NORTHRIDGE : Professor Wins Guggenheim Grant

Cal State Northridge history professor Reba Soffer, a 35-year campus veteran who specializes in modern English history, has been awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and is the only teacher in the 21-campus Cal State system to receive one this year.

Soffer, 60, of Pacific Palisades, said the $28,000 grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation will help underwrite her work away from CSUN during 1995-96.

She will be researching and writing a book on the role of historians that she plans to title, “The Historical Imagination.”

Soffer said time spent off campus doing research and writing is essential if professors want to do quality teaching. “I think they’re integrated and deeply related,” she said. “When you don’t write, you don’t think things through clearly.”

Her fellowship is one of 152 the New York-based foundation awarded this month to scholars and artists in the United States and Canada. Among the 25 given in California, six each went to scholars at Stanford and UC Berkeley, followed by four at UCLA and two at UC San Diego.

No other Cal State instructors were granted the fellowships this year. And neither Cal State nor foundation officials could say how many CSU teachers have received in the past. However, CSUN spokesman Bruce Erickson said the Northridge campus has had several prior winners.

By combining the fellowship with a six-month campus sabbatical and another fellowship she received from a different group, Soffer said she plans to spend from October to January lecturing in Australia on her topic, before returning home to finish the research and writing on her book.

The book will focus on how different types of historians bring different perspectives to their craft, Soffer said.

She plans to use the examples of three observers of English history in recent decades to portray the varying approaches of insiders, outsiders and those claiming impartiality.

The foundation has been awarding the research fellowships since 1925 to advanced professionals with track records of scholarship.

The application by Soffer, the author of two prior books and recipient of a Cal State outstanding teacher award in 1984-85, was chosen from 2,856 that were received.