Mercer Times

Princeton faculty members Lex Brown and Lucas Ramos have been honored with the 2024-25 Rome Prize, a prestigious fellowship for independent research in the arts and humanities. Both are alumni of Princeton University. The award provides recipients with an opportunity to work at the American Academy in Rome for a period ranging from five to ten months.

Peter Miller, president of the academy, highlighted the significance of the prize: “The Rome Prize is one of the most storied fellowship programs in the United States,” he said. It offers recipients “the chance to live and work in Rome, inspired by the city and one another.” This year, 31 American and three Italian artists and scholars were granted this fellowship.

Lex Brown, who joined Princeton's faculty in 2020 as a lecturer in visual arts at the Lewis Center for the Arts, was awarded for her project "Soap Operetta." Her work involves writing opera librettos influenced by various performance forms such as clowning and musical theater. She describes her project as “a hybrid approach that incorporates operatic song structures and comedic physical acting.”

During her time in Rome, Brown will study opera history and participate in workshops on Italian performance traditions like Commedia dell'arte. She emphasized Italy's role as "the birthplace of opera" and noted that these traditions require direct mentorship: "You have to be taught by somebody who knows how to do the movement, the entrance, the exit."

Lucas Ramos is pursuing his Ph.D. at Columbia University after graduating from Princeton with a major in history. He received recognition for his dissertation project titled "Queer, Catholic, Communist: Forging a Sexual Revolution in the Italian Republic, 1958–1989." His research will involve fieldwork at Vatican Archives and interviews with queer political organizers from past decades.

Ramos expressed enthusiasm about joining the academy’s community: "I'm very excited to join the American Academy’s community of artists and scholars," he stated.

Wendy Heller from Princeton served as jury chair for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies during this year's awards process.