Shi receives Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellowship

Classics PhD candidate Ronnie Shi has been awarded the Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellowship from Stanford's Humanities Center.  These awards go to Stanford doctoral students whose work is "of the highest distinction and promise."  Recipients have offices at the Humanities Center and take part with other graduate and faculty fellows in the Center's programs, promoting humanistic research and education at Stanford.

Ronnie’s dissertation, Writing and the Origins of Greek Intellectual Influence, proposes a new answer to an old question: Why are the origins of Western thought Greek?  Instead of seeking explanations for the birth of “reason” or “critical thinking,” this project ascribes the long intellectual shadow cast by Greece to the emergence there of an unusual literary culture—an event which, far from occurring in the normal course of a literate society’s development, required an extraordinary series of historical accidents to come about.

Join us in congratulating Ronnie on this well-deserved award!