ATHENS, GA, January 29, 2021 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Marquis Who's Who, the world's premier publisher of biographical profiles, is proud to present Betty Jean Craige, PhD, with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. An accomplished listee, Dr. Craige celebrates many years' experience in her professional network, and has been noted for achievements, leadership qualities, and the credentials and successes she has accrued in her field. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Betty Jean Craige is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Director Emerita of the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts at the University of Georgia. She lives in Athens, Georgia.
Dr. Craige received her B.A. in Spanish Literature from Pomona College (1968) and her M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1974) in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington. She taught at the University of Georgia from 1973 to 2011.
Dr. Craige has published books in the fields of Spanish poetry, modern literature, history of ideas, politics, ecology, and art. In the early 1980s, Dr. Craige became interested in what she considers a fundamental transformation of the West's conceptual and political order. Reconnection: Dualism to Holism in Literary Study (1988), which won the Frederic W. Ness Book Award from the Association of American Colleges, and Laying the Ladder Down: The Emergence of Cultural Holism (1992), which won the Georgia Author of the Year Award, explore the development in the twentieth century of a holistic understanding of culture and nature. American Patriotism in a Global Society (1996) examines the relationship of "political holism" to globalization.
Her biography Eugene Odum: Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalist (2001, 2002) is the fourth book in a set of books about holism.
After completing the Odum biography, Dr. Craige published two art books on the Catalán (Spanish) artist Alvar Suñol, including Alvar: Thirty Years of Lithography (2001); and Alvar: In Color and Poetry (2005), a trilingual volume (English, Spanish, and Catalan) that includes her introduction and her translation into English of seven poems by Marjorie Agosín.
She guest-curated a show of Alvar's lithographs at the Georgia Museum of Art (2001). She produced a 42-minute documentary, with Alan Stecker, titled Alvar Suñol: His Vision and His Art, which won First Place in Short Documentary at the Indie Gathering film festival (2006) and was shown on Georgia Public Television (2007, 2008). In 2007, she edited the catalogue Alvar: The Albany Museum of Art and curated the exhibition at the Albany Museum of Art titled Alvar: Contemporary Renaissance.
Her work as a Hispanist includes a study of Federico García Lorca's surrealist poetry, titled Lorca's Poet in New York (1977), and five book-length translations, Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (1978), The Poetry of Gabriel Celaya (1984), Manuel Mantero: New Songs for the Ruins of Spain (1986), Poems for Josefina, by Marjorie Agosín (2004), and Mother, Speak to Us of War / Madre, háblanos de la guerra, by Marjorie Agosín (2006).
In 2010, Dr. Craige published in both hardback and audiobook Conversations with Cosmo: At Home with an African Grey Parrot, which won Silver in the Foreword Book of the Year competition. For two years—2012 and 2013—she published a weekly Sunday column in the Athens Banner-Herald titled "Cosmo Talks."
She then turned her attention to writing fiction: a "Witherston Murder Mystery" series, including Downstream (2014), Fairfield's Auction (2016) which won First Place in Mystery and Mayhem in the Chanticleer Book Awards, Dam Witherston (2017) which was named Winner of 2018 New York City Big Book Award in Mystery, Distinguished Favorite in Mystery in 2018 Independent Press Awards, and Honorable Mention in Mystery in the 2017 Royal Dragonfly Book Awards, and Saxxons in Witherston (2019), which won a 2019-2020 Honorable Mention in Reader Views Reviewers Choice Award in Mystery/Thriller, a 2020 Royal Dragonfly Book Award Honorable Mention in Mystery, Distinguished Favorite in Independent Press Award, Distinguished Favorite in Mystery in 2020 NYC Big Book Awards, and a 5-Star Review from Readers' Favorite; and the thriller Aldo (2018) which won Distinguished Favorite of 2018 New York City Big Book Award in Mystery and Second Place in the 2018 Royal Dragonfly Book Awards in both Mystery and Science Fiction.
She has a non-fiction book forthcoming, Ruminations on a Parrot named Cosmo (2021).
Dr. Craige's essays have appeared in PMLA, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The Athens Banner Herald.
Dr. Craige has received the University of Georgia Alumni Society Faculty Service Award (1994), the Albert Christ-Janer Award for Creativity in Research (2003), the Blue Key Service Award (2010), and the Women's Studies Faculty Award (2011). She has also received awards for teaching, including the Honoratus Medal from the Honors Program. The title "University Professor" was granted to her in 1995 as "highest recognition for significant impact on The University of Georgia." On May 13, 2004, she received the Governor's Award in the Humanities.
On December 20, 2003, Dr. Craige delivered the graduate and professional schools' commencement address at the University of Georgia. On January 27, 2012, she gave the University's Founders Day Lecture. On September 17, 2013, she accepted the Jeannette Rankin Fund Founders' Award.
Dr. Craige was Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Delta Prize for Global Understanding.
She served as President of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI@UGA) in 2015-2016.
She has served on the boards of the Georgia Museum of Natural History, the Cancer Foundation of Northeast Georgia, and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
In December of 2020 she received the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.
See: http://bettyjeancraige.org.
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