Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor, continues to break new ground with his work on the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Professor Darnton desires to see a universal library established online that would “make all knowledge available to all citizens.” In the 1990s he initiated two projects to digitize scholarly and historical works, and in 2007 he was named Director of the Harvard University Library.

More on Professor Darnton’s work and the DPLA can be found in this month’s Technology Review.

*Photo credit: Thierry Dudoit/Express-Rea/Redux
*Text credit: Nicholas Carr, “The Library of Utopia”, Technology Review, May/June 2012, MIT Press.

Professor Maya Jasanoff has won the Washington Book Prize for her recent book “Liberty’s Exiles.”

Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History and Director of the Center for History and Economics, Emma Rothschild, was awarded a Phi Beta Kappa teaching award at the 222nd Phi Beta Kappa Literary Exercises last week. In addition to celebrating top-ranked seniors in Harvard College’s class of 2012, the Literary Exercises honor Harvard professors for their excellence in teaching.

A list of PBK honorees and more commencement coverage can be found in the Harvard Gazette online.

Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Afsaneh Najmabadi will present her digital archive project, Women’s World in Qajar Iran, at the White House on Wednesday May 30 as part of the presentation and discussion panel “Exploring Communities of Muslim Women Throughout History.” The event has been organized by the White House Office of Public Engagement and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In addition to Professor Najmabadi, there will be presentations from Mounira M. Charrad of the University of Texas at Austin and Azizah al-Hibri of the University of Richmond and KARAMAH Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights.

The American Philosophical Society awarded the Jacques Barzun Prize for the best book in cultural history published in 2010 to Professor Peter E. Gordon in recognition of his book Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos. The award was presented by Mary Patterson McPherson, Executive Officer of the Society.

Continental Divide is a study of the 1929 public debate between two major philosophers of the past century – Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger – that took place in Davos, Switzerland. Their confrontation over the mission of philosophy in the wake of Kant, neo-Kantianism, Husserl, and the crisis of European thought after World War I acquired an allegorical significance over the years, as if it marked an ultimate and irreparable rupture in 20th century Continental thought. Cassirer represented an anthropological turn to culture and “symbolic forms,” while Heidegger argued for a post-metaphysical existential phenomenology – and this debate about what it means to be human has proceeded along these lines down to the present day.

For more on the Jacques Barzun prize, visit the American Philosophical Society’s website.

*Photo credit: American Philosophical Society.

Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History, Michael McCormick as well as Dean of Radcliffe Institute and Howard Mumford Jones Professor American Studies, Lizabeth Cohen, have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

One of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, the American Academy is a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to academy publications and studies of science and technology policy, energy and global security, social policy and American institutions, the humanities and culture, and education.

Recently, Professor McCormick has been continuing his quest to bring climate science into the realm of historical research by studying climate data and historical accounts after the fall of the Roman Empire for a forthcoming article.

Professor Cohen has been appointed Dean of Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study after serving as Interim Dean for the academic year 2011-2012.

For more on the Academy and a list of the 14 Harvard scholars elected this year, visit the Harvard Gazette.

James Hankins, professor of history and general editor for I Tatti Renaissance Library at Harvard, has been awarded the Paul Oskar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award from the Renaissance Society of America. He is the the youngest recipient of the award, which has previously gone to two other Harvard professors, James S. Ackerman in 1998 and Lewis Lockwood in 2008.  Harvard PhDs who have won the award are F. Edward Cranz and John W. O’Malley.

For more information on the award and past winners, please visit the Renaissance Society of America’s website.

Lizabeth Cohen, Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies and interim dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study since last July, has recently been named dean by Harvard President Drew Faust.

“Liz Cohen is a distinguished and imaginative scholar with a deep knowledge of Radcliffe and Harvard and a strong dedication to Radcliffe’s pursuit of new ideas and collaborations across the academic disciplines, the professions, and the creative arts,” said Faust in announcing the appointment. “She is an experienced academic leader with a talent for nurturing creativity and spurring cooperative effort, and as interim dean she has already strengthened Radcliffe’s ties to people and programs across Harvard and beyond. Her wide span of intellectual interests, her spirited curiosity, and her incisive intelligence promise to serve the institute well.”

“I am thrilled to have the opportunity to lead the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study to further success in its mission to create and disseminate bold new thinking in the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and the arts,” said Cohen. “In my eight months as interim dean, I have learned how much the institute has to offer — advancing the research of Harvard faculty and students, providing intellectual invigoration to our interdisciplinary fellows, sustaining the world’s preeminent research library on the history of women, and pursuing programs to share this wealth of new knowledge with wider audiences close to home and increasingly around the world.”

Read the full story in the Harvard Gazette.

*Photo credit: Tony Rinaldo, Harvard Gazette

Professor Maya Jasanoff has won the National Book Critics Circle Award in general nonfiction for her work “Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World”. The National Book Critics Circle awards honor the best literature published in English in six categories: autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

Read the Harvard Gazette story.

Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library, has been awarded a National Humanities Medial. This award honors individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities, broadened our citizens’ engagement with the humanities, or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to important resources in the humanities.

For the full list of winners and more information about the award, visit the National Endowment for the Humanities website.