Stephen Greenblatt, Former President of the MLA, Receives Holberg Prize

The MLA congratulates Stephen Greenblatt, past president of the association and John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, on being awarded the 2016 Holberg Prize—the largest international prize awarded annually to an outstanding researcher in the arts and humanities, social science, law, and theology. In awarding the prize to Greenblatt, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, chair of the Holberg Academic Committee, said, “Greenblatt’s work has brilliantly opened up new ways to think about the Renaissance and Shakespeare. In doing so he has also provided us a vocabulary through which we can approach the task of understanding our times and its history.” Greenblatt will receive the prize during a ceremony at the University of Bergen, Norway, on 6 June and says that he accepts the Holberg with gratitude as recognition of the critical importance of the humanities in our everyday existence. Previous winners of the Holberg Prize include Julia Kristeva, Jürgen Habermas, Manuel Castells, Bruno Latour, and Marina Warner. To learn more, please visit www.holbergprisen.no/en.