U of M College of Liberal Arts faculty member wins prestigious award from the American Academy in Rome
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL ( 4/18/2008 ) --Hisham Bizri, College of Liberal Arts (CLA) faculty member at the University of Minnesota, has been selected as a recipient of the 112th annual American Academy in Rome Prize Competition. The academy officially announced the award recently in the New York Times.
Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship a year ago, Bizri, an assistant professor in the department of cultural studies and comparative literature and a filmmaker,
received the award in the Rome Prize’s visual arts category on the basis of his work to develop his film “The Last Day of Summer” from a screenplay he wrote.
“I didn’t expect to win, really, especially considering past winners such as artist Elliot Carter,” said Bizri. “I am from Lebanon, a small country, where I spent most of my life living in wars and never dreaming of joining the American Academy in Rome. But, I’ve had and have so much love in my life -- family, friends and colleagues -- so, maybe it is not so unexpected. I am very honored."
The Rome Prize is an annual award for artists and scholars to further develop both intellectually and artistically. Fellowship winners travel to Rome and are provided a stipend, a study or studio, and room andboard for a period of six months to two years. Bizri will be living at the academy in Rome for all of next year.
“This is an extraordinary honor for Hisham and a continuing affirmation of the exceptional quality of his work and the lasting impact that his work is having among so many diverse audiences,” said James Parente Jr., interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts. “Hisham continues to make us very proud that he is on our faculty and contributing in so many important ways to promote film studies and digital film-making."
A practicing filmmaker from Lebanon, Bizri presented in 2006 a first-of-its-kind symposium on film and culture in the Arab world. He is the co-founder of the Arab Institute of Film in Amman, Jordan. Bizri’s films have been shown internationally including the Louvre, Cairo Opera House, Biennale des Cinema Arabes (Paris), Milan Film Festival (Italy), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), Harvard Film Archives (Cambridge), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Cinémathèque Française (Paris) among others.
Much of his work may be viewed as meditations on the themes of exile and melancholy. These visual meditations are shaped by his personal experience of interceding between the Middle East of his Arab-Muslim upbringing and Anglo/European art and culture. Emerging from this personal context, his work reflects political and social concerns with contemporary Arab politics and culture and aesthetic concerns with painterly values and the poetics of modern life.
About the American Academy in Rome
Established in 1894 and chartered by an Act of Congress in 1905, the American Academy in Rome is a center that sustains independent artistic pursuits and humanistic studies. It is situated on the Janiculum, Rome’s highest hill. Each year, through a national competition, the Rome Prize is awarded to up to 30 individuals emerging artists (working in architecture, landscape architecture, design, historic preservation and conservation, literature, musical composition, or visual arts) and scholars (working in ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and early Modern, or Modern Italian Studies).