GTU alumnus John Holt (M.A., 73) has been awarded a Fellowship by the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The Fellowship will support Holt’s research on Buddhist/Muslim tensions in Sri Lanka and Burma.
This year’s Guggenheim Fellowships, announced in April, were awarded to a diverse group of 178 scholars, artists, and scientists. Honorees were chosen from among nearly 3,000 applicants. Holt is one of only three 2014 Guggenheim Fellows whose projects are in the field of religion.
In applying for the Fellowship, Holt noted that his serious study of both Hinduism and Buddhism began while working on his master’s degree at the Graduate Theological Union in the early 1970s. Holt has served on the faculty at Bowdoin College since 1978, but has also taught and researched in several Asian nations, including six years in Sri Lanka. He writes that his years of experience in Asian cultures have given him “an eye for the vitality and diversity of ‘lived religious traditions.’”
Since its establishment in 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has granted more than $315 million in Fellowships to nearly 17,000 individuals, including scores of Nobel laureates and poets laureate, as well as winners of Pulitzer Prizes, Fields Medals, and other international honors.