Gabriel Trop, associate professor of German, has been awarded the 2018 Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement by Young Faculty. The awards, made possible by the generosity of Phillip (UNC Class of 1921) and Ruth Hettleman, recognize scholarly and artistic achievement by junior tenure-track, or recently tenured, members of the faculty.
Trop came to Carolina in 2010 after earning his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. His research interests tend to examine the relationship between literature, science, and philosophy, with a special focus on German Idealism, Comparative Romanticisms, and poetics and aesthetics.
His major scholarly achievement to date is his monograph, Poetry as a Way of Life: Aesthetics and Askesis in the German Eighteenth Century, published by Northwestern University Press in 2015. Reviewers described the book as “refreshingly original,” “bold,” and “groundbreaking” and herald it as a major reinterpretation of Germany poetry. He has also published 13 peer-reviewed articles in prestigious scholarly journals in Europe and North America.
Jonathan M. Hess, former chair of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, said departmental course offerings in the field of literature and philosophy have expanded exponentially since Trop came to Carolina. For instance, Trop designed a new first-year seminar on “Intensity, Vitality, and Ecstasy” and revamped and revitalized key courses such as “German Intellectual History” and “The Age of Goethe.”
In addition, Trop is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature and an official mentor for the Carolina Scholars Program. He has also served as a visiting professor at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen.
He has earned a Johnson Teaching Excellence Award, a UNC Global Partnership Award and a Schwab Academic Excellence Award.
Said Hess, “Trop has truly distinguished himself as a scholar, teacher, mentor and colleague since joining the Carolina community.”
Trop is one of four UNC faculty to receive the $5,000 award. The other recipients include Joaquín E. Drut, associate professor and Melchor Fellow in the Department of Physics and Astronomy; Shawn Hingtgen, associate professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in the Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics; and Juan Song, assistant professor in the UNC School of Medicine Department of Pharmacology.