Professors Joseph Massad and Andrew Nathan received the Lionel Trilling and Mark Van Doren Awards, respectively, on Monday in an announcement from the Columbia College Academic Awards Committee.
The Trilling Award honors “a book from the past year by a Columbia author that best exhibits the standards of intellect and scholarship found in the work of Lionel Trilling, CC ’27,” according to a press release from the Committee. The Van Doren Award honors a professor for “his or her commitment to undergraduate instruction, as well as for ‘humanity, devotion to truth, and inspiring leadership.’”
Massad—a professor of Arab politics in the college’s Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department—received the award in recognition of his book Desiring Arabs, published in June 2007. The book, according to the press release, “offers a probing study of representations of Arab sexuality” and is “an important and eloquent work of scholarship that the committee feels will have a lasting impact on the field.”
Nathan is director of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at the School of International and Public Affairs and a political science professor. He has taught at Columbia since 1971.
The Committee is led by nine students, including co-chairs Ian Corey-Boulet, CC ’09 and former Spectator head Copy editor, and Elizabeth Grefrath, CC ’08, who are advised by Dean Hazel May. Members audit courses taught by Van Doren Award nominees and read the books nominated for the Trilling Award. The winners are selected through a series of weekly meetings throughout the academic year.
The college will honor Massad and Nathan on May 7 in a reception in Low Library.
