A grant from a federal organization will give a Hartwick College history professor the chance to write a book he has been researching for more than two decades.
Peter Wallace, 56, has been offered a $50,400 National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship, according to the organization. He said he expects the college's board of trustees to grant a sabbatical in February that will allow him to use the funds during the 2009-2010 school year.
He will use that time to write the book, under contract with Brill Publishers in Leiden, called "Friends, Neighbors, Strangers and Enemies: Changing Political Identities in the Upper Rhine Valley, 1580-1740."
This is the second such award Wallace has been offered since he started teaching in 1981. He has been at Hartwick since 1984 and received a stipend from the agency in 1986 to begin the current project.
"I'm extremely excited," he said about the award.
The work developed from studies he began as a graduate student in the 1980s. From his first visit, he could sense the "mix of amity and enmity," in the region that is in Germany, France and Switzerland, he said. The book "examines the era when modern regional political identities ... were first beginning to gel."
With so many territorial conflicts still going on in the world, the story is relevant to the time, he said. The world saw millions of people dying in the late 19th and 20th centuries when the Alsace region was fought over between France and Germany.
His work found that nationalist identities took a while to be shaped in the area and in some cases never fully developed, he said.
"I am pleased for the scholarly recognition that Peter has received by being offered an NEH Fellowship for academic year 2009-10, said Gerald Hunsberger, the college's dean of academic affairs.
The college has recognized Wallace's scholarly endeavors at Hartwick before.
Honors include presenting him with the 2006 Teacher-Scholar Award recognizing his research and commitment to students in the classroom, and the 1992 Margaret B. Bunn Award for Excellence in Teaching as voted on by students.
"Hartwick is a wonderful place," Wallace said. By giving professors the time they need to develop their books, it doesn't detract from the classroom, he said.
While publishing is allowed to be secondary to the classroom, "they reinforce one another," he said. "Hartwick has grown into an institution that allows for a balance between the two."
Hartwick Pres. Margaret L. Drugovich said that "the depth and quality of Wallace's scholarship is a point of pride for Hartwick."
The recognition from institutions that support research, such as NEH, is itself a scholarly accomplishment, she said.
"Hartwick students are fortunate to have access to Peter and other Hartwick faculty ... who have received such recognition," she said.
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