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|
Rebecca
Arrington
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| Michael
Kubovy |
Two
receive Guggenheim Fellowships
By
Robert Brickhouse
A U.Va.
psychology professor and an architect who is a fellow at the Institute
for Advanced Technology in the Humanities are among 183 scholars,
artists and scientists recently chosen to receive prestigious
Guggenheim Fellowships for 2001.
Psychology
professor Michael Kubovy, who is writing a book on understanding
human pleasure, and architect Katherine Wentworth Rinne, who is
creating an interactive World Wide Web archive showing the importance
of water as a “living system” in the history of Rome,
were chosen from more than 2,700 applicants throughout the United
States and Canada. The annual awards from the John Simon Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation, which provide financial support for a year’s
intensive work on a project, are made on the basis of distinguished
achievement and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.
Kubovy,
a member of the psychology faculty since 1987, will work on a
book tentatively titled “The Pleasures of Minds.” Drawing
on his interests in perception, cognition, evolution, psychology
of art, aesthetics and philosophy of mind, he will explain why
and how human beings experience pleasure. One section will discuss
pleasures of the body, reviewing the current state of knowledge
about pleasure centers of the brain. Another section will review
the history of research on visual and other stimuli that people
find attractive. Other sections will look at purely mental pleasures,
the relation between pleasure and emotions and “negative”
pleasures that result from a temporary escape from suffering.
The
core of his argument, Kubovy says, is that people evaluate pleasurable
activities in terms of the emotions they produce and that different
pleasures provide different intensities of emotions. His 1986
book, The Psychology of Perspective and Renaissance Art, also
formed a bridge between psychology and key issues in the humanities.
He previously taught at Yale and Rutgers.
Rinne, who has been a fellow affiliated with U.Va.’s Institute
for Advanced Technology in the Humanities since 1998 and has also
held a visiting appointment in the School of Architecture, will
continue work on her IATH project, “Aquae Urbis Romae: The
Waters of the City of Rome.” Her interactive Web study examines
the role of water in the 2,800-year history of the city and investigates
relationships between natural and imported water systems as they
influenced urban growth.
A
main aim, Rinne says, is to show how water impacts public life.
In Rome, the Tiber River, springs, streams, marshes, aqueducts
and wells, all linked through topography, have shaped the larger
landscape of streets, piazzas, neighborhoods and parks that define
the unique character of the city.
The
IATH Web site, with a prototype of the project now available at
www.iath.virginia.edu/waters, is intended partly as a tool for
students in fields ranging from architecture, landscape, and planning
to history, archaeology and hydrology. It includes an electronic
archive of historic and current maps, archaeological data, images
and texts of major Roman writers.
Rinne
says she hopes the project can be a model for design and planning
professionals to look at the water history of other cities as
they make contemporary policy decisions. A visiting professor
at Iowa State University this semester, she will spend part of
her Guggenheim fellowship period at U.Va. and part in Rome.
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