AAR Welcomes New Fellows to Rome

The newest cohort of Rome Prize Fellows gathered in the Bass Garden before the Opening Reception on September 10, 2024 (photograph by Gerardo Gaetani)
2025 Rome Prize winners at Carnegie Hall in April 2024 (photograph by Christine Butler)

The Academy is grateful to reopen this month and welcome the newest cohort 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, thirty-one Americans and three Italians 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.

The 2025 Rome Prize Fellows are listed by discipline below. Click a person’s name to read about their current project.

Ancient Studies

Samuel H. Kress Foundation/Donald and Maria Cox Rome Prize
Brigitte A. Keslinke
PhD Candidate, Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World Graduate Group, University of Pennsylvania
The Making of a Meal: Commensality in the Cult of Mithras

Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Rome Prize
Emily C. Mitchell
PhD Candidate in Classical Philology, Department of the Classics, Harvard University
Voices in Stone: Remembering the Enslaved and the Emancipated in Latin Verse Epitaphs

Andrew Heiskell/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/National Endowment for the Humanities Rome Prize
Vassiliki Panoussi
Chancellor Professor of Classical Studies, College of William and Mary
The Goddess Isis in Roman Literature: Gender, Ethnicity, and Identity

Arthur Ross Rome Prize
Crystal Rosenthal
PhD Candidate, Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin
Agents on the Shore: Harbor Arches in Roman Port Cities

Architecture

Arnold W. Brunner/Frances Barker Tracy/Katherine Edwards Gordon Rome Prize
Michelle JaJa Chang
Assistant Professor of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Material Resistance to Symbolic Form

Lily Auchincloss Rome Prize
David Costanza
Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Cornell University
Bending Stone

Design

Rolland Rome Prize and
Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize
Amy Revier
Owner/Director, Amy Revier, Austin, Texas
Woven Narratives of Rome

Historic Preservation and Conservation

Suzanne Deal Booth Rome Prize
Katherine L. Beaty
Book Conservator for Special Collections, Weissman Preservation Center, Harvard Library
A Technical Study of Italian Archival Bookbindings

Adele Chatfield-Taylor Rome Prize
Krupali Krusche
Associate Professor, School of Architecture, University of Notre Dame
The Roman Forum – Learning Grounds for the Renaissance – What Did They Truly Learn?

Landscape Architecture

Gilmore D. Clarke and Michael Rapuano/Kate Lancaster Brewster Rome Prize
Anthony Acciavatti
Diana Balmori Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, Yale University
Groundwater Earth: The World before and after the Tubewell

Garden Club of America/Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize
Megumi Aihara and Dan Spiegel
Principals, Spiegel Aihara Workshop, San Francisco
Continuing Lecturer, Department of Architecture, College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley (Spiegel)
Landscapes after the Fire

Literature

Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, a Gift of the Drue Heinz Trust
Selby Wynn Schwartz
Writer, San Francisco
The Small Sea

John Guare Writers Fund Rome Prize, a Gift of Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman
Jacob Shores-Argüello
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Baylor University
River Citizen

Medieval Studies

Paul Mellon Rome Prize
Claire Dillon
PhD Candidate, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University
Constructing the Histories of Medieval Sicily: Production, Power, and Fragmentation in the Textile Industry and Beyond

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Rome Prize
Craig Perry
Assistant Professor, Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies and the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, Emory University
Towards a Documentary History of Medieval Africa

Modern Italian Studies

Millicent Mercer Johnsen/National Endowment for the Humanities Rome Prize
Carol E. Harrison
Professor, Department of History, University of South Carolina
A Women’s History of Vatican I

Jesse Howard Jr. Rome Prize
Lucas R. Ramos
PhD Candidate, Department of History, Columbia University
Queer, Catholic, Communist: Forging a Sexual Revolution in the Italian Republic, 1958–1989

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Rome Prize
Giancarlo Tursi
Assistant Professor of Translation Studies, Department of French and Italian, University of California, Santa Barbara
Dialectal Dante: The Politics of Translation in Risorgimento Italy

Musical Composition

Luciano Berio Rome Prize
Jonah Nuoja Luo Haven
PhD Candidate in Composition, Department of Music, Harvard University
A Prone and Useful Nothingness: Music-Making within the Sixth Mass Extinction

Elliott Carter Rome Prize
Jen Shyu
Composer, Vocalist, Multi-Instrumentalist, Dancer, and Producer
Cofounder, Copresident, and Co-CEO, Mutual Mentorship for Musicians (M³), Brooklyn
Fertile Land, Fertile Body

Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

Anthony M. Clark Rome Prize
Julia Rose Katz
PhD Candidate, Department of Art History, Rutgers University
Circe’s Wand: Reimagining Antiquities in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800

Samuel H. Kress Foundation/Marian and Andrew Heiskell Rome Prize
Shannah Rose
PhD Candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
The Codex Ríos and the Reception of Mesoamerican Pictography in Early Modern Italy

Tsao Family Rome Prize

Jenny Lin
Associate Professor of Critical Studies, Roski School of Art and Design, University of Southern California
The Global Art-Fashion System: New Silk Roads through China, Italy, and the United States

Visual Arts

Nancy B. Negley Rome Prize
Lex Brown
Lecturer in Visual Arts, Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University
Soap Operetta

Abigail Cohen Rome Prize
Matthew Connors
Professor, Photography Department, Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Shadows and the Silent Majority

Jules Guerin Rome Prize
Devon Dikeou
Artist, Editor, and Publisher, zingmagazine
Curator and Cofounder, Dikeou Collection
The Inconspicouses

Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize
Nona Faustine
Artist, Brooklyn
AfroPhantazein

Philip Guston Rome Prize
Richard Mosse
Artist, New York
Late Fascism and Fantasy Fiction in Contemporary Italy

Henry W. and Marian T. Mitchell Rome Prize
Sheila Pepe
Artist, Brooklyn
It’s All Public

Terra Foundation Affiliated Fellowship for a Chicago-Based Visual Artist

Kimmah M. Dennis
Artist and Visiting Artist Coordinator, Department of Painting and Drawing, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Interwoven

Italian Fellows

Enel Foundation Italian Fellow in Architecture, Urban Design, and Landscape Architecture
Giuseppe Grant
Architect, Rome; Cofounder, orizzontale
Roma Ludica: City as Playground

Marcello Lotti Italian Fellow in Music
Daria Scia
Composer, Forio, Italy
lines of spiritual motion, composing in dialogue with the works of Flannery O’Connor

Franco Zeffirelli Italian Fellow in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
Eugenio Villa
Postdoctoral Researcher, Università di Udine
Bessarion’s Encyclica ad Graecos (1463) in the Framework of the First Ottoman-Venetian War (1463–1479)

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