Eric Zolov Receives 2026 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship

Stony Brook University Professor Eric Zolov has been named to the 101st class of Guggenheim Fellows by the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Zolov, a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of History, is one of 223 scholars working across 55 disciplines to be selected to the 2026 class. Fellows were chosen based on both prior career achievement and exceptional promise, through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of nearly 5,000 applicants.

Zolov's research and teaching interests focus on the interplay between culture, politics and international relations in 20th-century Latin America, with a particular emphasis on the Cold War period, as encompassed by the phrase "Global Sixties." The Guggenheim Fellowship was awarded for his new project, The Bossa Nova Moment: Harmonizing Pan-Americanism in the Era of the Cuba Revolution. It explores the sonic and geopolitical implications of bossa nova during the long 1960s.

"The Department of History is extremely proud of Eric Zolov's Guggenheim Fellowship," said Sara Lipton, professor and chair of the College of Arts and Sciences Department of History. "It's an extremely prestigious and competitive fellowship, awarded only to the most accomplished and talented scholars, writers and artists; generally, only a handful of historians make the final cut. But more important than the prestige of the award is the quality and importance of Eric's project. His study of the political and racial aspects of the bossa nova movement in the long 1960s is a creative and ambitious interdisciplinary endeavor, which should help remind the world that the humanities and the arts are central to all aspects of society and life… a point too often forgotten of late."

"Congratulations to Professor Eric Zolov on receiving a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship," said David Wrobel, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of history. "The conferral of this highly prestigious award is a confirmation of the groundbreaking, field-changing originality, as well as the intellectual sophistication and rigor of The Bossa Nova Moment."

Zolov recently received the Wayne Shirley Fellowship for research at the Library of Congress from the Society of American Music.

Established in 1925 by founder Senator Simon Guggenheim, the Fellowship provides a monetary stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under "the freest possible conditions."

"Our new class of Guggenheim Fellows is representative of the world's best thinkers, innovators, and creators in art, science, and scholarship," said Edward Hirsch, president of the Guggenheim Foundation. "As the Foundation enters its second century and looks to the future, I feel confident that this new class of 223 individuals will do bold and inspiring work, undaunted by the challenges ahead. We are honored to support their visionary contributions."

Since its establishment, the Guggenheim Foundation has granted nearly $450 million in Fellowships to more than 19,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors. The broad range of fields of study is a unique characteristic of the Fellowship program. The Fellowship is application-based and open to U.S. and Canadian citizens or permanent residents.

See the complete list of 2026 Fellows.