Brunson-Poorvu

Prizes honor outstanding junior faculty

Yale College Dean Mary Miller will host a dinner on Dec. 11 to honor the recipients of three annual awards for outstanding junior faculty: the Arthur Greer Memorial Prize, the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Prize, and the Poorvu Family Award. Each prize carries an award of funding to support further research.

Poorvu Family Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching
The Poorvu Family Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching was established to recognize and enhance Yale’s strength in interdisciplinary teaching. It provides the means for distinguished junior faculty in interdisciplinary fields to conduct essential summer research.

Molly Brunson, now in her fifth year as an assistant professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, specializes in 19th-century Russian prose fiction, with additional expertise in Russian art, especially 19th-century realist painting. Although her degree from Berkeley is in Slavic languages and literatures, she is also a thoroughly trained art historian. As a result of her dual interests, interdisciplinary teaching that links literature and visual culture has been an integral part of all of the undergraduate courses she has taught at Yale. For example, her “Literature and Painting in the Age of Tolstoy” course was a Freshman Seminar offered in fall 2009 that featured frequent visits to the collections at the Yale University Art Gallery and Yale Center for British Art. Brunson’s courses are thoughtfully and rigorously designed, in addition to being highly innovative. She not only works with materials from different disciplines, but also has the students engage the methodological and theoretical issues inherent in interdisciplinary studies.