The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress was founded in 2000 with a gift of $60 million from Metromedia president John W. Kluge. Although it is one of the youngest centers for advanced studies in the humanities in the United States, it has been able to attract to Washington some of the best minds in the world, enabling them to have easy access to the Library's comprehensive collections and allowing them to engage in dialog with legislators, other public figures and scholars with like interests.
From distinguished world leaders to aspiring academics and artists, the scholars have found at the Library of Congress a diverse collegial place "where humanistic scholarship is pondered and explored in depth—with all the unexpected discovery and delight that world-class collections make possible," according to Kluge Center director Prosser Gifford.
The goal of Librarian of Congress James H. Billington in creating the Kluge Center was to bring "as many great minds of the world [as possible], and then an even larger component of young minds, through this place so that they have a chance to use and profit from and interact with the collections and an extraordinary staff [of the Library of Congress]—a couple of thousand analysts, historians and catalogers, who themselves are an enormous scholarly resource."
The Kluge Center houses five senior Kluge Chairs (American Law and Governance, Countries and Cultures of the North, Countries and Cultures of the South, Technology and Society and Modern Culture); other senior-level chairs (Henry A. Kissinger Chair, Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in American History and Ethics and the Harissios Papamarkou Chair in Education and Technology); and nearly 25 postdoctoral fellows.
The scholars who are joining the Kluge Center in September are researching a diverse array of topics—from the significance of the Bible in American public life and Ottoman public opinion on the eve of World War I to the condition of slaves in 17th century South America and the causes of the Cold War and the genocide in Rwanda. The Kluge Chair for American Law and Governance has not been filled for this fall.
The list of scholars and their topics follows.
Asa Briggs
Kluge Chair of Countries and Cultures of the North
Asa Briggs is a historian who is widely known for his work in such diverse fields as social and labor history, urban studies and the history of communication. A tireless advocate of quality television in the United Kingdom and champion of the open university concept there, he was made a life peer, Baron Briggs of Lewes, in 1976. He and Vaclav Havel will share this position: Briggs for two months and Havel for three.
At the Library of Congress, Briggs will explore the divergent paths that broadcasting companies took during the 1920s and 1930s in Great Britain and the United States.
During World War II, Briggs served in the Intelligence Corps and later became a fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. He held other positions at Oxford, rising to become provost of Worcester College there. Briggs was also a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton; a professor of modern history at Leeds University; professor, dean and vice-chancellor at Sussex University; and chancellor of the Open University at Milton Keynes, U.K.
Briggs has written widely on Victorian history and the broadcasting industry. His publications include "Victorian People" (1954), "History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom" (five volumes, 1961-95), "Victorian Cities" (1963), "How They Lived, 1700-1815" (1969), "Marx in London" (1982), "A Social History of England" (1983), with his wife, Joanna Spicer, "The BBC: The First Fifty Years," (1985) and "A Social History of the Media" (2002).
Vaclav Havel
Kluge Chair of Countries and Cultures of the North
Vaclav Havel was president of Czechoslovakia and later, of the Czech Republic. He is the second former head of state to be in residence at the Kluge Center, following former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil. One of Europe's leading political, moral and intellectual figures, Havel will be pursuing his lifelong interest as a playwright and dramatist.
Born into a well-known entrepreneurial and intellectual family, Havel was prevented by the Czechoslovak Communist authorities from continuing his studies after completing required schooling in 1951. He did, however, complete his secondary education during the evening and spent two years at a technical university. Following two years of military service, Havel worked as a stage technician and then studied drama by correspondence at the Faculty of the Theatre of the Academy of Musical Arts.
Havel's play "The Garden Party" was a major inspiration for Czechoslovak revivalist tendencies in the 1960s, which led up to the Prague Spring of 1968. Soviet troops put an end to the Prague Spring later that year, but Havel continued to be a leader of the Czech intellectual opposition and protested against the repression of the Communist regime. He was jailed on three different occasions, spending a total of five years in prison.
With the fall of East German leader Erich Honecker, followed by the dissolution of the Berlin Wall, citizens in Prague took to the streets to demonstrate, and the Communist government finally capitulated. Havel was elected president by the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia in 1989 and elected president of the newly formed Czech Republic in 1993 and again in 1998. For his literary work and his efforts as a champion of human rights, Havel has been awarded a number of international prizes.
As president of the Czech Republic, Havel was the guest of the Library of Congress in 1998 for the opening of an exhibition commemorating the 80th anniversary of the founding of the independent Czechoslovak state. At that time, the Librarian presented him with the original 1918 Declaration of Independence of the Czechoslovak nation in the hand of Thomas Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, as a gift from the Library of Congress to the Czech Republic.
