Karen Karbiener Wins Kluge Fellowship and Fulbright Grant to Research Two New Books

      Karen Karbiener, master teacher of humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Science’s Liberal Studies Program, has won awards to research two new publications over the next year.
       As a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress from February to July 2010, Karbiener will continue work on Walt Whitman and New York: The Urban Roots of Leaves of Grass. The book reconstructs Whitman’s life and career through its most productive and most obscure period: his years writing in and of New York, particularly his work on Leaves. Karbiener’s aim is to let readers see, hear, and sense the urban setting that transformed a sensitive young man into one of America’s greatest poets.
       Karbiener has also been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant. At the University of Novi Sad in Serbia, she will lead a graduate seminar in American studies while working on a literary biography of her family by reconnecting with centuries of Vojvodina roots broken off after World War II. Progressive trends in Serbia’s government, she says, enable this project, which in turn honors and celebrates the country’s changes.
       Karbiener is one of approximately 1,100 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program this year.