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UCSD COMMUNICATION PROFESSOR WINS GUGGENHEIM FELLOWSHIP

Vicente Rafael, an associate professor of communication at the University of California, San Diego, has been granted a fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

A scholar of Filipino culture and history, Rafael was one of only 182 artists, scholars, and scientists selected for a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship award from a field of more than 2900 applicants. According to the foundation, Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishments. The 2000 awards totaled $6, 345,000, with an average recipient award of $34,000.

Rafael, whose current work focuses on language and the origins of nationalism in the Philippines, is the fifth member of the UCSD Department of Communication faculty to win a Guggenheim Fellowship, and one of nine UC scholars to win the award this year. Rafael is the author of several books on Filipino culture, including the recently published "White Love and Other Events in Filipino History" (Duke University Press, 2000), and "Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society Under Early Spanish Rule," (Duke University Press, 1993).