June 20, 2004 Swann Foundation Announces Awards of Academic Grants for 2005-2006

The Caroline and Erwin Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon, administered by the Library of Congress, announces the award of Swann Fellowship academic grants for the 2005-2006 academic year to three applicants: Amy Robin Hoffman, Nicole Tucker Keith and Hillary Chute. In lieu of awarding one single fellowship, as in the past, the foundation's advisory board decided to support three applicants' projects with individual $1,500 academic grants.

Hillary Chute, a doctoral candidate in English at Rutgers University, will receive support to research her dissertation, "Contemporary Graphic Narratives: History, Aesthetics, Ethics." In her study, Chute focuses on historically based graphic narratives and draws on narrative and visual art theory as well as postmodern literary theory to argue that the expansive, dynamic and distinctive form of graphic narratives gives them special advantage in realizing historical representation.

Nicole Tucker Keith, a candidate for a master's degree in landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, has been awarded an academic grant to support her research project, "Studies in Landscape Representation: Interrelations and Interdependencies." Keith proposes to explore how artists represent landscape in comics. She will analyze how these artists' representations of landscape work within their sequences of imagery and how these relate to landscape architects' approaches to landscape in their drawings.

Amy Robin Hoffman, a candidate for a master's degree in English literature at the University of Connecticut, will receive support to research her thesis, "The Many Faces of Edward Gorey." Hoffman will investigate Gorey's work in the area of caricature by focusing on his dual identities as writer and artist and giving special attention to the artist's portrayals of himself.

New York advertising executive Erwin Swann (1906-1973) established the Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon in 1967. An avid collector, Swann assembled a large group of original drawings by 400 artists, spanning two centuries, which his estate bequeathed to the Library of the Congress in the 1970s. Swann's original purpose was to build a collection of original drawings by significant humorous and satiric artists and to encourage the study of original cartoon and caricature drawings as works of art. The foundation's support of research and academic publication is carried out in part through a program of fellowships. The Swann Foundation awards one fellowship annually (with a stipend of $15,000) to assist continuing scholarly research and writing projects in the field of caricature and cartoon.

The next deadline for applications for the 2005-2006 academic year is Feb. 15, 2005. Guidelines and application forms, which have recently been revised, are available through the Swann Foundation's Web site: www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/swannhome.html; or by calling Martha Kennedy in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress at (202) 707-9115.