Terry Belanger: U.Va. professor receives MacArthur Foundation award

Terry Belanger, a history and engineering professor and honorary curator of the Special Collections Library, was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship yesterday.The award grants five-year fellowships to those who exhibit "exceptional merit and promise of continued and enhanced creative work" and includes a $500,000 stipend, according to the MacArthur Foundation.

Belanger's MacArthur Fellowship is the first to be awarded to a University Professor since 2002. He plans to use the money to fund the University's Rare Book School, which he founded.

Belanger, a book historian, collector and preservationist, has been at the University since 1992. In 1983, Belanger founded the Rare Book School at Columbia University before shifting the program to the University in 1992.

The Rare Book School, which focuses on the history of written and electronic text, attracts a variety of historians, librarians, collectors and others each year, according to the MacArthur Foundation.

"He has opened up the book as an art form," University President John T. Casteen, III said. "At the same time, he has led a generation of learners to appreciate and understand the rare book, the unique book, the artistically produced book as an artifact of that aspect of popular culture that best charts the progress of human learning."

In addition to his work with the Rare Book School, Belanger also is an undergraduate professor, teaching both history and engineering courses in the fall.