A true genius

This morning, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named Saidiya Hartman to its Class of 2019 of MacArthur fellows. Hartman, 58, is a Professor of Comparative Literature and English and Women’s and Gender Studies.

The 26 fellows, widely known as MacArthur “Geniuses,” receive $625,000 over the course of five years to fund their groundbreaking work in whatever capacity they see fit. There are no strings attached. Not even one.

Hartman’s work encompasses a wide range of disciplines, but is particularly interested in slavery and its legacy, the lives of “ordinary” black women, and the limits of the historical archive in telling these stories. Her most recent book, “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments,” poses the question, “What is a free life?” Critiquing sociological surveys, tenement photographs, and reformatory case files, she explores the intimate stories of young black women “who are imagining what a beautiful life can be as the black ghetto is emerging.”

At Columbia, she has taught courses such as “Du Bois at 150,” which interrogates “the philosophical, literary, historical, and sociological work of W.E.B. Du Bois…some 150 years after his birth and 55 years after his death.” This semester, she is teaching a graduate course on feminist pedagogy or “what it means to teach as a feminist.”

“I do the research of a scholar, but I want the work to read with the beauty of a novel,” she said.

Two graduate school alumni were also recipients of the prestigious fellowship. Valeria Luiselli (GSAS’15), 36, is a writer whose work challenges “conventional notions of authorship in fiction, essays, and inventive hybrids of the two that pose profound questions about the various ways we piece together stories and document the lives of others.”

Emmanuel Pratt (GSAPP’03), 42, is an urban designer who focuses on “integrating agriculture, education, and design in a resident-driven approach to community development and turning neglected urban neighborhoods into places of growth and vitality.”

Photo via MacArthur Foundation