Posted on February 20, 2002 at 10:12 a.m.
BIRMINGHAM, AL — University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Professor William C. Carter, Ph.D., author of the critically acclaimed biography, Marcel Proust: A Life, has been selected as the recipient of the 2002 Caroline P. and Charles W. Ireland Prize for Scholarly Distinction. A reception and dinner will be held in his honor at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 14, at The Club, atop Red Mountain. For more information, or to make reservations, contact Denise Daniel at (205) 934-8404.
UAB presents the Ireland Prize annually to a full-time faculty member in the Schools of Arts and Humanities, Natural Sciences and Mathematics, or Social and Behavioral Sciences for professional and academic achievements and contributions made to the university and local community. This prize is made possible by the Caroline P. and Charles W. Ireland Endowment for Scholarly Distinction.
Carter teaches 19th and 20th century French literature in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and is an internationally recognized scholar of the great French novelist Marcel Proust. Carter’s book, Marcel Proust: A Life, published in 2000 by Yale University Press, received favorable reviews from several publications, including The Los Angeles Times’ Sunday Book Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The American Scholar, the Chicago Tribune and The Sunday Times in London. The book was selected as a “Notable Book” for 2000 by The New York Times and was one of The Los Angeles Times’ “Best Books of 2000.”
Among Carter’s other books is The Proustian Quest, selected by Choice, a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries, as an Outstanding Academic Book of 1993. Since 1989 he has been an editorial board member of the Bulletin Marcel Proust. In addition, he was project director and co-producer of the award-winning documentary “Marcel Proust: A Writer’s Life,” which aired on PBS in 1993.
Carter has received numerous other prizes, including the Palmes Académiques, awarded in 1989 by France, in recognition of outstanding contributions to French culture. In 1992 he was awarded the Prix Servir du Rotary International, a service award given by Rotary International of France to an American who has made outstanding contributions to Franco-American cultural exchange. Carter was the 1999 winner of the “Outstanding Foreign Language Teacher” award from the Alabama Association of Foreign Language Teachers. He also received the Prize for Excellence award from the Alabama Association of Teachers of French in 1994 and again in 2001 for contributions to French culture.