Lamin Sanneh
Kluge Chair of Countries and Cultures of the South
Lamin Sanneh, the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity and professor of history at Yale University, will be inquiring into the institutions of Islamic governance and law before, during and after British rule in Nigeria during his residency at the Kluge Center.
A Gambian-born convert from Islam to Christianity, Sanneh graduated from the University of London with a doctorate in Islamic history and later taught at the University of Ghana and the University of Aberdeen. He served for eight years as an assistant and associate professor of the history of religion at Harvard University before moving to Yale University in 1989.
A highly respected author and sought-after lecturer and public speaker, Sanneh has written extensively on a number of religious and historical subjects. Among his many books are "Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa" (1999), "The Crown and the Turban: Muslims and West African Pluralism" (1997) and "Encountering the West: Christianity and the Global Cultural Process: The African Dimension" (1993). For his academic work, Sanneh was made Commandeur de l'Ordre National du Lion, Senegal's highest national honor.
Philip Gold
Kluge Chair in Technology and Society
Chief of the clinical research program of the Clinical Neuroendocrinology Branch at the National Institutes of Health and a newly appointed member of the Library's Scholars' Council, Philip Gold earned his undergraduate and medical degrees at Duke University. He did his internship in internal medicine at the Boston City Hospital, followed by a residency in psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. In 1974 he joined the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) as a clinical associate in the section on psychiatry in the laboratory of clinical science. He has been with NIMH ever since, heading first the unit on affective disorders and then the section on neuroendocrinology. In 1987 he took his current position as chief of the Clinical Neuroendocrinology Branch, which focuses on advancing knowledge that will improve the diagnosis, treatment and overall health of patients suffering from depression.
At the Kluge Center, Gold, who has long been interested in the anatomic, molecular and physiological aspects of the generalized stress response and its relationship to major depression, is narrowing his research in a topic he calls "Self-perception, Identity and Depression."
Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov
Kluge Chair of Modern Culture
Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, a philologist and translator of international repute, is a professor in the department of Slavic languages and literatures and the program of Indo-European studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. During his residency at the Kluge Center, he will explore the symbols of the Old Slavic, Proto and Ancient Indian, Ancient Near Oriental and Pre-Columbian MesoAmerican cultures in his continuing study of the history of writing.
Ivanov has held many distinguished positions, including the director of the All-Union Library of Foreign Literature in Moscow, chairman of the Department of Structural Typology of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. and chairman of the Department of the Theory and History of World Culture and professor of the Philosophical Faculty at Moscow State University. He has also served as head of the Commission for the Complex Study of Creative Activity of the Scientific Council for the World Culture at the Academy of Sciences and president of the artistic translation section of the Moscow division of the U.S.S.R. writers' union.
A member of the Library of Congress Scholars' Council, Ivanov was curator for the 1994 Library of Congress exhibition "In the Beginning Was the Word: The Russian Church and Native Alaskan Cultures," which can be seen on the Library's Web site at www.loc.gov/exhibits/russian/russch1.html.
Ivanov has received numerous awards, including the Lenin Prize, and he is an honorary member of the American Linguistics Society as well as a fellow of the British Academy. He received doctorates from both Moscow State University and the University of Vilnius. He is the author of more than 15 books and 1,000 journal articles and has been editor in chief of Elementa, the Journal of Slavic Studies and Comparative Cultural Semiotics, since 1992.
Melvyn P. Leffler
Henry Alfred Kissinger Scholar in Foreign Policy and International
Relations
Melvyn Leffler, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences and Edward Stettinius Professor of American History at the University of Virginia, is the fourth scholar to occupy the Kissinger chair since the position was created in 2000 through the generosity of friends of the former secretary of state to honor him and emphasize the importance of foreign affairs.
Previous chair holders were Aaron Friedberg, then director of the research program in international security and acting director of the Center of International Studies at Princeton University; Klaus Larres, then Jean Monnet Professor, European Foreign and Security Policy at the School of Politics, Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland; and Lanxin Xiang, then professor of international history and politics at the Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales in Geneva.
As occupant of the Kissinger chair, Leffler hopes to write a book about the Cold War to address such fundamental questions as "why it started," "why it lasted as long as it did" and "why it ended when it did."
One of the country's leading authorities on modern U.S. foreign relations, Leffler received his doctorate from Ohio State University in 1972. He has been on the faculty of the department of history at the University of Virginia since 1986.
