URI English professor wins Guggenheim

SOUTH KINGSTOWN – University of Rhode Island English Professor Mary Cappello has been selected for the 2011 Guggenheim Fellowships.

Cappello, a resident of Providence, was one of the 180 winners selected from a group of 3,000 applicants and will use the fellowship to write a book-length essay on mood.

Cappello was one of 13 creative artists who won awards in nonfiction, URI said in a news release on Thursday. Another Rhode Islander, Rosemary Mahoney of Bristol, also won a Guggenheim in nonfiction.

Capello’s book has been given the working title of “In the Mood: Toward a Psychology of Atmosphere.” She intends it to be her literary contribution to a psychology that takes mood seriously, URI said.

“A great deal of thinking and writing in [the United States] has been carried out in the name of understanding ‘feeling’ and its newly minted cousin, ‘affect’, but mood remains untapped,” said Cappello. Mood, she said, is elastic; it can be stretched into various meanings yet, while pervasive, remains indefinable.

Her previous work includes: “Awkward: A Detour,” “Swallow: Foreign Bodies, Their Ingestion, Inspiration and the Curious Doctor Who Extracted Them,” a critical memoir on cancer “Called Back” and the memoir “Night Bloom.”

In its 87th year, the Guggenheim Fellowships, which can be characterized as “midcareer” awards, go to individuals who have already demonstrated “exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.”

The awards are divided into two annual competitions: one for citizens and permanent residents of the U.S. and Canada, which are announced in April, and one for citizens of Latin America and the Caribbean, to be announced in early June.

URI said it did not have the immediate grant amount available, but last year the average award was $36,867.