Brandeis Magazine

Sylvia Barack Fishman is this year’s recipient of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry’s Marshall Sklare Award. The honor is given to a senior scholar who significantly contributes to the social scientific study of Jewry, primarily through published work. Fishman is the Near Eastern and Judaic studies department chair, the Joseph and Esther Foster Professor of Contemporary Jewish Life, and the co-director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute.

Historian Alan Taylor, PhD’86, has been awarded his second Pulitzer Prize in the category of history, for the book “The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1771-1832,” which examines the assistance rebellious slaves in Virginia gave the British, particularly during the War of 1812. Taylor received the 1996 Pulitzer in history for “William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic.” In August, he will become the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Chair in history at the University of Virginia.

The Association for Computing Machinery has given Leslie Lamport, MA’63, PhD’72, the A.M. Turing Award, widely known as the “Nobel of computing.” A principal researcher at Microsoft Research, Lamport developed LaTeX, a typesetting system ubiquitous in technical and scientific publications, and explored the seemingly chaotic world of distributed computing systems.

David Engerman, the Ottilie Springer Professor of History, received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for his achievements in historical research. Engerman plans to use the fellowship in 2016 to work on a research project titled “Planning for Plenty: The Economic Cold War in India.”

Anita Hill, senior adviser to the provost, and professor of social policy, law and women’s studies, is the subject of the critically acclaimed documentary “Anita: Speaking Truth to Power.” The film, directed by Academy Award winner Freida Lee Mock, examines Hill’s role in the U.S. Senate’s confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991.

The American Council of Learned Societies presented Ulka Anjaria, assistant professor of English, with a Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Anjaria’s research focuses on post-2000 literature and popular culture in India, including their relationship to social concerns.

Naghmeh Sohrabi, the Charles (Corky) Goodman Chair in Middle East History, was awarded a New Directions Fellowship by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Sohrabi will use the fellowship, which this year went to only 10 professors nationally, to work on a book about the 1979 Iranian revolution.

In February, Chad Williams, chair of the African and Afro-American studies department, spoke at a Washington, D.C., event sponsored by the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History, and hosted by the White House Office of Public Engagement. After a screening of a new documentary titled “Veterans of Color,” Williams participated in a discussion about African-Americans in the military.