Category: Albert Christ-Janer Award

Albert Christ-Janer Award 2001

Edward J. Larson, the Richard B. Russell Professor of American History and the Herman E. Talmadge Chair of Law, has a long-established record of scholarship on the theory of evolution and its social implications. He is best known for his 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning book, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion. The book chronicles the 1925 trial of high school biology teacher John Scopes, who was arrested for teaching the theory of evolution. The trial pitted lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryant in a battle about the teaching of evolution and creationism in public schools.

Dr. Larson’s other books include: Trial and Error: The American Controversy Over Creation and Evolution; Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South; and Evolution’s Workshop: God and Science on the Galapagos Islands, which chronicles the history of science and environmental protection on these islands. Among his numerous publications are two co-authored technical books on law and medicine and 12 law review articles.

His research primarily focuses on issues of law, science and medicine from a historical perspective and has been featured in such publications as Nature, Scientific American, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Virginia Law Review, and British Journal for the History of Science. He has lectured at universities in Australia, Europe, Africa, China and New Zealand. As a result of his book on the Scopes trial, he has been interviewed on major programs for PBS, the History Channel, CNN and C-SPAN.

In 2000, Dr. Larson won the George Sarton Award and delivered the prestigious George Sarton Lecture at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The award honors scholarship in the history of science and is jointly sponsored by AAAS and the History of Science Society. The Fulbright Program named him the John Adams Chair in American Studies in 2001.

Albert Christ-Janer Award 2003

Betty Jean Craige, university professor of comparative literature and director of the Center for Humanities and Arts, studies Western society’s shift in conceptual order from a dualistic to a holistic understanding of nature and culture. Her six books include a biography of the late ecologist Eugene Odum, a book on American patriotism and a volume on literary study. In Laying the Ladder Down, which won a Georgia Author of the Year Award in Non-Fiction, Craige argues that Western culture’s shift toward cultural holism is evident from such social forces as feminism and the peace and environmental movements. Craige co-directs the Delta Prize for Global Understanding, which has been awarded to such luminaries as Jimmy and Roslyn Carter and Desmond Tutu.

Albert Christ-Janer Award 2005

W. Frederick Mills is an internationally acclaimed trumpet player, arranger and conductor. A member of the Canadian Brass for 24 years, he performed as a soloist in 16 countries on five continents. He also played solo, first-chair trumpet with the American Symphony Orchestra and the Houston Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski, the New York City Opera Orchestra, the National Arts Center Orchestra of Canada, the Casals Festival Orchestra inPuerto Rico and many others.

Professor Mills’ arrangements and scoring for brass ensembles have changed the standard repertoire for brass chamber music. He introduced an “international, clearer transparent sound,” said his nominating committee. That sound has clearly defined musical notes and audible influences from many different countries, which makes it resonate with cultures the world over. Since 1996, Professor Mills has released six compact-disc recordings, all reflecting “a diversity of style and repertoire,” said Dr. Donald Lowe, Director of the UGA School of Music.

Before joining UGA’s music faculty, Professor Mills had already made more than 65 CDs, DVDs and videos and given more than 5,000 live performances of concerts, operas, ballets and show productions in most of the world’s great concert halls.

Founder of UGA’s Bulldog Brass Society, Professor Mills coaches the nationally recognized graduate chamber group. The Society is also the prime member of Georgia Brass, the newest large ensemble at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music.

Extensive experience as a performer, arranger and conductor has helped Professor Mills attract many talented musicians to UGA. He is “thought of as a great international ambassador for brass music and all that it includes wherever he goes,” said Roy Poper, Professor of Trumpet at Oberlin College Conservatory of Music.

Professor Mills, who continues to perform and conduct nationally and internationally, recently appeared with the Athens National Philharmonic in Athens, Greece, the Basel Symphonic Brass in Switzerland, the Tchaikovsky Conservatory’s Moscow Brass in Russia and at the International Trumpet Guild Conference in Denver, Colo. Next year he will return to Moscow to direct concerts with the Bolshoi Theater Brass. He also has received honorary doctorates from Hartwick College, N.Y., and the New England Conservatory, Boston.

