UA English Professor Awarded Prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Dr. Heather Cass White, professor of English at The University of Alabama, was recently selected by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation as a Guggenheim Fellow.

White was among 188 in the class of 2024. Fellows are a distinguished and diverse group of culture-creators work­­ing across 52 disciplines. Chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of almost 3,000 applicants, this year’s class was tapped based on prior career achievement and exceptional promise.

“Perhaps the most meaningful part of receiving the fellowship, for me, is appearing on the same list as countless poets I admire, past and present,” White said. “Just this year those include Tracy K. Smith and Robyn Schiff, both of whom I read and teach over and over. Best of all, it associates me with my poet colleague, UA’s own Joel Brouwer, a 2010 fellow.”

White will use the award to edit the correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore, two great American poets of the 20th century. Both Bishop and Moore were Guggenheim Fellows.

As established in 1925 by founder Senator Simon Guggenheim, each fellow receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under “the freest possible conditions.” Since its inception, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded over $400 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 fellows.

“I’ve spent my professional life thinking about poems and trying to share my pleasure in them with others,” White said. “I’m honored that the Guggenheim Foundation thinks I’ve made a valuable contribution and wants to support my future efforts.”

White has published four books and numerous journal articles. Her book “New Collected Poems of Marianne Moore” was co-winner of the Modern Language Association Prize for Best Scholarly Edition in 2019.