NEW: URI Professor Recognized for Creative Nonfiction
Thursday, April 21, 2011
University of Rhode Island Professor Mary Capello may have spent the past five years trying to pin down the elusive concept of mood, but it’s doubtful there was anything unclear about how she felt this Thursday when the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation notified her that she was the recipient of one of this year’s prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships. Sometimes
referred to as “midcareer” awards, the 180 Guggenheim Fellowships recognize not just an individual’s past achievement, but also their promise for the future.Cappello, a Providence resident, earned recognition for her innovative work in the realm of nonfiction. Her past works have tackled some of the most curious and ephemeral aspects of the human condition—such as “awkwardness” and the concept of “ingestion”—and have boldly blended the lines between memoir, cultural history, and philosophical meditation. Her current project engages with a similarly ethereal subject: mood.
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“A great deal of thinking and writing in America has been carried out in the name of understanding ‘feeling’ and its newly minted cousin, ‘affect’, but mood remains untapped,” says Cappello.
Thanks to the fellowship, Cappello will be able to devote an entire year to writing her next book, which is tentatively titled “In the Mood: Towards a Psychology of Atmosphere.” She hopes that the book will be able to give mood a certain “sound” and tangibility.
Cappello currently teaches creative writing at URI. She has been a finalist for the school’s Teaching Excellence Award numerous times, and will speak at URI’s Ocean State Summer Writing Conference on June 25th from 2:00-3:30 pm.
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