Summer News Roundup: Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching and the Lionel Trilling Book Award
Summer News Roundup: Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching and the Lionel Trilling Book Award
Sundial takes a moment to remind everyone that at our university, there are indeed professors who do good work.
The following was published as part of Sundial’s Summer 2024 News Roundup, a collection of humorous takes on the news you missed.
→ You must be dying to know who won the Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching and the Lionel Trilling Book Award.
It’s the question on everyone’s mind, as it should be.
As evidenced by the past few blips from my fellow Sundial writers, we hear too much in the news about Columbia’s attention-whoring administration. And, surprise, surprise, those headlines are usually not super positive.
Now, I’m all for publicly critiquing a complacent and ineffective group of well-paid bureaucrats, but behind the veil of the “University” with its “leadership” and “administration,” there are actual scholars worthy of recognition. They are often some of the most misrepresented and underpowered forces in academia despite serving as the very backbone of our institution. They have hard jobs, I mean, think about it: They get to set their own hours and write books for fun, and most of them have pretty good job security and…actually, that sounds pretty good. But we should remember they also have to deal with our shit, and they will have a much greater impact on our lives than any administrator.
And that’s why there are no awards for excellent administrator-ing like there are for teaching. Although the pomp surrounding any kind of professorial award is now quite minimal (Spectator doesn’t even cover these awards anymore, but it’s not like they’re super relevant anyway), I want to shout out, in particular, the Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching and the Lionel Trilling Book Award, which Columbia College announced the winners of in May.
Most students—hell, most administrators—probably couldn’t tell you who either of these people were. But many probably also don’t know why there’s a portrait of Dwight Eisenhower in Butler Library. But, I would still encourage the community to pay attention to the awards established in their names, especially since this year both awards went to professors from the English department, and I’m becoming suspicious of voter fraud and/or collusion.
The Van Doren Award is named for Charles Van Doren GSAS ’59, a man who somehow inspired both the bohemian “Beat Generation” AND the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Bet you can’t beat that level of diversity of thought. But truly, the award is about excellence in teaching. It’s like winning the gold medal in the CULPA Games. It should remind us that while it's fun to bicker about whether pro-Palestine protestors or COÖP enthusiasts pull off sleeping in a tent better, sometimes the more productive disagreements are happening in the classroom.
This year, the award went to Professor Sharon Marcus from the Department of English and Comparative Literature, who has been teaching since 2003. She proves you can never have enough overly specific academic interests. Seriously, her research spans everything from “Marxism and Critical Social Theory” to “Britain.” And even if you disagree with some of her ideas (which is half the point of a university anyway), reports say her Bildungsroman class was the place to be. I guess “coming of age” is really in right now. Onto the next one.
Established in the name of the New York intellectual (CC 1925, GSAS 1938) with a sense of public appeal, the Lionel Trilling Book Award has had some pretty illustrious recipients. (The first-ever winner in 1976 was Edward Said for his book Beginnings.)
In this age of mass communication, in which talented writers often take to the comment section to valiantly slander their ideological opponent, it’s nice to be reminded that important thoughts are still being printed and bound. Trilling, himself an anti-Stalinist Marxist who wrote for the Partisan Review while at Columbia, was great proof that a good scholar should not shy away from controversial ideas—as long as they’re well argued and, well, readable (both common problems for many at Columbia).
This year, Professor Eleanor Johnson received the award for her book Waste and the Wasters: Poetry and Ecosystemic Thought in Medieval England. The title is a mouthful, and I didn’t know that “ecosystemic” was even a word until just now. But, living in New York City, the point hits close to home. If the Medievals were bad about wasting shit, imagine how much worse we must be. Here’s my modern rendition of poetry on our ecosystemic wasting:
$71,170 is our current tuition
Columbia wastes every dime
All anyone wants is attention
And now I’m locked out of campus–all the f*cking time
I’ll take my award now.
But, seriously, it’s nice to see that these awards still carry meaning even when so much around us at Columbia seems to be collapsing. And, the best part is that the winners are decided by a student committee.
This is all to say that while all the on-campus drama ensued last semester, a chance to say congratulations to these professors was one of several things lost in the fray. (And we at Sundial sure have been hard at work reporting on and commenting on all that drama ourselves). But I, for one, thought this issue wouldn't be complete without a shoutout to those often underappreciated figures who continue to make Columbia the place we all once dreamed of attending.
Sundial congratulates Professor Sharon Marcus and Professor Eleanor Johnson on receiving the Mark Van Doren Teaching Award and the Lionel Trilling Book Award, respectively.
Mr. Cheramie is a senior studying history and Classics in Columbia College and the managing editor of the Sundial.