William Rogers Award: Nawal M. Nour '88

A Sudanese-American, Nawal is an obstetrician and gynecologist who founded and directs the African Women’s Health Practice at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. This clinic, the only one of its kind in the United States, addresses the unique medical and emotional needs of female immigrants who have been genitally circumcised in their homeland. Nawal’s work moves beyond the cultural debate regarding female circumcision to recognize that this practice also represents a chronic medical risk throughout the lives of women who have been victimized in this manner. She has written an influential protocol for medical management of female circumcision and has developed techniques for the surgical reversal of infibulation, the most severe form of female circumcision.

Through her dedication, passion, proficiency, community outreach, and education of fellow health professionals, Nawal’s work bridges the clinical, the practical, and the humane. By applying her skills in medicine and public health to contemporary issues of culture and human rights, Nawal is advancing important initiatives in the area of international women’s health. In the fall of 2003, she was named a fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The fellowships, known as “genius awards,” recognize creativity and are designed to encourage talented people to pursue their intellectual and professional inclinations. Nawal also received the 2004 Alumni Award from the American School of London, of which she is a graduate.

Nawal came to the United States from Sudan in 1980. After receiving an A.B. from Brown, she went on to earn an M.D. and an M.P.H. from Harvard University in 1994 and 1999, respectively. She completed a chief residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in 1998. There she founded the African Women’s Health Practice in 1999, which she continues to direct today. In addition to her work at the clinic, Nawal holds the position of instructor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School.

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Horace Mann Medal: Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting '94 Ph.D.

Professor of French and Italian at Vanderbilt University, Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting received her Ph.D. in French studies from Brown in 1994. A national commentator on issues ranging from race and cultural stereotyping to hip-hop culture to the pre-9/11 relationship between France and the United States, she was named a “rising superstar” among black intellectuals in the Chicago Sun-Times in 2002. “In an era when interdisciplinarity is lauded, Sharpley-Whiting’s immense intellect and huge curiosity make her an ideal example,” Michael Eric Dyson wrote. She is “one of the country’s most brilliant and prolific racial theorists.”

Tracy teaches comparative diasporic literary and cultural movements, Francophone studies, critical race studies, feminist theory, Jazz Age Paris, film, and hip-hop culture at Vanderbilt, where she is also director of African American and Diaspora studies and the W. T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies.

The author of many articles and book chapters, Tracy has published books including Negritude Women (2002), Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in French (1999), and Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms (1998). Her co-edited volumes include The Black Feminist Reader (2000); Spoils of War: Women of Color, Cultures, and Revolutions (1997), which received honorable mention for outstanding book from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America; and Fanon: A Critical Reader (1996).

Tracy serves on the editorial boards of Modern Fiction Studies and the International Journal of Francophone Studies and was chair of the Advisory Committee on Foreign Languages and Literatures for the Modern Language Association. She has also won fellowships from the Rockefeller, Camargo, and George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard foundations. She has recently completed a book entitled Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Young Black Women, Hip-Hop, and the New Gender Politics (New York University Press, 2007) and is beginning work on another book on black women in Paris during the Jazz Age.

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John Hope Award for Public Service: Peter A. Kovacs '78, Stephanie L. Grace '87, Mary K. Swerczek '98

Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and deadliest hurricane in the history of the United States. Katrina formed in late August during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and, within days, devastated much of the north-central Gulf Coast, most notably in the immediate vicinity of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Central to the media coverage of this catastrophic event was the New Orleans Times- Picayune, whose editor and staff writers literally reported from the eye of the storm. They provided exemplary, multifaceted coverage of Hurricane Katrina, making exceptional use of the newspaper’s resources to serve an inundated city – even after evacuation of the newspaper's printing plant.

For its extraordinary coverage under the leadership of managing editor Peter Kovacs ’78, the Times-Picayune was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes in 2006: one for public service and one for breaking news for its heroic coverage of the hurricane and its aftermath.

Peter joined the Times-Picayune staff in 1983 as the night metro editor. In 1988 he coordinated the paper’s coverage of that year’s presidential campaign and conventions. In 1990 he was promoted to metro editor, and in 1993 he was named to an associate editor position. Before the Times-Picayune, Peter worked as a reporter and editor at the Birmingham News.

Stephanie Grace ’87 is a political columnist for the Times-Picayune. She joined the paper’s East Jefferson Parish bureau as a reporter in 1994. In 1999, Stephanie began covering New Orleans politics, and in 2003 she started a political column on the Times-Picayune op-ed page. She began her reporting career as an intern with the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau and has also worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer and CBS News’s election unit. At Brown, Stephanie studied political science and went on to earn a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Mary Swerczek ’98 is a reporter in the Times-Picayune’s Kenner bureau. She joined the paper in 1999, covering St. Charles Parish from the newspaper’s River Parishes bureau. She interned at the Times-Picayune after graduating from Brown with a degree in history and English. Previously, Mary interned at the Omaha World-Herald.

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