GRADUATE student ESSAY PRIZE
SEASECS invites submissions for its annual Graduate Student Essay Prize competition. An award of $300 will be given for the best graduate student paper presented at the annual meeting of the society. Students currently enrolled in graduate programs (M.A. and PhD) and in all fields are invited to apply. All applicants must be or become members of SEASECS. Entries should be submitted as final versions of the paper, with complete citations and bibliographic information. Please submit entries (.docx or pdf) by 5:00 p.m. Central Standard Time on Saturday, March 17, 2024, to Dr. Ereck Jarvis at jarvisj@nsula.edu.
2024 winner: Laura Drake (Mississippi State University). Drake’s essay, “‘Death in Its Power Reduces’: The Chatham Square Cemetery of Congregation Shearith Israel” represents an original contribution to understandings of religious diversity and toleration in colonial America. The beautifully framed paper draws on extensive and innovative archival research to make clear, nuanced arguments about the complex experiences of Jewish communities in colonial New York.
Honorable Mentions: 1) Anna Kroon (Texas Tech University) for “Survivor Bias among Eighteenth-Century Chapbooks,” part of a massive archival undertaking that applies innovative research methods to understudied texts to increase our understanding of eighteenth-century readerships. 2) Tye Landels (Duke University) for “Articulations of Collective Shame in Early British Abolitionism,” which deftly negotiates the genre of the conference paper to share important learned analyses of writing about the slave trade in relation to British nationhood.
2023 Winner: Andrea Ferniany (University of Mississippi), “Disability and Feminine Performance in Frances Burney’s Camilla.” Honorable Mention: Alexandra Sausa (UT Knoxville), “Neurodivergence in Jane Austen’s Emma: The Narcissistic Heroine, Her Social ‘Blindness’ and ‘Blunders’.”
The committee also gives honorary mention to the essay by Alexandra Sausa, “Neurodivergence in Jane Austen’s Emma: The Narcissitic Heroine, Her Social ‘Blindness’ and ‘Blunders’.” The committee felt that the essay used a compelling theoretical frame to craft an interesting and innovative analysis of Emma, blending both primary and secondary texts on neurodivergence to create a critically engaged study.
2022 Winner: Jamie Kramer (University of Tennessee), “Seeking Passions from Synthetic Solitude: Visiting the Human and Automaton Hermits of England’s Garden Hermitages.” Honorable mention: Jacob Myers (University of Pennsylvania), “Adaptation, Anti-Heritage, and Illegibility in The Favourite (2018).”
2021 Winner: Ziona Kocher (University of Tennessee at Knoxville), "Pretty Young Gentleman: Age, Embodiment, and Queerness in The Country Wife." Honorable mention: Luke Vines, "Prophets and Readers: Samuel Johnson, John Ruskin, and a New History of Reading."
2020 Winner: Jennifer Ishee Hoffmann (Mississippi State University), “’I would not comply’: Coventanter Intransigeance and Religious Rhetoric in a Colonial Pennsylvania Captivity Narrative.”
2019 Winner: 2019: Annie Laura Persons (Virginia Commonwealth University), “The Parallel: or, Pilkington and Pope Compared.”
2018 Winner: Katherine Calvin (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), "Touching Watelet: L'Art de peindre and the Performance of Philosophical Materialism."
2017 Winner: Mariah Gruner (Boston University), "Transformative Emulation: Construction and Display of the Mobile Schoolgirl Self and Sampler."
2016 Winner: David Vinson (Auburn University), “The Extraordinary Afterlife of Major John André, the ‘Common Spy.’”
2015 Winner: Michael M. Wagoner (Florida State University), “The Merry Tragedy of Henry VII as written by Charles Macklin, Comedian.”
2014 Winner: Janet Min Lee (Columbia University), "'Her eyes sparkled on him': Allegorical Physiognomy in Henry Fielding's Jonathan Wild."
2012 Co-Winner: Clayton Tarr (University of Georgia) for “Framing the Gothic: Ann Radcliffe and Narrative Boundaries.”
2012 Co-Winner: Shelby Johnson (University of Tennessee), “Reclaiming History’s Terra Incognita: Frances Burney, The Wanderer, and Race.”