Don Howard, assistant professor of radio-TV-film at The University of Texas at Austin, has won a Guggenheim Fellowship Award on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.
He is among 179 artists, scholars and scientists selected from nearly 3,000 applicants.
David Stuart, professor of Mesoamerican art in the College of Fine Arts, also won a Guggenheim Fellowship this year.
Howard has written and directed several of his own films, including “Letter From Waco” and “Nuclear Family,” a documentary produced in conjunction with KLRU-TV and ITVS, that examined rituals of gender and family in Texas through the lens of football and weddings. In the future he hopes to make a feature-length narrative titled “Police and Thieves,” a political coming-of-age film set in the Reagan-era 1980s.
He has directed and edited a wide variety of material for film and television, with an emphasis on documentary work. He was co-editor on Margaret Brown’s Townes Van Zandt documentary “Be Here to Love Me.”
The grant will help underwrite production for his next film, “Say Hello to Mr. Go: An Elegy for South Louisiana.” The documentary, which he is developing with writing partner Jim Shelton, will trace the growing threats to the Louisiana wetlands and the musical culture of South Louisiana.
Since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has given more than $230 million in fellowships to more than 15,500 individuals. The fellowships are designed to encourage advanced professionals in the fields of natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and the creative arts to take time from steady appointments, such as teaching, and focus on personal creative projects.
