Anne Coldiron of English wins yearlong $50,400 NEH fellowship

Anne Coldiron, an associate professor in the Department of English, has won a $50,400 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities that she will use to write her third book. In the book, to be titled, Printers Without Borders: Translation, Transnationalism, and Early English Print, Coldiron will look at the effects of the printing press and translations in 15th and 16th century literary works.

“In that earlier age of information revolution, two kinds of textual technologies – printing and translation – worked synergistically to create astonishing changes in literature and culture,” Coldiron said. “In the current information revolution, we, too, are experiencing the transformative powers of translation and ‘info tech,’ and together, they connect cultures and shake up our basic assumptions and habits. But, because the analogy between the old and new textual revolutions is imperfect, it needs to be historicized and contextualized. That is the goal of my project.”

Coldiron says the yearlong fellowship gives her the gift of time. “We [humanities researchers] don’t need labs or much equipment, but we must have extended, uninterrupted time with books for the slow, deep thinking and the exploration of objects in their full historical and social contexts that makes the best humanities research.” Coldiron, a member of the History of Text Technology program, received an earlier NEH fellowship in 1998. For more information, go to http://www.fsu.edu/news/2010/01/06/neh.fellowship/