MacArthur Genius Grant Awardees Include NU Professor, Chamber Ensemble Founder

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 2, 2012 10:00PM

Northwestern Professor Dylan Penningroth (left) and International Contemporary Ensemble founder Claire Chase. (Photos courtesy of The John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

The 2012 MacArthur Foundation Fellows were announced Monday and two of the recipients have Chicago connections.

Dylan Penningroth, an Associate Professor at Northwestern University’s Department of History since 2003, was selected for his research into American slavery and the immediate years after abolition. Penningroth’s research and books have shed light as to how slaves and ex-slaves were able to claim family and property, even as they were often considered property under the law.

Penningroth’s 2003 book The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South and more recent writings like this 2009 essay for The American History Review dig deep into this informal economy and how African Americans used extra-legal and a tight-knit social and family structure to make that possible, tracing his research back to Africa’s Gold Coast for parallels and connections.

Claire Chase founded the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2001, which has grown to become one of the world’s most sought-after and respected new music ensembles. With residencies at New York University and Columbia College Chicago, ICE is committed to advancing new music from contemporary composers and maintains a flexible roster of over 30 musicians who can perform as a full ensemble or smaller groups capable of playing everywhere from coffeehouses and classrooms to museums and orchestra halls.

Penningroth and Chase receive a five-year, $500,000, no strings attached grant to do with as they wish. Previous Chicagoans awarded MacArthur "genius grants" have included musician Ken Vandermark (a 1999 winner), playwright and director Mary Zimmerman (1998), and Jeanne Gang, who was awarded a fellowship last year.