Image: Dr. Ari Daniel Levine, Horace Montgomery Professor of History, was awarded a prestigious research fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) for the 2022-2023 academic year. The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world’s leading centers for curiosity-driven basic research. Since 1930, it has served as a model for protecting and promoting independent inquiry, prompting the establishment of similar institutes around the world, and underscoring the importance of academic freedom worldwide. Current philanthropic support and a reliable stream of endowment-generated revenue allow its permanent Faculty and visiting researchers (known as Members) to freely determine the course of their study. The Institute’s mission and culture have produced an exceptional record of achievement. Among its present and past Faculty and Members are 35 Nobel Laureates, 44 of the 62 Fields Medalists, and 22 of the 25 Abel Prize Laureates, as well as many MacArthur Fellows and Wolf Prize winners. Past Faculty have included Albert Einstein, one of its first Professors who remained at the Institute until his death in 1955, and distinguished scientists and scholars such as Kurt Gödel, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Erwin Panofsky, Hetty Goldman, Homer A. Thompson, John von Neumann, George Kennan, Hermann Weyl, and Clifford Geertz. Dr. Levine is a specialist in the intellectual and cultural history of middle-period China. While at IAS, he will be researching and writing a monograph that reconstructs how eleventh-century Chinese literati comprehended vision and visuality across a wide range of textual genres and knowledge systems. Congratulations to Dr. Levine!
