UW-Madison historian Monica Kim awarded MacArthur 'genius' grant
A University of Wisconsin-Madison historian on Wednesday won one of the nation's most prestigious awards, which comes with a no strings attached $800,000 stipend to spend however she sees fit.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named UW-Madison professor Monica Kim, 44, as one of 25 national recipients of the MacArthur fellowship. Also known as the "genius grant," the awards are given annually to a select group of individuals across a range of disciplines who show exceptional creativity in their work and future ambitions.
Individuals cannot apply for the awards. Instead, hundreds of anonymous nominators across the country submit about 2,000 nominations each year for a secret selection committee to consider.
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Over the past 30 years, about 1,100 individuals have won the award, including journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, surgeon and author Atul Gawande and sociologist Matthew Desmond, who wrote an award-winning book about eviction in Milwaukee.
At least four other UW-Madison professors have received the MacArthur award, with the two most recent grants awarded in 2019 to cartoonist and art professor Lynda Barry and climate researcher Andrea Dutton.
Kim's research focuses on the changes in warfare over the 20th century by studying the experiences of ordinary people as opposed to official accounts. She has studied the Korean War extensively, an interest that stems from her Korean parents immigrating to the U.S. during that time.
The MacArthur Foundation said her research "reorients our understanding of U.S. foreign policy during and after the Korean War."
"As a historian, I am forced to reckon with a fundamental principle: the stories we tell about war affect if and how we can imagine a radical peace," Kim said.
Kim earned her bachelor's degree from Yale University and her doctorate from the University of Michigan. She previously taught at New York University before joining UW-Madison in 2020.
She told UW-Madison she may use the grant money, which is awarded over the next five years, toward her next book or a lab where activists, scholars and journalists can explore ways of looking at geopolitics.
Other grant recipients this year include Priti Krishtel, a lawyer exposing inequities in the patent system to make medications more affordable; Jennifer Carlson, a sociologist studying the motivations and assumptions that shape the country's gun culture; and Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineer working to reduce global plastic pollution.
Contact Kelly Meyerhofer at kmeyerhofer@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @KellyMeyerhofer.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: University of Wisconsin historian Kim wins MacArthur genius award
