A Florida State University faculty member from the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics is among this year’s recipients of a prominent award granted to artists and humanities scholars in the U.S.
Martin Munro, eminent scholar of French and director of the Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, received a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship for his project, “Francophonics: Sounding Global French Cultures.” This project illuminates connections among four French-speaking global artists by examining the use of sound in their works.
“I was surprised, happy, honored and humbled, in that order, when I heard the news,” Munro said. “I have applied for the Guggenheim for a long time. The fellowship means a lot for me and my work; it recognizes what I have done before and encourages me to do more, for which I am very grateful.”
Munro is one of 188 Guggenheim Fellows announced this month by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Winners were selected from nearly 3,000 applicants based on criteria measuring their previous career achievements and their potential for creating exceptional future work. Munro’s fellowship begins in January and includes a $50,000 award that will allow him time and resources to complete a book encapsulating his research.
“I am so pleased to congratulate Martin on receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship,” said Sam Huckaba, dean of the FSU College of Arts and Sciences. “This celebrated award, earned through a fiercely competitive process, is a recognition of past excellence and future promise. With his selection, Martin has joined a group of distinguished recipients forever linked to the honor.”
The fellowship, considered the pinnacle of scholarly recognition in the humanities, grants a monetary stipend to allow awardees to conduct the highest level of independent work with few restrictions. More than 19,000 fellowships have been awarded since the program’s founding in 1925.
“Through his work and his leadership of the Winthrop-King Institute, Dr. Munro places FSU at the forefront of the most prominent academic centers dedicated to the study of Francophone literature and culture, especially of the Caribbean region. This recognition of Dr. Munro’s pursuits further solidifies our strengths in these areas. More importantly, it increases our ability to attract high-quality students — especially those seeking to pursue graduate studies — to our programs in Global French studies.”
– Reinier Leushuis, chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics
“Humanity faces some profound existential challenges,” said Edward Hirsch, president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. “The Guggenheim Fellowship is a life-changing recognition. It’s a celebrated investment into the lives and careers of distinguished artists, scholars, scientists, writers and other cultural visionaries who are meeting these challenges head-on and generating new possibilities and pathways across the broader culture as they do so.”
Munro’s research areas include Francophone literature and culture, particularly of the Caribbean region, as well as writing and exile in Francophone cultures, rhythm in Francophone literatures and cultures and Caribbean sound studies.
The Francophonics project was inspired by what Munro describes as a network of invisible and largely unheard artists scattered across the globe who have incorporated French language and culture into their works, whether by being French citizens, expatriates or having been born into areas of former French colonization in the Caribbean, Africa or Asia. This book is a culmination of his body of work on sound studies.
“Francophonics is a means of reading, tracking and hearing the acoustic elements of artistic creations — novels, poems, music and even visual phenomena such as films and photographs — that allows critics and scholars to think in terms of sound and its historical, political and cultural resonances in contemporary works of art,” Munro said. “I will be working on some of my favorite artists: Franco-Mauritian author Michaël Ferrier, Innu poet Joséphine Bacon, French pop icon Christine and the Queens, and the Belgian-Congolese musician Baloji.”
Munro earned his doctorate in French at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1999 and has lectured at University College Cork, Ireland, and the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. He joined the modern languages faculty at FSU in 2008. Munro became director of the Winthrop-King Institute in 2012, and his previous awards include a National Humanities Center fellowship, an international fellowship with the Society for French Studies, and the French Voices Award from the French Embassy Cultural Services.
“Through his work and his leadership of the Winthrop-King Institute, Dr. Munro places FSU at the forefront of the most prominent academic centers dedicated to the study of Francophone literature and culture, especially of the Caribbean region,” said department chair Reinier Leushuis. “This recognition of Dr. Munro’s pursuits further solidifies our strengths in these areas. More importantly, it increases our ability to attract high-quality students — especially those seeking to pursue graduate studies — to our programs in Global French studies.”
Kaveh Akbar, who earned a doctorate in creative writing from FSU’s Department of English, is also among the recipients of this year’s Guggenheim Fellowships.
To learn more about Munro’s work and the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, visit modlang.fsu.edu. Visit winthropking.fsu.edu to learn more about the Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies.