Elaine McMillion Sheldon Receives Mid-Career Excellence in Research and Creative Achievement Award
Each year the University of Tennessee College of Arts and Sciences seeks to recognize faculty members who excel in scholarship and creative activity while also being fully engaged in the other responsibilities of faculty jobs, primarily teaching and service. To this end, the college honors faculty in three stages of their research careers – early, mid, and senior – with awards for excellence in research or creative achievement.
The college presented a Mid-Career Research Award to Elaine McMillion Sheldon, assistant professor of cinema studies. In response to receiving this honor, Sheldon stated, “I am humbled to receive this award by the College of Arts and Sciences. It’s a distinct honor to be part of an incredible faculty committed to groundbreaking research at UT.”
Sheldon is an Academy Award-nominated and Peabody-winning documentary filmmaker. She has been nominated for six Emmy awards. She is the recipient of a 2021 Creative Capital Award and a 2020 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and was a finalist for a 2021 Livingston Award.
She recently completed a feature-length documentary King Coal, with support from the Sundance Documentary Institute, Creative Capital, Tribeca Film Institute, Catapult Film Fund, First Look Media, and the West Virginia Humanities Council. Sheldon is the director of two Netflix Original Documentaries — Heroin(e) and Recovery Boys — that explore America’s opioid crisis. Heroin(e) premiered at the 2017 Telluride Film Festival, was nominated for a 2018 Academy Award, and won the 2018 News and Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Documentary