By Donald Gilpin

Four Princeton University faculty members, two University Arts Fellows at the Lewis Center, nine Princeton University alumni, and a former Princeton resident who graduated from Princeton High School (PHS) have all received 2025 Guggenheim Fellowships awarded to “exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in the creative arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.”

Recognizing both “prior achievement” and “future promise,” The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded the grants annually since 1925. There were 198 American and Canadian scholars selected this year.

Guggenheim winner Rachel Shteir, head of dramaturgy at DePaul University, author of four books, and recipient of numerous writing awards, grew up in Princeton and attended Princeton Public Schools (PPS) from Riverside through PHS.

“I’m thrilled and honored to be awarded the Guggenheim, which is a statement about my work’s impact at a moment at which the arts are challenged,” she wrote in an email. “I’m also grateful to the Guggenheim for providing me with the rare gift of time.”

Shteir, whose recent biography, Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disruptor, was a finalist for the National Critics Circle Awards Best Biography of 2023, has lectured widely on popular culture and theater, and is often quoted in the national media. She noted that she had “many amazing and dedicated teachers during her time in the PPS, citing history teacher Jeff Lucker, English teacher Joan Goodman, “and many others who gave students space.”

Princeton University Mathematics Professor Maria Chudnovsky, whose research focuses on graph theory and combinatorics, won a Guggenheim in mathematics. She has a Ph.D. (2003) from Princeton and has been a professor at the University since 2015.

East Asian Studies and History Professor Thomas Conlan, whose research focuses on medieval Japanese history, received a Guggenheim in Asian studies. He has been on the Princeton faculty since 2013.

Rhodri Lewis, who came to Princeton in 2017 and is a senior research scholar and lecturer with the rank of professor in English, was awarded a Guggenheim in literary criticism. His scholarship focuses on the literary, cultural, and intellectual histories of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Carolyn Rouse, the Ritter Professor of Anthropology and a documentary filmmaker, received the Guggenheim in anthropology. She came to Princeton in 2000. Her scholarship focuses on development and education, medical anthropology, religion, race, resistance, social inequality, and visualizing complex ethnographic data.

The Arts Fellows Guggenheim recipients include yuniya edi kwon and Peter S. Shin, both in the field of music composition.

Kwon is a composer, violinist, vocalist, and interdisciplinary artist. Shin, a composer whose music interweaves Korean and American themes and influences, is currently pursuing a yearlong composition project for the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth.

The Princeton University alumni recipients of 2025 Guggenheim Fellowships include Laura Beers, Class of 2000, for intellectual and cultural history; Katie Kitamura, Class of 1999, for fiction; Accra Shepp, Class of 1984, for photography; and Carla Williams, Class of 1986, for photography.

Princeton graduate school 2025 alumni winners include Angela Esterhammer, 1990 graduate alumna, for English literature; Kellen Funk, 2018 graduate alumnus, for law; Katherine Ludwig Jansen, 1995 graduate alumna, for medieval and early modern studies; Annette Yoshiko Reed, 2002 graduate alumna, for religion; and James Morton Turner, 2004 graduate alumnus, for the history of science, technology, and economics.

Since their inception 100 years ago, the Guggenheim Fellowships “have helped artists, writers, scholars, and scientists at the highest levels of achievement pursue the work they were meant to do,” states the Foundation website.

The Guggenheim Trust has supported more than 19,000 Fellows in more than 50 different fields.