ANN ARBOR—Five University of Michigan faculty members are among the winners of this year’s Guggenheim Fellowship Awards, according to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

The U-M winners and their study areas are Laura Lee Downs, associate professor of history, “French children’s summer camps, 1880-1960”; Sabine G. MacCormack, the Mary Ann and Charles R. Walgreen Jr. Professor for the Study of Human Understanding, professor of classical studies and of history, “Historical writing in Spain and Peru, 1500-1650”; Peter Railton, professor of philosophy, “Objectivity and value”; Duncan G. Steel, professor of electrical engineering and computer science and professor of physics, “Semiconductor nanostructures for quantum information”; and Alan M. Wald, professor of English and American culture, “The American literary left in the mid-20th century.”

The Guggenheim Foundation selected 179 artists, scholars, and scientists from 2,800 applicants for awards totaling $6 million. Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of “unusually distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.”