Gonzalo Rubio, associate professor of classics and ancient Mediterranean studies and history and religious studies at Penn State, has been awarded a 2012 National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to conduct research about the earliest literary compositions in any Semitic language, a language family that includes Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic. The College of the Liberal Arts faculty member will pursue a detailed study, editions and translations of the earliest literary writings in Semitic languages, found on cuneiform clay tablets from Ancient Syria and Mesopotamia. The NEH Fellowship is widely recognized as one of the highest honors for scholars in the humanities.