Sharon Ann Farmer, professor of history

Sharon Ann Farmer, professor of history at UC Santa Barbara, is among the 186 artists, scholars, and scientists from the United States and Canada to receive prestigious Guggenheim fellowships for 2005.

Farmer will use her Guggenheim stipend of $37,000 to continue a long-term research project, a monograph titled “Oriental luxuries, Parisian crafts, and the making of Europe’s fashion capital.”

“I am examining the material and symbolic culture of 13th- and 14th-century English and French aristocratic and royal courts through the lens of Parisian commerce and industry,” Farmer says.

Recently, Farmer also received a National Endowment for the Humanities Award for her research, one of only 195 scholars nationwide to do so.

It included a stipend of $40,000 over a nine- to 12-month period. NEH fellowships support individuals pursuing advanced research that contributes to the understanding of the humanities.

Guggenheim Fellows are selected on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.

“I will be using the NEH award for a sabbatical leave during the 2005-2006 academic year, and the Guggenheim for a sabbatical leave during the 2007-2008 academic year,” she says.

Farmer, who received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1983, has been a member of the UCSB history faculty since 1986.