Peter Michalik, a 1997 graduate of Cornell, won a 1998 Jacob K. Javitz Fellowship in humanistic studies this spring. The award provides up to $15,000 per year for up to four years of graduate study.

Michalik will study English literature in the Ph.D. program at Harvard University beginning in the fall 1998. A native of Ardsley, N.Y., he graduated from Regis High School in Manhattan and was a double major at Cornell in English and history. He graduated summa cum laude in English with a thesis on D.M. Thomas' The White Hotel, was co-winner of the Barnes Prize for best essay on Shakespeare and was an editor of the Cornell Political Forum.

"Like Jonathan Culler in English and Dominick LaCapra in history, my two biggest Cornell influences, I try to elaborate and exploit tensions between rhetoric (in its deconstructive sense) and history through a balance of close readings and critical theory," Michalik said. "Culler and LaCapra, while among the school's two best-known and most influential figures in the humanities, practically spoiled me with their attention. Because of the amount of attention I received from the very best, my last two years at Cornell were probably the equivalent of the first two years of grad school somewhere else."

Culler is the Class of 1916 Professor of English, and LaCapra is the Bowmar Professor in Human Studies.

Michalik also was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies, but he declined it in favor of the Javitz. Michalik spent the 1997-98 academic year working for Simon & Schuster publishers in New York City.