ITHACA, N.Y. -- Michael Steinberg, professor of history at Cornell University, is the recipient of a 2003 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to conduct research abroad during his 2003-04 sabbatical leave. In addition, Steinberg was awarded the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin. The latter prize will allow Steinberg to study in Berlin next fall as a member of the academy.

The latest Guggenheim fellowship winners -- 184 artists, scientists and scholars -- were awarded a total of $6.7 million. They were selected from more than 3,200 applicants and chosen for distinguished achievement and exceptional promise.

Steinberg's academic specialty at Cornell is modern European cultural and intellectual history and modern Germany and Austria. In 2000 he received the Austrian national history prize for his book Austria as Theater and Ideology: The Meaning of the Salzburg Festival . The book examines the world-renowned Salzburg Music Festival as a microcosm of modern Austrian identity and conflicts. In the book's second edition, Steinberg relates the festival to Austria's recent political flirtation with right-wing politics. In addition, Steinberg has published articles about this and other related topics in The New York Times and in scholarly journals.

The Guggenheim fellowships are designed to help scholars secure a block of time, free from other duties, in which to pursue their own academic or creative work . Steinberg will use the time to focus on a book-in-progress, tentatively titled, Judaism and Generations in German Europe .

"Starting in the period of 18th century Enlightenment and emancipation and concluding with the post-Holocaust era, the book will offer a new perspective on the subtle relations between German and Jewish identity," Steinberg said.

Since 1925 the Guggenheim foundation has granted more than $185 million to nearly 15,000 individuals. Noted Cornell winners have included A.R. Ammons, the late poet and Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry, and novelist Alison Lurie, professor emerita of English. David M. Lee, professor of physics and winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in physics, received Guggenheim fellowships in 1966 and 1974.