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The SCS Board is delighted to announce a new prize, which will be awarded for the first time in 2020. The Gruen Prize honors Erich S. Gruen, Gladys Rehard Wood Professor of History and Classics Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. It will be an essay prize for the best graduate student research on multiculturalism in the ancient Mediterranean, and submissions about any aspect of race, ethnicity, or cultural exchange will be considered.

The prize recognizes Professor Gruen’s outstanding scholarly work and his exceptional mentoring of graduate students over a number of decades. He has contributed major scholarship in three distinctly different areas -- the Roman Republic, the Hellenistic world, and the Jews of the ancient Mediterranean, each one of these areas being the equivalent of a complete career for most scholars. His current research continues to expand our understanding of ethnicity, identity, and exchange in the multicultural ancient Mediterranean. He has served on the dissertation committees of over one hundred Ph.D. students, and he reports that he is in touch with most of his former advisees. You can read a full biography of Professor Gruen here.

Professor Gruen’s former students have been working with the Board to set up the prize in honor of his 85th birthday and invite other faculty to serve with them as founding members of the Gruen Prize Committee. SCS expects to announce the inaugural application guidelines for the prize in May 2020, with a deadline for submissions in October 2020. The initial value of the prize will be $500 and will be funded by spendable Annual Giving donations while SCS raises funds for an endowment to sustain the prize over the long term. It is hoped that fundraising will be sufficient to increase the value of the prize after the first five years.

Please donate to the Gruen Fund to support this important new prize. The first $500 donated this fiscal year will be treated as spendable funds to support the 2020 Gruen Prize. All other funds raised in this fiscal year will be invested in the endowment for long-term support of the prize. SCS has received a pledge from an anonymous donor that will provide matching funds for donations made in 2020 up to a total of $10,000. You can donate via this online form. SCS is a 501(c)3 public charity and donations may be tax deductible.

If you would like to volunteer to serve on the Gruen Prize Committee, please send a brief email with your name and relevant experience to info@classicalstudies.org by February 7, 2020