UC Riverside Distinguished Humanist Achievement Lecturer
2002-2003 DHAL Robert Essick Professor of English University of California, Riverside
	In 1991-92 The Center for Ideas and Society inaugurated an annual lecture to honor the scholarly achievements and accomplishments of a member of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty. The purpose of the annual UC Riverside Humanist Achievement Lecture is to recognize, acknowledge, and celebrate a significant recent scholarly research accomplishment (or performance) by one of our colleagues, or a series of such achievements, whether this is a recent book or a series of articles, or indeed, an especially distinguished performance.  This recognition is without regard to rank or length of service at the University of California, Riverside. For a list of our past awardees click here.
DHAL Lecture "Information and Knowledge on the Internet: The Example of the William Blake Archive." HMNSS 1500 January 20, 2004
Robert Essick Biography
Degrees Ph.D. English 1969 University of California, San Diego B.A. English 1965 UCLA Awards National Endowment for the Humanities Research Grant, 1972 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, March 1979; Guggenheim Foundation publication subvention, March 1980 WILLIAM BLAKE, PRINTMAKER, selected by the Association of College and Research Librarians as one of the outstanding academic books of 1980-1981 Grants-in-Aid, American Council of Learned Societies, April 1983 National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Research Fellowship, 1986-1987 UC President's Research Fellowship in the Humanities, 1989-1990 UCR Faculty Research Lecturer, 1991 WILLIAM BLAKE'S COMMERCIAL BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS selected by the Association of College and Research Librarians as one of the outstanding academic books of 1991-1992
Research Areas British literature and art of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, particularly the visual and verbal works of William Blake and his circle. Publications William Blake, Printmaker. Princeton University Press, 1980. The Separate Plates of William Blake: A Catalogue. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1983. William Blake and the Language of Adam. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989. William Blake's Commercial Book Illustrations: A Catalogue and Study of the Plates Engraved by Blake after Designs by Other Artists. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 199l. William Blake: Milton and the Final Illuminated Works, coeditor with Joseph Viscomi. London, Blake Trust/Tate Gallery; Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993. Biography Robert Essick (B.A. UCLA; Ph.D. University of California, San Diego) is a specialist in British romantic literature and art, particularly William Blake. Among his fifteen books are William Blake, Printmaker (Princeton University Press), selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Book of 1980-81; William Blake and the Language of Adam (Oxford University Press 1989); and William Blake's Commercial Book Illustrations (Oxford University Press) selected by Choice as an Outstanding Book of 1991-92. His most recent book, William Blake at the Huntington (1994) was a Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection. He is an on-line Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia and is currently working on the Blake Electronic Archive. Essick is a member of the Board of Overseers of the Huntington Library and the Editorial Board of Studies in English Literature. He has been an NEH, American Council of Learned Societies, and Guggenheim Fellow and was the Faculty Research Lecturer at UCR in 1990-91   Email: robert.essick@ucr.edu

Past UC Riverside Distinguished Humanist Lecturer's

Year	Awardee	Department	Paper Title
2001-2002	Keith Griffin	Economics	A Witness of Two Revolutions
2000-2001	Susan Foster	Dance	Frame Theory
1999-2000	Philip Brett	Music	Auden's Britten
1998-1999	Sterling Stuckey	History	The Artist and His Audience: The Case of Paul Robeson
1997-1998	Susan Straight	Creative Writing	Readings from her work in progress
1996-1997	Carl Cranor	Philosophy	Regulating Toxic Substances Through a Glass Darkly: Using Science Without Distorting the Law
1995-1996	John Fischer	Philosophy	Free Will and Creative Self-Expression
1994-1995	Fred Strickler	Dance	Dance/Lecture Performance
1993-1994	Amelia Jones	History of Art	Postmodernism and the Seductions of Marcel Duchamp
1992-1993	Zhang Longxi	Comparative Literature	Knowledge, Skepticism, and Cross Cultural Understanding
1991-1992	Brian Copenhaver	History and Philosophy	Was There a Renaissance in Natural Philosophy? The Aristotelian Magic of Pietro Pomponazzi