The 2012 class of Guggenheim Fellows was announced this week by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, inciting some exuberant responses on the part of several winners (check out Terry Teachout’s Twitter feed). The Guggenheim has long been hailed as the “mid-career award,” honoring scholars, scientists, poets, artists, and writers, who have likely published a book or three, professed a fair amount of research, and are actively engaged in projects of significant scope. The fellowship possesses some tortured origins—(John) Simon Guggenheim, who served as president of the American Smelting and Refining Company and Republican senator from Colorado, seeded the award (1925) following the death of this son John (1922) from mastoiditis (Guggenheim’s second son George later committed suicide, and more infamously his older brother Benjamin went down with the Titanic).

Among this year’s crop (we dare say more forward-leaning than previous years?) is a roster of standout “professionals who have demonstrated exceptional ability by publishing a significant body of work in the fields of natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and the creative arts,” affiliated with the University of Chicago Press:

Creative Arts

• Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry magazine and author of three poetry collections, coeditor of The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine (forthcoming Fall 2012)

History of Science, Technology, and Economics

• Matthew L. Jones, James R. Barker Associate Professor of Contemporary Civilization at Harvard University, author of The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution: Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, and the Cultivation of Virtue (2006)

Humanities

• Jonathan Lamb, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, author of Preserving the Self in the South Seas, 1680–1840 (2001, winner of the John Ben Snow Foundation Prize from the North American Conference on British Studies) and coeditor of Exploration and Exchange: A South Seas Anthology, 1680–1900 (2001)
• Elisha P. Renne, professor in the Departments of Anthropology and  Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, coauthor of Regulating Menstruation: Beliefs, Practices, Interpretations (2001)
• Lisa Saltzman, professor of history of art at Bryn Mawr College, author of Making Memory Matter: Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art (2006)
• Lynn Spigel, the Frances E. Willard Chair and Professor of Screen Cultures at Northwestern University, author of TV by Design: Modern Art and the Rise of Network Television (2009) and Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (1992, shortlisted for several awards)
• Ramie Targoff, professor of English and director of the Mandel Center for the Humanities at Brandeis University, author of John Donne, Body and Soul (2008) and Common Prayer: The Language of Public Devotion in Early Modern England (2001, winner of the Conference on Christianity and Literature Book Award)
• Luise White, professor of history at the University of Florida, author of The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (1990)

Intellectual & Cultural History

• Adrian Johns, Allan Grant Maclear Professor of History at the University of Chicago, author of Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates (2010, winner of several awards) and The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (1998, winner of several awards)

Social Sciences

• John H. Aldrich, the Pfizer-Pratt University Professor of Political Science at Duke University, author of Why Parties? A Second Look (1995, 2011) and Before the Convention: Strategies and Choices in Presidential Nominating Campaigns (1980)
• John H. Cochrane, the AQR Capital Management Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a member of the University of Chicago Press Faculty Board of Directors
• James N. Druckman, the Payson S. Wild Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, coeditor for the series Chicago Studies in American Politics
• Steven Epstein, professor of Sociology and John C. Shaffer Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University, author of Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research (2007, winner of a hearty set of awards!)
• James B. Jacobs, the Warren E. Burger Professor of Law at New York University’s School of Law, author of Drunk Driving: An American Dilemma (1989) and Stateville: The Penitentiary in Mass Society (1977); coeditor of The Pursuit of Absolute Integrity: How Corruption Control Makes Government Ineffective (1996)
• Don Kulick, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, author of Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes (1998)

And finally, congratulations to Kirin Narayan, professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, author of Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov (2012) and My Family and Other Saints (2007), who joined the Guggenheim Foundation’s Standing Committee for the Educational Advisory Board (here’s to picking some winners!)