Robert Spoo ’00 Named 2016 Guggenheim Fellow

Tulsa, Okla.—Robert Spoo, Chapman Distinguished Chair at The University of Tulsa College of Law, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2016 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The foundation annually awards prestigious fellowships to individuals who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. This year, the foundation awarded 175 fellowships to scholars, artists and scientists in the United States and Canada, chosen from nearly 3,000 applicants. Spoo is one of 47 recipients in the category of Humanities and one of three in the subcategory of English Literature.

“I’m honored to be named a Guggenheim Fellow and grateful to The University of Tulsa and the donors of the Chapman Chair for their support of my scholarly work,” said Spoo. “I’m looking forward to a productive grant year.”

Spoo, whose interdisciplinary research explores the connections among law, literature and intellectual property, will use his fellowship to complete a book titled Modernism and the Law. “Professor Spoo’s creative and innovative work spans the humanities and legal fields of intellectual discourse,” said Lyn Entzeroth, Dean and Dean John Rogers Endowed Chair at TU Law. “This award of a Guggenheim Fellowship recognizes his exceptionally valuable and productive academic career and will allow him the freedom and ability to continue exploring and expanding his research and scholarship.”

Spoo came to The University of Tulsa College of Law in 2008 after clerking for now-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor (then a judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) and practicing law with major firms in New York, Tulsa and San Francisco. Prior to his legal career, he was a tenured English professor and editor of the James Joyce Quarterly at The University of Tulsa, publishing widely on modern authors.

“This is a prestigious award for a deserving recipient. Guggenheim Fellows regularly receive Nobel or Pulitzer Prizes, and Bob Spoo is worthy of such acclaim,” said university President Steadman Upham. “His work has earned him a seat at the table among the world’s top intellectual property experts. He also is a treasured mentor and colleague across disciplines at TU and far beyond.”

Spoo’s recent book, Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing, and the Public Domain (Oxford UP, 2013), has been enthusiastically reviewed in The Nation, Publishers Weekly, London Times Literary Supplement, Paris Review Daily and other venues. He is currently one of the lead editors of an Oxford University Press project to collect, annotate and publish the unpublished letters (nearly 2,000) of James Joyce.

The complete list of 2016 Guggenheim Fellows can be found at gf.org.