Maccolades for March 2023: World’s largest history prize, a globe-trotting fellowship, a season to remember, and more

Maccolades is a monthly round-up of the most recent accolades and accomplishments earned by members of the Macalester community. Below are highlights from March 2023. 

A history prize worth $300K

Macalester graduate Krista Goff ’04 won the Dan David Prize, the world’s largest history prize. Goff will receive $300,000 in recognition of her achievements and to support future work. A history professor at the University of Miami, Goff examines asymmetries of power and processes of belonging and exclusion in the Soviet Union. She is the co-editor of the journal Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History and co-director of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Think Tank, a national program based at Howard University.

“Our winners represent a new generation of historians,” said Ariel David, board member of the Prize and the son of its founder, in the announcement. “They are changing our understanding of the past by asking new questions, targeting under-researched topics and using innovative methods.”

A triplet of residencies

Michael Prior, English professor and Mellon ACM Faculty Fellow, earned a spot in the “Past Wrongs, Future Choices” Spring 2023 residency program at the University of Victoria. The program provides a $9,000 award, a setting for focused work, and interdisciplinary networking opportunities to examine the World War II internment and dispossession of people of Japanese descent in Allied countries. 

“I will use the time and space provided by the residency to continue work on a new poetry collection, Wartime Measures, which will explore processes of cultural and familial memory in relation to the incarceration of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians during the Second World War — an incarceration experienced by my maternal grandparents,” Prof. Prior said. “For me, this new collection is a necessary project of re-witnessing in a time when historical wrongs in North America hauntingly parallel recent politics of persecution.”

To further support this work, Prof. Prior was selected for the Amy Clampitt Residency, which will provide him with a $15,000 stipend and residency in poet Amy Clampitt’s former house in Massachusetts for six months in 2024. Additionally, Prof. Prior was named a 2023 Artist-in-Residence and Master Artist Fellow at Craigardan, a nonprofit arts organization and educational working farm in Elizabethtown, New York. Prior will receive a $1,000 fellowship and a $500 honorarium to deliver a public talk. 

From D.C. to Dublin: Student leader to embark on social justice journey

Hufsa Ahmed ’24 was selected as a 2023 Frederick Douglass Global Fellow. Ahmed, a political science and economics major, is one of 12 student leaders who will participate in a three-continent global journey to Washington, D.C.; Cape Town, South Africa; and Dublin, Ireland for a comparative study of social justice leadership. During the four-week summer program, fellows will explore the legacies of Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, John Lewis, Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Daniel O’Connell, John Hume, and other giants of social change. 

“The outstanding students of color selected for this prestigious award were chosen based on their demonstrated commitment to advancing peace in our world by building bridges between people with different viewpoints,” noted the Council on International Educational Exchange in its announcement.  

Shooting for success

The Macalester men’s basketball team wrapped up a strong season, finishing 11-9 in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, a record that constituted the best MIAC finish, most MIAC wins, and best overall winning percentage since the 2003-04 season. Macalester was the only MIAC team to have three players — Badou Ba ’25, Coby Gold ’25 and Caleb Williams ’24 — make the all-conference team.

Ba was named the MIAC’s Defensive Player of the Year. Williams scored his 1,000th point against Saint John’s on Feb. 15 and made the MIAC All-Playoff team. Williams also was named to D3Hoops.com All-Region 9 second team and selected for the Division III Academic All-America first team for men’s basketball by the College Sports Communicators. He is the first men’s basketball player in Macalester history to earn this honor. A physics major, Williams holds a 3.91 GPA. 

Found in translation

Dr. Ahoo Najafian, assistant professor of Islamic Studies, won a Scholarly Editions and Translations award from the National Endowment for the Humanities to work on the 12th-century Persian mystical epic, The Divine Tragedy (Mosibat-nameh) by Farid al-Din Attar. In collaboration with her colleague at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Prof. Najafian will translate the text into English and compose a volume, titled “Attar’s Affliction: Sufism and Allegory in the Global Middle Ages,” to examine conceptions of allegory and the role it played in the literary traditions of Islam in the Middle Ages and its connection to other religious traditions.

“I was quite excited about offering the first English translation of a very important Persian text,” Prof. Najafian said. “The fellowship would allow me to visit archives in England and Turkey and compare different manuscripts in order to introduce a comprehensive edition to the audience.”

How to be considered for future Maccolades

If you or someone you know recently earned an award, fellowship, or honor and would like it to be considered for inclusion in next month’s Maccolades, please let Communications & Marketing know by filling out this Maccolades form. For recent book publications, please use this book publication form.