Chandler wins 2000 Laing Award

James Chandler

James Chandler, the George M. Pullman Professor in English Language & Literature, has won the 2000 Gordon J. Laing Award from the University Press. The honor, which is conferred annually, recognizes a faculty author, editor or translator of a book published during the preceding three years that adds the greatest distinction to the list of the University Press.

Chandler received his award during a recent ceremony and reception at the new press building in recognition of his book England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism. The book examines the ties between Romantic and contemporary historicism and explores the crucial literary, historical and political developments in post-Waterloo Britain.

John Brewer, the John and Marion Sullivan University Professor in English Language & Literature and History, said that England in 1819 has proven highly influential in the study of Romanticism. Brewer, a member of the Board of University Publications, an interdisciplinary body of faculty members from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Biological and Physical Sciences divisions that awards the prize each year, praised Chandler’s book as “a wide-ranging, enormously ambitious, densely packed, closely argued work.”

The Laing Award is named for Gordon Laing, who served as general editor of the Press from 1909 to 1940 and helped to establish its reputation as the premier scholarly publisher in the United States. Previous winners have included such distinguished faculty members as Paul Ricoeur, William McNeill and Martin Marty.

Best known for scholarship on the Romantic Movement in England and the connections between politics and literature, history and criticism, Chandler is the author of three books and dozens of essays and review articles. His current project concerns filmmaker Frank Capra, and links the “golden age” of Hollywood to conventions of the sentimental novel. Chandler began teaching at the University in 1976 while completing his Ph.D. in English Language & Literature. Since receiving his appointment to the faculty in 1978, he has taught courses in English and in the Committees on the History of Culture, Cinema & Media Studies and General Studies in the Humanities.

Chandler has been selected to succeed J. Paul Hunter as Director of the Franke Institute for the Humanities. Chandler, who chaired the group that recommended the formation of an institute at the University in 1988, will begin his five-year term effective July 1.