In 1993 he won the prestigious Bancroft Prize for his book "A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War" (1992). His other works include "Specter of Communism: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1917-1953" (1994) and "Elusive Quest: America's Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919-1933" (1979). He was co-editor of "Origins of the Cold War: An International History" (1994).
Leffler served in the office of the Secretary of Defense during the Carter administration, where he worked on arms control and contingency planning as a fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to a joint Soviet-American symposium on the Cold War in Moscow and Washington in 1990; he was a senior fellow at the Nobel Peace Institute in Oslo during 1993 and 1998, where he lectured on the Cold War; and he served as president of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations in 1994.
Derrick de Kerckhove
Harissios Papamarkou Chair in Education
Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology and professor in the department of French at the University of Toronto, Derrick de Kerckhove worked with Marshall McLuhan for more than 10 years as a translator, assistant and co-author. De Kerckhove's most recent book, "McLuhan for Managers: New Tools for New Thinking," was published in 2003.
De Kerckhove received his doctorate in French language and literature from the University of Toronto in 1975 and a doctorate in the sociology of art from the University of Tours (France) in 1979. Among the books he has edited or written are "Understanding 1984" (1984), "The Alphabet and the Brain" (1988), "La civilisation vidéo-chrétienne" (1990), "Brainframes: Technology, Mind and Business" (1991), "The Skin of Culture" (1995) and "Connected Intelligence" (1997).
De Kerckhove was decorated by the government of France with the order of "Les Palmes académiques" and has been a member of the Club of Rome since 1995.
The Harissios Papamarkou Chair in Education and Technology was established by a gift from Alexander Papamarkou (1930-1998), an investment banker who was generous in his support of the arts, education and medicine, in honor of his grandfather, a Greek educator. Holders of the Papamarkou Chair focus their research on the Library's role in education and examine the impact of education and technology on individuals and society. De Kerckhove is the second holder of the chair, following the composer Libby Larsen.
Mark A. Noll
Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in American History and Ethics
Mark A. Noll of Wheaton College is the third holder of the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in American History and Ethics at the Kluge Center. The first to hold the chair was Judge John T. Noonan (U.S. Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit); he was followed by Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago. Noll hopes to pursue research in the significance of the Bible in American public life.
Currently the McManis Chair of Christian Thought at Wheaton College and the co-founder and adviser for the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, Noll has been called the premier evangelical church historian in the United States. His scholarly interests include American theology, politics and society from the Great Awakening to the Civil War, the intellectual history of Protestantism, the cultural history of the Bible, hymn singing and evangelicalism in the North Atlantic region of the United States.
Noll received his doctorate from Vanderbilt University and has been a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School, the University of Chicago Divinity School, Westminster Theological Seminary and Regent College of Vancouver, Canada. He is a prolific author who has written extensively on Christianity and evangelicalism. Among his many books are "The Work We Have to Do: A History of Protestants in America" (2002), "A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada" (1992), "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" (1994), "America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln" (2002), "Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America" (1986) and "Adding Cross to Crown: The Political Significance of Christ's Passion" (1996).
Noll has also written numerous articles and edited works such as "God and Mammon: Protestants, Money, and the Market, 1790-1860" (2002), "Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals" (2003), "Singing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land: Hymnody in the History of North American Protestantism" (2004) and many others.
The holder of the Maguire Chair conducts research on the ethical issues associated with American history. Research may include the conduct of politics and government at all levels of American life as well as the role of religion, business, urban affairs, law, science and medicine in the ethical dimensions of leadership.
Mohammed Arkoun
Senior Distinguished Scholar of Islamic Studies
Mohammed Arkoun is professor emeritus at the Sorbonne, director of Arabica: Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies and one of the most prominent and influential figures in Islamic studies today. His most recent book is "The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought" (2002).
A native of Algeria, Arkoun studied at the faculty of literature of the University of Algiers and at the Sorbonne in Paris. His reputation was firmly established with his work on the historian and philosopher Ibn Miskawayh, Ahmad ibn Muhammad (c. 940-1030). As the editor of Arabica, Arkoun has played a significant part in attempting to shape Western-language scholarship on Islam. He is the author of numerous books in French, English and Arabic, including "Rethinking Islam" (1994) and "L'immigration: défis et richesses" (1998). His shorter studies have appeared in translation in many academic journals.
