Two Illinois professors receive Guggenheim Fellowships – News Bureau
Source: https://news.illinois.edu/two-illinois-professors-receive-guggenheim-fellowships-2
Archived: 2026-04-23 17:19
Two Illinois professors receive Guggenheim Fellowships – News Bureau
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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Two University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professors have been awarded 2026
Guggenheim Fellowships
.
This year’s Illinois fellows are
English
professor
Christopher Kempf
and
media and cinema studies
professor
Julie Turnock
.
They are among 223 individuals working across 55 disciplines chosen through a rigorous peer-review process from nearly 5,000 applicants, according to the
announcement
of the fellows. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awards fellowships to exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions.
Kempf’s project, “The Economy,” is a book of poems that will articulate the ramifications of speculative financial bubbles on built and natural space. Organized around the Great Recession of 2008, during which he was a house painter, Kempf uses nine long-poems to examine the extension of economic thinking into all aspects of individual and collective life. He gives special attention to how emergent financial instruments affect experience of place and their effects in the real world. He also examines the accessibility of financial capitalism and the cultural strategies of predatory inclusion, such as the extension of high-interest credit to finance consumption.
Kempf will use his fellowship for site-based research at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Hoover Dam and General Motors’ Fort Wayne Assembly Plant, and for archival research at Schlesinger Library’s extensive home economics collection at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission housed at Stanford University.
Kempf is the author of the poetry collections “What Though the Field Be Lost” and “Late in the Empire of Men,” and the scholarly book “Craft Class: The Writing Workshop in American Culture.” He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, an Illinois Arts Council Individual Artist Award and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.
Turnock’s project, “Beyond ’King Kong’”, is a technical, industrial and aesthetic history of the special-effects industry in the Hollywood studio era, circa 1915-1960, well before the digital era. It goes beyond 1933’s special effects landmark “King Kong” to examine the historical economic structures that organized personnel and production of this distinctive sector of studio-era filmmaking. Attending to the material conditions of special visual effects production and informed by extensive archival research, it centers on the labor performed by unsung “below-the-line” effects workers rarely considered in cinema histories but whose skills make much of “movie magic” possible.
Turnock is the director of the
Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies
and the author of the books “The Empire of Effects: Industrial Light and Magic and the Rendering of Realism” and “Plastic Reality: Special Effects, Technology, and the Emergence of 1970s Blockbuster Aesthetics.” She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and is a 2020-2022 College of Media Scholar.
Editor’s notes
: To contact Christopher Kempf, email
ckempf2@illinois.edu
. To contact Julie Turnock, email
jturnock@illinois.edu
.
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MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820
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Phone
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News Bureau
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Education
Health and Medicine
Humanities
Law and Policy
Library and Information Sciences
Science and Technology
Agriculture
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Engineering
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Veterinary Medicine
Social Sciences
Campus News
Announcements
Campus Life
Honors
For Faculty and Staff
For Journalists
About
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Two University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professors have been awarded 2026
Guggenheim Fellowships
.
This year’s Illinois fellows are
English
professor
Christopher Kempf
and
media and cinema studies
professor
Julie Turnock
.
They are among 223 individuals working across 55 disciplines chosen through a rigorous peer-review process from nearly 5,000 applicants, according to the
announcement
of the fellows. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awards fellowships to exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions.
Kempf’s project, “The Economy,” is a book of poems that will articulate the ramifications of speculative financial bubbles on built and natural space. Organized around the Great Recession of 2008, during which he was a house painter, Kempf uses nine long-poems to examine the extension of economic thinking into all aspects of individual and collective life. He gives special attention to how emergent financial instruments affect experience of place and their effects in the real world. He also examines the accessibility of financial capitalism and the cultural strategies of predatory inclusion, such as the extension of high-interest credit to finance consumption.
Kempf will use his fellowship for site-based research at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Hoover Dam and General Motors’ Fort Wayne Assembly Plant, and for archival research at Schlesinger Library’s extensive home economics collection at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission housed at Stanford University.
Kempf is the author of the poetry collections “What Though the Field Be Lost” and “Late in the Empire of Men,” and the scholarly book “Craft Class: The Writing Workshop in American Culture.” He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, an Illinois Arts Council Individual Artist Award and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.
Turnock’s project, “Beyond ’King Kong’”, is a technical, industrial and aesthetic history of the special-effects industry in the Hollywood studio era, circa 1915-1960, well before the digital era. It goes beyond 1933’s special effects landmark “King Kong” to examine the historical economic structures that organized personnel and production of this distinctive sector of studio-era filmmaking. Attending to the material conditions of special visual effects production and informed by extensive archival research, it centers on the labor performed by unsung “below-the-line” effects workers rarely considered in cinema histories but whose skills make much of “movie magic” possible.
Turnock is the director of the
Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies
and the author of the books “The Empire of Effects: Industrial Light and Magic and the Rendering of Realism” and “Plastic Reality: Special Effects, Technology, and the Emergence of 1970s Blockbuster Aesthetics.” She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and is a 2020-2022 College of Media Scholar.
Editor’s notes
: To contact Christopher Kempf, email
ckempf2@illinois.edu
. To contact Julie Turnock, email
jturnock@illinois.edu
.
Read Next
Campus News
Honors
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Following in the footsteps of Jane Goodall: A wildlife pathologist’s story
Dr. Karen Terio works to understand, diagnose, treat and prevent disease in a host of animals, from dolphins to turtles to chimpanzees and cheetahs.
Arts
Graduate art and design students exhibit their work at Krannert Art Museum
The School of Art & Design Master of Fine Arts Exhibition at Krannert Art Museum presents the work of graduate students in art and design.
Strategic Communications and Marketing
News Bureau
507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820
Email:
stratcom@illinois.edu
Phone
(217) 333-5010