Catherine Prendergast

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Catherine Prendergast
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship (2014)
Academic background
Education
Academic work
DisciplineIntellectual history
Institutions

Catherine Jean Prendergast[1] is an American literary scholar and author of narrative nonfiction. She is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.[2]

Biography[edit]

Prendergast received her B.A. from Columbia University in 1990 and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1997.[3] Her research focuses on the intersections of social and literary, cultural movements as well as the spread of the English language.[2]

Her book Literacy and Racial Justice: The Politics of Learning after Brown v. Board of Education (2003) has won the Mina P. Shaughnessy Award from the Modern Language Association for "an outstanding scholarly book in the fields of language, culture, literacy, and literature that has a strong application to the teaching of English."[4]

Prendergast received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014 to support research for her book,[5] The Gilded Edge, which investigates the circumstances surrounding the suicides of Nora May French, George Sterling, and Carrie Sterling by cyanide ingestion.[6]

Personal life and family[edit]

Her father, Kevin H. Prendergast,[7] was the chair of Columbia's astronomy department known for his work in the field of many-body systems.[8] Her uncle, Robert Prendergast, was a coxswain for Columbia's rowing team who painted the blue and white "C" over the Spuyten Duyvil cliff and later a professor of immunology at Johns Hopkins University.[9][10]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize". University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Retrieved 2022-05-28.
  2. ^ a b "Catherine Prendergast | English at Illinois". english.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2022-05-28.
  3. ^ "Columbia College Today". www.college.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2022-05-28.
  4. ^ "Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize Winners". Modern Language Association. Retrieved 2022-05-28.
  5. ^ "Catherine Prendergast". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 2022-05-28.
  6. ^ THE GILDED EDGE | Kirkus Reviews.
  7. ^ "Kevin H. Prendergast papers, 1954-1990". www.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2022-05-28.
  8. ^ Spiegel, Edward A. (2005-12-01). "Obituary: Kevin H. Prendergast, 1929-2004". Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society. 37: 1555–1556. Bibcode:2005BAAS...37.1555S.
  9. ^ Radomsky, Rosalie R. (1994-05-29). "If You're Thinking of Living In Spuyten Duyvil; Sunsets Over the Palisades, and Legends". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-05-28.
  10. ^ "Obituaries". Columbia College Today. 2021-01-18. Retrieved 2022-05-28.