Arkoun, who delivered the distinguished Gifford Lectures in 2001 at four universities in Scotland, has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, Princeton University, Temple University, the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, the Pontifical Institute of Arabic Studies in Rome and the University of Amsterdam. He serves as a jury member for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and is currently emeritus professor at the Sorbonne as well as senior research fellow and member of the Board of Governors of the Institute of Ismaili Studies.
Xiacong Li
Senior Distinguished Visiting Scholar
Xiacong Li is professor of historical geography and cartography and vice director of the Centre for Ancient Chinese History Studies at Peking University. He specializes in the study of traditional Chinese architecture, temples in Beijing, canals, the Silk Road in China and Central Asia and Chinese local gazetteers. He is also a leading authority on pre-1900 Chinese maps; his book "A Descriptive Catalogue of Pre-1900 Chinese Maps in Europe" is a basic reference work for China studies.
At the Library of Congress, Li will work in both the Asian and Geography and Map divisions reviewing and selecting 100 maps found in the Library's collection of gazetteers (fangzhi) so that they can be made available both online and in print publications in Chinese and English. His research will focus on the maps that describe territories, boundaries, terrain, mountains and rivers, passes, fords and bridges, city walls and moats, river conservancy and dikes, transportation and courier service, graves and tombs, ancestral shrines and Buddhist and Taoist temples.
Menahem Schmelzer
Senior Distinguished Scholar
Menahem Schmelzer, professor of medieval Hebrew literature and Jewish bibliography at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, will research the interrelationship between Jewish and non-Jewish printers and publishers in 18th century Germany during his residency at the Kluge Center.
Born in Hungary, Schmelzer was a victim of both Nazi and communist oppression in his homeland. He began his studies in Semitic languages at the University of Budapest and later studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Budapest. With a master's degree in Jewish Studies from Copenhagen University and a diploma from the State Library School, Schmelzer emigrated to the United States and began a long association with the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. There he earned a doctorate in Hebrew literature and worked in the seminary library until 1987. At the same time, he also served as assistant professor of medieval Hebrew literature, a post to which he was appointed in 1969. He was appointed full professor in 1980 and professor emeritus in 2003.
Schmelzer has published books and articles on medieval Hebrew literature and Jewish bibliography and was the editor of Aron Freimann's "Union Catalog of Hebrew Manuscripts and Their Location" (1974), Alexander Marx's "Bibliographical Studies and Notes on Rare Books and Manuscripts in the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America" (1977) and the poems of Isaac ben Abraham Ibn Ezra (1980).
Postdoctoral Scholars
Also in residence at the Kluge Center in the Fall of 2004 are a group of postdoctoral scholars.
- Mustafa Aksakal, Library of Congress International Studies Fellow, received his doctorate from Princeton, where his dissertation won the Bayard and Cleveland E. Dodge Best Dissertation Award. An assistant professor at Fordham University, he calls his research topic "Defining Ottoman Public Opinion on the Eve of World War I."
- Carol Benedict, Library of Congress International Studies Fellow, received her doctorate from Stanford University. Presently on the faculty of the history department at Georgetown University, her research project on tobacco use in China is titled "Golden-silk Smoke: A Social and Cultural History of Tobacco Consumption in China, 1550-2000."
- Juliet Bruce, David B. Larson Fellow in Spirituality and Health, received her doctorate from the University of Hawaii's International University for Professional Studies. Executive director of the Institute for Transformation through the Arts, Bruce is researching the theory and practice of creative self-expression for healing purposes.
- Gian-Mario Cao, Kluge Fellow, has been a research fellow at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel. He received his doctorate from the Scuole Normale Superiore of Pisa and is researching "Diogenes Laertius: Medieval and Renaissance 'Fortuna' and Bibliography."
- Ruth Clements, Kluge Fellow, received her doctorate from the Harvard Divinity School. Chief of publications at the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she calls her project "Biblical Interpretation and Christian-Jewish Controversy: Interaction, Influence, and Rhetoric in the 2nd-3rd Centuries C.E."
- Amirul Hadi, Rockefeller Fellow in Islamic Studies, is a lecturer and chair of the department of Islamic studies at the State Institute of Islamic Studies Ar-Raniry in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. A recipient of a doctorate from McGill University, Hadi's research topic is called "War and Peace Among a Muslim People of Sumatra: A Study of Acehnese Hikayat Prangs (Heroic Poems)."
- Athanase Hagengimana, Kluge Fellow, will attempt to explain the psychological processes underlying the 1994 Rwandan genocide, basing his research on the existing literature about genocide and on data from interviews and self-reports of 200 genocide perpetrators. An instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, he calls his project "Psycho-social Causes of Rwanda Genocide."
