Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 14:04:35 -0600
From: "Williamson, Blair" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: award announcement for release
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To Whom It May Concern:

We are pleased to announce the $50,000 Hiett Prize in Humanities awarded to Dr. Hilaire Kallendorf, assistant professor of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University. Please include this press release in your organization s newsletter or announcements to honor Dr. Kallendorf for her achievement.

Thank you,

Blair Williamson

College Relations Intern

Dean s Office, College of Liberal Arts

Texas A&M University

 

 

 

 

The Dallas Institute

of Humanities and Culture

www.dallasinstitute.org

 

Media Contact:

Carpenters & Associates

Jean Carpenter or Christine Volkmer

Office: 214-520-3666

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$50,000 Hiett Prize in the Humanities Awarded to

Dr. Hilaire Kallendorf of Texas A&M University

 

 

For Immediate Release

March 16, 2006

DALLAS The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture is pleased to announce its second annual Hiett Prize in the Humanities winner: Dr. Hilaire Kallendorf of Texas A&M University.

Dr. Kallendorf competed nationally for the Hiett Prize in the Humanities and will be awarded the $50,000 Hiett Prize in Dallas on April 25^th at  Celebrating America s Future,  a gala sponsored by the Dallas Institute. Renowned broadcast journalist and Dallas Institute Fellow Jim Lehrer will be the keynote guest, interviewed by fellow journalist and Institute Fellow Lee Cullum.  0

 

 

The proceeds from the Hiett award gala benefit the Summer Teachers Institute, a program designed to support and rejuvenate teachers in Dallas through the humanities.

Dr. Kallendorf is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University.  She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University.  Her work deals with many aspects of religious experience, especially as belief relates to literature and culture.  She is the author of two books, Exorcism and Its Texts: Subjectivity in Early Modern Literature of England and Spain and Conscience on Stage: The Comedia as Casuistry in Early Modern Spain (in press at University of Toronto).  She has published scholarly articles on such topics as self-exorcism, piety and pornography, ghosts, Taíno religious ceremonies, and Christian humanism in the Renaissance.  Currently she is working on her third book and gathering material for a fourth, which will foreground a spiritual critique of postmodernism.  She is also working jointly with others at Texas A&M and in Mexico on a digitalization project to rescue the bibliographical patrimony of Mexico.

 

Dr. Kallendorf stands about 5' 3" in black pumps, and wearing her black double breasted coat dress and her black hair pulled straight back she looked quite serious - like the classical ballerina she was for 15 years, but when her red lipsticked smile opened up with "Howdy," the official Texas A&M greeting, she had the Dallas Institute board members and guests in the palm of her hand.

 

Dr. Kallendorf went on to say that she loves to answer the question, "What do you do?" which she interprets as, "Who are you?," with the statement, "I am an exorcist." That can be a conversation starter or stopper depending on the courage of the inquirer.

 

She views her role in the humanities as logical - she can't do math or science - but also as a higher calling to be a beacon in the midst of post-modernism, which she views as a disease that is infecting our culture. Through her work as teacher, mother, friend, and researcher, she exorcises demons like "new historicism", those rewriting history with a secular atheistic bias, and the demon of "lack of moral agency" that creates confusion and fragmentation of the true Self within us all. She sees a current society that is desperate to go to confession - looking at the talk shows and blogs which mirror an emerging confessional culture.

 

The Hiett Prize is intended to encourage promising individuals whose work in the humanities has extraordinary promise and also significant public application.  In 2004, Kim Hiett Jordan donated $1 million for the endowment. She is a board member of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, which is a nonprofit educational organization that since 1980 has enriched and deepened the practical life of the city with the wisdom and imagination of the humanities. 

 

The Hiett Prize is neither a lifetime achievement award nor a purely academic prize.  Instead it will encourage future leaders in the humanities by assisting them early in their careers.  The question, What are the humanities and how do they shape our lives, our cities, our future? is explored at the Dallas Institute, which seeks to act as a bridge between the study of the humanities and the life of the city in a meaningful way.

 

The finalist judges for the 2006 Hiett Prize were three nationally acclaimed figures in the humanities: Prof. Michael Hoeflich, University of Kansas, Prof. Seth Lerer, Stanford University and Prof. Frederick Turner, University of Texas at Dallas.

 

Call for nominations for the 2007 Hiett Prize is now open and the deadline for applications is September 15, 2006. Visit www.dallasinstitute.org for more information.

 

Please contact Carpenters & Associates for interview arrangements.

 

###

 

 

Blair Williamson

Student Intern I, College Relations

College of Liberal Arts

Texas A&M University

4223 TAMU

College Station, TX 77845-4223

 

301 Coke, #16

Office: (979) 458-1347

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