthur Ross Rome Prize  
Christopher Erdman  
PhD Candidate, Department of Classics, University of California, Santa Barbara  
Voting Culture and Political Theater in Late Republican Lawmaking

Emeline Hill Richardson/Jesse Howard, Jr. Rome Prize  
Mary-Evelyn Farrior  
PhD Candidate, Department of Classical Studies, Columbia University  
Inscribing Community: Mapping Greek Inscriptions in Imperial Rome

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Rome Prize  
Ryan Haecker  
Research Fellow, William Temple Foundation, England; Course Tutor, London Jesuit Centre  
Theology of Logic in Origen of Alexandria

Architecture

Arnold W. Brunner/Frances Barker Tracy/Katherine Edwards Gordon Rome Prize  
César A. Lopez  
Assistant Professor, School of Architecture and Planning, University of New Mexico  
Citizenry Actions

Lily Auchincloss Rome Prize  
Ajay Manthripragada  
Design Critic, Department of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design  
Imbrex and Tegula

Design

Rolland Rome Prize  
David Weeks  
Designer, Brooklyn  
Movable Beasts

Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize  
Elizabeth Whelan  
Principal, Elizabeth Whelan Design, Brooklin, Maine  
Silk in the Alchemy of History

Historic Preservation and Conservation

Adele Chatfield-Taylor Rome Prize  
Aaron Cayer  
Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, University of New Mexico  
Building Legitimacy: Designing, Disseminating, and Preserving a New Religion

Suzanne Deal Booth Rome Prize  
Emily B. Frank  
Objects Conservator and PhD Candidate, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University  
Object Agency and Intervention in Roman Art 

Landscape Architecture

Garden Club of America/Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize  
Miranda E. Mote  
Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, Pratt Institute; Lecturer, Program in Architecture, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania  
Botanography and Botanic Gardens: The Italian Art of Nature Printing and Its Influence on Early American Gardens and Botanical Language

Gilmore D. Clarke and Michael Rapuano/Kate Lancaster Brewster Rome Prize  
Lauren Stimson  
Partner, STIMSON, Princeton, Massachusetts  
Seeing Rural: Embracing Art, Craft, and Slowness in the Italian Landscape

Literature

John Guare Writers Fund Rome Prize, a Gift of Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman  
Elif Batuman  
Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of English, Barnard College, Columbia University  
CAMINO REAL/THE SELIN NOVELS

Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, a Gift of the Drue Heinz Trust  
Erica Hunt  
Bannerman Visiting Associate Professor of the Practice, Department of Literary Arts, Brown University  
The Mood Librarian Tells Stories

Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, a Gift of the Drue Heinz Trust  
Katie Kitamura  
Clinical Professor, Creative Writing Program, New York University  
Turpentine

Rome Prize in Literature  
Shruti Swamy  
Writer, San Francisco  
Margret and Vishnu: Stories

Medieval Studies

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Rome Prize  
Christopher Bonura  
Member, School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Studies  
The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius: Empire, Eschatology, and Political Theology from Late Antique Mesopotamia to the Global Imagination

Paul Mellon Rome Prize  
Dov Honick  
PhD Candidate, Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame  
Beyond the Talmud: Revisiting Christian Anti-Jewish Polemic Sources in the Twelfth Century

Modern Italian Studies

Rome Prize in Modern Italian Studies  
Jessica L. Harris  
Assistant Professor, Department of History, St. John’s University  
Black America and Italy: African American Women in Post-Fascist Italian Culture

Millicent Mercer Johnsen/National Endowment for the Humanities Rome Prize  
Erica Moretti  
Assistant Professor, Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York  
Across the Colonial Sea: Family Reunification, Vatican Humanitarianism, and the End of Empire (1943–1950)

Samuel H. Kress Foundation/Donald and Maria Cox Rome Prize  
Sara L. Petrilli-Jones  
PhD Candidate, Yale University and Scuola Normale Superiore  
Drafting the Canon: Legal Histories of Art in Florence and Rome, 1600–1800

Musical Composition

Samuel Barber Rome Prize  
Baldwin Giang  
PhD Candidate in Music Composition, University of Chicago  
Transnational Queerness: Three Compositions Reflecting on City Life, Queerness, and Romance

Frederic A. Juilliard/Walter Damrosch Rome Prize  
Kate Soper  
Composer, Northampton, Massachusetts; Iva Dee Hiatt Professor of Music, Smith College; Codirector, Wet Ink Ensemble  
Orchestra Orpheus Opus Onus

Rome Prize in Musical Composition  
Anthony Vine  
Composer in Residence, Filomen M. D’Agostino Greenberg Music School  
Little Clay Vases

Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

Samuel H. Kress Foundation/Marian and Andrew Heiskell Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize  
Gabriella L. Johnson  
PhD Candidate, Department of Art History, University of Delaware  
Galatea’s Realm: The Art of Coral, Shells, and Marine Fossils in Early Modern Sicily, Naples, and the Maltese Islands

Anthony M. Clark Rome Prize  
Nhung Tuyet Tran  
Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Toronto  
Cosmopolitanism, Trans-Imperial Subjects, and the Vietnamese Confession Crisis in the Making of the Early Modern Global Church, 1660–1800

National Endowment for the Humanities Rome Prize  
Anne L. Williams  
Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, University of Hong Kong  
Imago humilis: Humor, Irony, and Rhetoric in Art and Devotion

Visual Arts

Carla Fendi Rome Prize  
Kamrooz Aram  
Artist, Brooklyn  
Renegotiating Ornament

Philip Guston Rome Prize  
Nao Bustamante  
Professor of Art, Roski School of Art and Design, University of Southern California  
BLOOM

Jules Guerin Rome Prize  
Mike Cloud  
Associate Professor, Department of Art, Theory, and Practice, Northwestern University  
Holistic Abstraction

Nancy B. Negley Rome Prize  
Zachary Fabri  
Artist, Brooklyn  
T(KH)N

Nancy B. Negley Rome Prize  
Jeanine Oleson  
Associate Professor, Department of Art and Design, Rutgers University  
Untitled, Work-in-progress

Philip Guston Rome Prize  
Estefania Puerta Grisales  
Artist, Burlington, Vermont  
Embodied Excess: Feeling the Ruins

Abigail Cohen Rome Prize  
Dread Scott  
Faculty, MFA Fine Arts Department, School of Visual Arts  
Temporal Shifting

Tsao Family Rome Prize

John Delury  
Professor of Chinese Studies, Yonsei University  
Thinking through Tianxia in Rome

Terra Foundation Affiliated Fellow for a Chicago-Based Artist

Lan Tuazon  
Associate Professor, Department of Sculpture, School of the Art Institute of Chicago  
Future Fossils: Ever Given

Italian Fellows

Franco Zeffirelli Italian Fellow  
Nicola Barbagli  
Scholar, Florence  
Domitian as Pharaoh: The Hieroglyphic Inscriptions of the Pamphilj Obelisk

Fondazione Sviluppo e Crescita CRT Italian Fellow in Visual Arts  
Fatma Bucak  
Artist, Turin  
We possess all things

Enel Foundation Italian Fellow in Architecture, Urban Design, and Landscape Architecture  
Sabrina Morreale  
Architect, London and Rome; Studio Master, Architectural Association School of Architecture; Cofounder, Lemonot Studio  
Roman Foraging: Spontaneous Convivial Acts within the Edgelands

Press inquiries

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Rome Press Officer

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