- John Hanson, Rockefeller Fellow in Islamic Studies, is associate professor of history and director of African studies at Indiana University. He earned his doctorate at Michigan State University and plans to do his research on "Modernity, Transnational Islam, and Africa: The Ahmadiyya Muslim Movement in the 20th Century Gold Coast/Ghana."
- Lu Liu, Kluge Fellow, is assistant professor of Chinese history at the University of Tennessee. She received her doctorate from the University of California at San Diego and is doing her research on "Mass Migration in Wartime China."
- Rama Mantena, Kluge Fellow, is visiting assistant professor of history at Smith College. She received her doctorate from the University of Michigan and calls her research project "Language, Temporality, and Progress in Colonial South India."
- Robert Mason, Kluge Fellow, is a lecturer in history at the University of Edinburgh. He received his doctorate from Oxford University, and he calls his research project "America's Minority: The Republican Party and the U.S. Electorate from Hoover to Reagan."
- Kate Masur, Kluge Fellow, is assistant editor of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland history department. A recipient of a doctorate from the University of Michigan, Masur's research project is titled "Unworthy of the Nation: Black Rights and the Failure of Democracy in Civil War-era America."
- Kathrin Meyer, Kluge Fellow, is a historian and translator for S. Fischer-Verlag. She received her doctorate from the Technical University of Berlin and will do research on "Reconstruction of Cultural Life in a Divided City: Denazification of Artists by the Allied Kommandatura Berlin."
- Scott Palmer, Kluge Fellow, received his doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is an assistant professor in the department of history at Western Illinois University, and he calls his research project "Forging Colossus: Monumentality, Modernity, and the Soviet-Built Environment."
- Karl Qualls, Library of Congress International Studies Fellow, received his doctorate from Georgetown University. Currently an assistant professor at Dickinson College, his project on postwar reconstruction in the Soviet Union is titled "History in City Plans: Politics, Everyday Life and Myth-making in Soviet Reconstruction, 1944-54."
- Hassan Rezaei, Rockefeller Islamic Studies Fellow, is a research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute in Hamburg. He received his doctorate from Tarbiat Modarres University in Tehran, and he calls his research project "The Immutable and the Mutable in the Islamic Criminal Justice Theory and the Iranian Post-revolutionary Practice."
- Marcia Ristaino, Kluge Staff Fellow.
- Melhem Salman, Rockefeller Islamic Studies Fellow, is a retired World Bank official. He received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University, and his research topic is called "A Biography of Salman al Farsi: 7th Century Luminary and Model for the Present."
- Patricia Sieber, Library of Congress International Studies Fellow, received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley in classical Chinese literature. Currently an associate professor in Chinese literature at Ohio State University, her research is on "The Formation of Modern Sinology."
- Douglas Slaymaker, Kluge Fellow, is assistant professor of Japanese in the department of Russian and Eastern studies at the University of Kentucky. He received his doctorate from the University of Washington and will be researching "The Japanese Imagination of France During the Prewar and Postwar Years."
- Temule (Temur), Kluge Fellow, received his doctorate from Nanjing University and is currently an assistant professor of history there. His research project is called "Mongolia of the Imagination: Western Travelers in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, with Special Emphasis on Owen Lattimore."
- Roy Tsao, Kluge Fellow, is a visiting assistant professor at Georgetown University. A doctoral recipient from Princeton University, he calls his research project "The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt."
- Gillian Weiss, Kluge Fellow, is assistant professor of history at Case Western Reserve University. She received her doctorate from Stanford University, and her research project is titled "Back from Barbary: French Slavery in the Early Modern Mediterranean."
- Nancy E. van Deusen, Library of Congress International Studies Fellow, received her doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. An associate professor at Western Washington University, she calls her project "Of Human Bondage: Personal Servitude in Three Andean Cities: Lima, Huamanga, and La Plata, 1535-1650."
- Galina Yermolenko, Library of Congress International Studies Fellow, received her doctorate from Marquette University, where she is an assistant professor in the humanities department. She calls her research project "Roxolana: From Slave to Legend."
- Thomas Zeller, Kluge Fellow, is assistant professor of history at the University of Maryland. His doctorate is from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, and his research project is titled "The View from the Road in the U.S. and Germany, 1920-1970."
For more information about any of the fellowships or programs offered by the John W. Kluge Center, contact the Office of Scholarly Programs, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue S.E., Washington, DC 20540-4860; telephone (202) 707-3302, fax (202) 707-3595, or visit the Web at www.loc.gov/kluge/.
