Hedrick to receive Award for Excellence in Culture & Tourism
What: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joan D. Hedrick, the Charles A. Dana Professor of History at Trinity, is one of four Connecticut residents who will honored by Gov. M. Jodi Rell with a 2008 Award for Excellence in Culture & Tourism. Recipients of the award are chosen based on the magnitude of their achievements, the level of recognition resulting from their endeavors, and their sustained contribution to their field and the state. The event is sponsored by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism.
When: Wednesday, April 9. The awards ceremony will be from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. and a reception will follow from 6:30 to 7:30.
Where: The atrium of the Legislative Office Building, 300 Capitol Avenue, Hartford.
Background: Hedrick, of Middletown, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for her biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe, entitled Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life, which Hedrick had spent 10 years researching and writing. She is also the author of The Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe Reader, published in 1999, and Solitary Comrade: Jack London and His Work, published in 1982.
In addition to winning the Pulitzer, Hedrick has been the recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships in both 1983 and 1998, and a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1983. She received her A.B. from Vassar College and her Ph.D. from Brown University.
Hedrick, who joined the Trinity faculty in 1980, founded the College’s Women’s Studies Program and then worked to reconfigure it as the Women, Gender and Sexuality Program. In her teaching, her areas of specialty include the intersection of class, race, gender and sexuality; 19th and early 20th century American history; and feminist history.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose residence is a Hartford tourist attraction and whose abolitionist masterpiece, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, galvanized emotions in the North and South during the Civil War, was a gifted and complex woman whose career spanned 44 years. Stowe worked to alleviate the harsh physical realities that governed many women’s lives, among them epidemics, high infant mortality and disastrous medical practices. Hedrick’s book was the first full-scale biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe to be written in 50 years.
Also being honored April 9 are Michael Wilson, artistic director of the Hartford Stage; Gene Wilder of Stamford, an Emmy-Award winning actor who has appeared on Broadway, in movies and in television; and Vita West Muir, founder of the Litchfield Jazz Festival and executive and artistic director of Litchfield Performing Arts.
Each of the honorees will receive a statuette, sculpted by Connecticut artist David Boyajian, which is a replica of Randolph Roger’s large statute, “The Genius of Connecticut,” done in 1878. The original bronze “Genius” was created to sit atop the state Capitol but now stands in the north lobby of the Capitol.
Seating at the awards ceremony is limited, so anyone wishing to attend should RSVP by April 3 to Rhonda.Olisky@ct.gov or 860-256-2752.