Albert Christ-Janer Award 2006

William D. Davis, Professor of Music, is a world-renowned bassoon performer who has created an imaginative and popular body of compositions for the instrument. Although the bassoon is not typically associated with solo performance, Davis has established an international reputation as a solo recitalist and as a soloist performing with a range of orchestras and concert bands. While his repertoire includes music from the last four centuries, his most widely recognized contribution is to the field of new music. As a composer, Davis has produced works for many instrument and vocal combinations, including solo and ensemble works for bassoon. His superb bassoon performance ability gives him a “hands-on” advantage when composing for this instrument. He uses avant-garde techniques integrated with musical textures that possess interest and clarity. The outcome has been an important contribution to the contemporary music repertoire. He has performed on four continents and is also a recording artist with works released on eight compact discs.

Albert Christ-Janer Award 2007

Levon Ambartsumian, Professor of Music, fills four distinct but complementary roles at UGA: violin performer; conductor of the ARCO Chamber Orchestra — an ensemble in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music; dedicated teacher; and highly prolific recording artist. Ambartsumian brings international distinction to the university in all four areas. His former students, many of whom now work as professors at major universities and play in symphony orchestras around the world, have won national and international competitions. Since 1995, Ambartsumian has released 14 compact discs featuring world premiere music recordings from the 18th century to the 21st century, all of which received excellent reviews. His performance skills, well-represented in his recordings of standards by composers such asVivaldi, Brahms and Wienawski, compare favorably with professional violinists worldwide, yet it is his enthusiastic support of contemporary music that sets him apart.

Albert Christ-Janer Award 2009

Hugh Ruppersburg, professor of English and senior associate dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, is a scholar of American literature, especially of the American South. The author of three books on major writers— two on William Faulkner and one on Robert Penn Warren—and of numerous articles about modern literature and film, Ruppersburg is also the editor of five major literary anthologies of Georgia writing, and the literature section of the New Georgia Encyclopedia; he is co-editor ofCritical Essays on Don DeLillo. Ruppersburghas received three major awards for his work: the Governor’s Award in the Humanities (2007) and Georgia Author of the Year in 1992 and again in 2004. Through his efforts to bring together literature of all genres, he has made a significant contribution to literary study—and to the cultural identity of Georgia.

Albert Christ-Janer Award 2010

James C. Cobb, B. Phinizy Spalding Distinguished Professor in the History of the American South, is widely recognized as one of the foremost scholars of Southern history and culture—and among the first to write broadly about the South in a global context. Cobb has written more than 40 articles and 12 books, mostly about the impact of changing economic conditions on the South. Two of these, “Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity” and “The Most Southern Place on Earth,” his book about the Mississippi Delta, are considered classics in the field. The latter quickly became a model for studying other regional cultures and subcultures, such as those of Appalachia and New England. Committed to reaching beyond the scholarly community, Cobb has written pieces forThe New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. His new book, “The New America: The South and the Nation Since World War II,” will be published in 2010 by Oxford University Press. Cobb’s work has won him a string of awards and prizes, named lectureships, offices in professional associations, most notably the presidency of the Southern Historical Association—and a dedicated audience of both academics and lay history buffs who eagerly follow his work.

Albert Christ-Janer Award 2011

Roger Vogel, professor of music, has published more than 105 original compositions. His wide-ranging list of works includes a one-act chamber opera, three concertos, and more than 30 sonatas, suites and other substantial works for larger chamber ensembles as well as solo and choral song cycles. His music appears on eight compact discs and has been performed in Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, Canada, and in 33 states across the U.S.

His original works began to be published and performed nationally in 1977, and they have been performed internationally since 1979. In February 2011, his song cycle, “Love Letters,” was performed as part of the Talisker Chamber Music Series in Toronto, Canada. His choral song cycle “Cats and Bats and Things with Wings,” commissioned and performed in honor of the University of Georgia’s bicentennial in 1984, won the prize of publication in the 1991 Roger Wagner Choral Composition Competition and has since been performed numerous times.