Congratulations to all the 2021 graduate award recipients!
The Charles Peters Prize
Awarded for the best essay on a subject involving Shakespeare or his contemporaries (inclusive dates: 1485-1660)
Judges: Jane Degenhardt and Joseph Black
Winner: Olivia Barry
Olivia Barry is a first-year MA/PhD literature student in the English Department. She studies early modern drama, with a particular interest in performance, disability studies, and visual culture.
The judges write, "This lively discussion of the circulation of embroidered clothing in Thomas Heywood’s Fair Maid of the Exchange offers a productive engagement with the theory of new materialism and extends our understanding of the play in new directions by showing how embroidered clothing acts as an agent for its makers, buyers, and wearers. As the essay shows, the cloth objects in the play embody human artistry and desire and come together to comprise an object assemblage that assumes its own collective power. This essay is especially notable for its versatile engagement of the critical discourses of new materialism, clothing studies, and disability studies, as well as for its illuminating close readings. One particularly illuminating angle of the essay was its consideration of how objects function as materializations of a collective creative process that colludes with the art of poetic invention. The essay’s conclusions offer rich ground for further thinking about the relationships between poetry, images, and embroidery, the artistry of 'artisanal; crafts, the production and circulation of objects by disabled bodies, and the documentation of women’s erotic agency through their artistic labor."
The LeeAnn Smith White Prize
Awarded for the best essay on a topic that falls within the broad area of American cultural and literary studies
Judges: Laura Furlan and Hoang Phan
Winner: Rowshan Chowdhury
Rowshan Jahan Chowdhury is a second-year PhD student in the English department with concentration in American Studies. Her research interests include American literature ranging from the early period to the long nineteenth century. As a scholar of American literature, she is concerned with the ways racial and gendered violence intersect, and the ways those subject to this violence are excluded from the ostensibly universal regime of liberty and equality. She is particularly interested in the interrelationships among various empires and reading literature through a transnational lens to explore more deeply the inter-continental relationships and rethink how they shape and reshape our contemporary global perspective.
Furlan and Phan write, "The winning essay, 'Fetishization, Archival Absence, and Indian Rebellion of 1857 in Western Discourse,' exemplifies emergent critical approaches of American Studies that expand beyond the borders of the United States and the theoretical boundaries of traditional literary criticism. Locating representations of the 1857 'Sepoy Mutiny' within the wider Trans-Atlantic contexts of British imperialism and U.S. colonialism and slavery, the essay also presents an illuminating historical exploration of the interdependent relationship between American writers’ representations of rebellion in 'British India' and their imaginings of African American and black rebellion in the United States. While drawing on traditional American Studies methodologies, in particular through its focus on material culture and print culture, the essay combines deep archival research with rigorous historical and literary analysis."
The John Hicks Prize
Awarded for the best literary essay any period after 1650
Judges: Jenny Adams and Ruth Jennison
Co-winners: Manasvini Rajan and Chandler Steckbeck
Manasvini Rajan is a second-year PhD candidate in literature. Her research interests lie in the environmental humanities and postcolonial studies.
"In confident, sophisticated prose, Rajan uses ecological theory to show the ways Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia 'challenges ideas of scarcity, citizenship, waste, purity, and mobility.' The judges, who read the essay as a cargo ship sits blocking the Suez Canal, found the essay timely in its focus on water its appropriation by state actors. The essay’s moments of close reading flowed smoothly from the political framing and theoretical apparatus, and it was a joy to read a paper where all these components fit smoothly together. "
Chandler Steckbeck is a second-year Ph.D. student studying early modern drama. Her research is currently focused on asking questions about the networked relationships between humans and non-humans on the stage.
"Her essay, 'Networked Relationships: Possibilities within Aphra Benn’s The Rover' impressed the committee with its ambitious and learned analysis. A theoretically sophisticated study, “Networked Relationships” artfully wove close readings and historical analysis. The essay explored the dynamics between characters and objects in a unique and compelling fashion, ultimately presenting an original feminist retheorization of Benn’s work."
The Walker Gibson Prize
Awarded for the best essay on a subject in Composition and Rhetoric
Judges: Haivan Hoang and Janine Solberg
Winner: Stacie Klinowski
Stacie Klinowski is a PhD student in the Composition and Rhetoric program. Her research interests include archival history, histories of composition, community literacy, and language ideologies.
The judges write, "Klinowski’s exceptional essay 'Race, Literacy, & Sponsorship: W.E.B. Du Bois’ Nineteenth Century Literacy Experiences; prompts us to consider how Du Bois’s literacy experiences may have been influenced by African American literacy sponsors that emerged in the context of anti-Black racial histories. It is a thoroughly researched and historically grounded reading of this influential scholar’s literacy experiences."
The judges write, "Klinowski’s exceptional essay 'Race, Literacy, & Sponsorship: W.E.B. Du Bois’ Nineteenth Century Literacy Experiences; prompts us to consider how Du Bois’s literacy experiences may have been influenced by African American literacy sponsors that emerged in the context of anti-Black racial histories. It is a thoroughly researched and historically grounded reading of this influential scholar’s literacy experiences."
Meredith B Raymond Scholarship
Sharanya Sridhar is a 5th year Phd candidate in the Early Modern and Renaissance Studies program. She is completing her dissertation titled "Global Genres, Local Shakespeares: Embodiments of World Literature in Post-Independence Tamil Cinema" under the supervision of Dr. Jane Hwang Degenhardt. In bringing together texts conventionally separated by disciplinary boundaries, her research argues for the importance of linguistic diversity in scholarly conversations about World Literature. More broadly, her work seeks to map out archives from the dravidian linguistic tradition that have remained underexplored within Global Shakespeare Studies. Sharanya plans to defend her dissertation at the end of fall 2022 and is grateful for this scholarship which will allow her to make substantial progress to her dissertation this summer. She is also excited to split her time between dissertation writing and co-chairing the Graduate Employee Organization this upcoming academic year.