Michael Brumbaugh was awarded a 2020 Summer Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a 2020-2021 Fellowship from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation. Both awards were granted in support of his book project Plato in Paraguay, a detailed study of a long-lost Latin treatise from the 18th century comparing life among the indigenous Guaraní of Paraguay to the idealized communities in Plato’s Republic and Laws. In addition to providing rare details about indigenous culture, both pre- and post-European colonization, this treatise takes aim at the legacies of antiquity and their value as ideological and practical models during the French Revolution. This monograph will serve as a companion to Prof. Brumbaugh’s forthcoming bilingual edition of the Neo-Latin treatise De administratione Guaranica comparate ad rem publicam Platonis commentarius (1793) [A Commentary on the Guaraní Way of Life Compared with Plato’s Republic] by José Manuel Peramás. A sneak peek at this project is now available in his chapter “Utopia Writes Back: Peramás on the Limits of Republicanism” in Brill’s Companion to Classics in the Early Americas.
Professor Brumbaugh is a two-time recipient of the Loeb Fellowship, having been granted one previously for work on his book The New Politics of Olympos (Oxford 2019).