Michael Walzer ’56 Award for Teaching

Award: Given every year to a tenure track faculty member who combines scholarship with inspired teaching. Farrelly is the 28th recipient of the award.

Biography: A graduate of Fordham University with an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Emory University, Farrelly joined the Brandeis faculty in the fall of 2006 after working as an award winning reporter and producer for Georgia Public Radio and as a Features Reporter for the Voice of America in Washington, DC and NY, for which she served as a correspondent to the 2004 Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Her book “Papist Patriots: The Making of an American Catholic Identity” is now under contract at Oxford University Press.

At Brandeis, she has taught courses on Classic Texts in American Culture, The Culture of Journalism, Advertising and the Media, International Affairs and the American Media, Religion in America and Public Intellectuals in American Life. She has also received a “Young Scholar in American Religion” Fellowship grant.

Student comments: “An open-minded, intellectually adventurous professor, Maura Jane Farrelly tops my list of favorite professors.”

“Lectures were FANTASTIC. They were extremely well organized and had lots of interesting information. Discussions in the class were extremely stimulating. Everyone in the room seemed engaged. Professor Farrelly was an amazing lecturer who really is the epitome of a professor who ‘demonstrated enthusiasm for teaching the subject.’”

“Professor Farrelly had a class of 75 students, but we often had the entire class engaged and participating in discussions. I have never seen someone able to control so well a class this size for a discussion, while keeping all of the students engaged.”