Creative Writing Associate Professor Chanan Tigay has been named a 2019 – 2020 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, joining more than 50 women and men as they pursue work across the sciences, social sciences, humanities and arts.
Tigay will pursue an individual project in a community dedicated to exploration and inquiry at Harvard’s institute for advanced study.
“This is a remarkable class of fellows,” Radcliffe Institute Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin says. “Radcliffe’s Fellowship Program — a microcosm of the institute — is a laboratory of ideas where scholars, artists, scientists and practitioners draw insights from one another and generate new knowledge that spans disciplinary boundaries. I am extraordinarily excited to see what emerges from this incredible group of individuals in the year ahead.”
While in residence, fellows at the Radcliffe Institute present lectures and exhibitions to the public, participate in cross-disciplinary study groups and work closely with undergraduate Harvard students who serve as research partners.
Tigay is an award-winning writer and journalist who has covered the Middle East, the September 11 terrorist attacks and the United Nations for numerous magazines, newspapers and wires. Author of The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Bible (Ecco/HarperCollins), Tigay appeared in the recent History Channel special The God Code.
Born in Jerusalem, Tigay holds degrees from Columbia University and University of Pennsylvania and was an investigative reporting fellow at University of California, Berkeley. He joined the San Francisco State faculty in 2012.
“I am grateful to the Radcliffe Institute for its extraordinary generosity, and to the SFSU Creative Writing Department, the College of Liberal & Creative Arts and University administration for supporting me as I pursue this unique opportunity,” Tigay says. “I look forward to spending the year thinking deeply and writing feverishly.”
The Radcliffe Institute has awarded more than 900 fellowships since its founding in 1999.
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is a unique space within Harvard — a school dedicated to creating and sharing transformative ideas across all disciplines. Each year, the institute hosts about 50 leading scholars, scientists and artists from around the world in its renowned residential fellowship program. Radcliffe fosters innovative research collaborations and offers hundreds of public lectures, exhibitions, performances, conferences and other events annually. The institute is home to the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, the nation’s foremost archive on the history of women, gender and sexuality.