Goucher’s April Oettinger Receives NEH Summer Stipends Award

“This is an incredibly prestigious award,” said José Antonio Bowen, the president of Goucher College. “We’re thrilled April was honored in this way.”

The Summer Stipends were developed by NEH to support individual scholars who are advancing the field of humanities. The program is highly competitive; in recent years, fewer than 10 percent of 900+ applicants won awards. Winners receive a stipend intended to support two months of full-time work on a scholarly project. Oettinger has been awarded $6,000 to work on her book, Lorenzo Lotto and the Sublime Turn in 16th-Century Venetian Landscape Painting.

Oettinger will be heading to Italy this summer to continue her research. She plans to consult 15th- and 16th-century books in the libraries of Venice, and in the nearby towns of Bergamo and Treviso. She will also study paintings by Lotto and his Venetian peers housed in churches and museums in the Veneto and Marche regions.

“I am thrilled and honored to have been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities summer research fellowship,” Oettinger said. “My project would not have been possible in the first place without the ongoing support of Goucher College—professional development funds, grants mentoring support, and especially the opportunity to interact with a wide variety of our students in my interdisciplinary course on landscape.” (One of the courses she offers is ARH 262–Nature into Art: The Cultural Dimensions of Landscape.)

Oettinger has been a member of the Goucher College faculty since 2005. She graduated from Colgate University with a bachelor’s degree, going on to earn a master’s degree and doctoral degree from the University of Virginia in the art and literature of Renaissance Venice.

Her research interests span all aspects of 15th- and 16th-century Venetian art, Italian Renaissance art and literature, and the history of the book. She has been an active researcher, previously receiving a Franklin grant from the American Philosophical Society, as well as fellowships from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Warburg Institute, the William Morris Society, and the Fulbright-Hays Program. In addition to awards, Oettinger has published a number of scholarly articles, co-curated an exhibition at the Walters Art Museum, and is co-editing a forthcoming book on the cultural dimensions of trees and greenery in Italian Renaissance art.

For more information about the NEH Summer Stipends, please visit: http://www.neh.gov/grants/research/summer-stipends