{"id":37643,"date":"2025-04-17T13:41:31","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T17:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=37643"},"modified":"2025-04-21T12:41:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T16:41:06","slug":"furmans-hecimovich-wins-guggenheim-cullman-fellowships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/furmans-hecimovich-wins-guggenheim-cullman-fellowships\/","title":{"rendered":"Furman\u2019s Hecimovich wins Guggenheim, Cullman Fellowships"},"content":{"rendered":"

Furman University English Professor Gregg Hecimovich<\/a> has received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship<\/a> in the Creative Arts and a separate residency fellowship from the New York Public Library\u2019s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars<\/a>. Both fellowships are in support of his upcoming biography \u201cThe Columbia Seven: The Life and Times of the Zealy Daguerreotypes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hecimovich received word about the Cullman Center residency first, but he wasn\u2019t sure he could accept it. Doing so would mean he\u2019d have to take an unpaid leave of absence from his teaching role in the Department of English and move to New York, sans family, for nine months. Despite a stipend for the residency and office digs in NYPL\u2019s flagship Schwarzman Building<\/a>, the prospect was a stretch. Until more news changed things.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was on spring break, working away on my book, \u2018The Columbia Seven.\u2019 My wife, Christy, and I were discussing whether we could pull off the Cullman when I got the notice from the Guggenheim Foundation. It felt like fate,\u201d Hecimovich said. \u201cWe danced around the house. It was just the boost we needed to afford to go all-in and plan for me to spend next year in NYC working on \u2018The Columbia Seven.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

As a member of the Guggenheim Fellows\u2019 centennial class, Hecimovich received a grant to support independent work under \u201cthe freest possible conditions\u201d he said, citing the terms of the grant. His book was the only biography honored by the foundation out of nearly 200 awardees. \u201cI\u2019m really proud that the award recognizes and supports excellence in writing biography,\u201d Hecimovich said.<\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Columbia Seven,\u201d which will be published by Simon & Schuster, Hecimovich is piecing together the life stories of seven enslaved South Carolinians whose images were frozen in time in the 1800s as daguerreotypes. They are considered among the first images of enslaved people ever recorded. He aims to have the work completed by September 2026, a target made all the more achievable with the help of his editor, Dawn Davis, whom Hecimovich calls \u201cthe best editor in publishing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hecimovich said neither the Cullman nor the Guggenheim fellowship would have come to fruition without the acclaim<\/a> received by the book he released in 2023 \u201cThe Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman\u2019s Narrative<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A

Hecimovich released “The Life and Times” (Ecco\/HarperCollins) in 2023.<\/p><\/div>\n

Both fellowships are intended for mid-career professionals who have already made significant contributions in the literary world. \u201cWithout what I learned and how I grew as a writer in producing \u2018The Life and Times,\u2019 the fellowships would have been out of reach,\u201d Hecimovich said, adding that best-in-class editing was key to the book\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am thrilled Professor Hecimovich is building on the momentum of \u2018The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts,\u2019\u201d said Dean of Faculty Jeremy Cass<\/a>. \u201cHis scholarship is steeped in the liberal arts experience, and it delights me that this work is of benefit to the entire university community, especially our students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since his arrival at Furman in 2018, Hecimovich\u2019s students have collaborated on \u201cThe Columbia Seven.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy students and I have spent hours poring over documents in the South Carolina State Archives and engaging community history in Columbia,\u201d he said. \u201cThe best way to draw in college students is to include them in ground-breaking research that matters.\u201d It\u2019s all part of The Furman Advantage<\/a>, an approach to higher education that provides undergraduates hands-on learning experiences.<\/p>\n

Hecimovich will get a boost from yet another fellowship before he begins his Cullman Center work in June. He received the Willam Gilmore Simms Visting Research Professorship at the University of South Carolina, where he\u2019ll spend the month of May doing archival work and community outreach.<\/p>\n

\u201cReal history is always in the mouths of the living, and I can\u2019t wait to conduct interviews related to my research in Columbia,\u201d Hecimovich said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The English professor will work on an upcoming biography, \u201cThe Columbia Seven,\u201d about enslaved people whose images were among the first to be recorded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":37649,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,31,35,55],"tags":[3373,3369,3371,801,3374,2204,3370,3372,2127],"class_list":["post-37643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-english","category-parent-news","category-undergraduate-research","tag-antebellum-photos","tag-awards-for-biography","tag-cullman-fellowship","tag-daguerreotypes","tag-enslaved-people","tag-faculty-scholarship","tag-guggenheim-fellowship","tag-new-york-public-library","tag-zealy-daguerreotypes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37643"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37689,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37643\/revisions\/37689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}