2023 Faculty and Student Awards

Congratulations to English faculty and students on their awards and accomplishments!

Faculty Awards & Fellowships

Long Faculty Fellowship: Emily Mitchell

Professor Mitchell will use the time afforded by the Long Faculty Fellowship to develop English 378: Special Topics in Independent Literary Publishing. This course introduces students to the nuts and bolts of the editorial process: production, distribution, marketing, and all the aspects of putting together a quarterly. This is a course that will hold wide appeal to students interested in literary studies, creative writing, book-making, public writing, media studies and communications. English 378 is an example of the rigorous and imaginative pedagogy supported by the Long Teaching Fellowship.

Faculty Service Award: Edlie Wong

This award is given to a faculty member of the English department particularly dedicated to service to the department, leadership and support of graduate students.

"Dr. Wong offers an extraordinary amount of service to the department, to the field of 19th century American literature, and to graduate students. Within the department, Dr. Wong co-chairs the Local Americanist lecture series with Dr. Levine. They consistently draw leading scholars to Tawes to discuss their cutting-edge work, offering opportunities not just to hear from experts in the field, but for graduate students to respond and interact with them. Dr. Wong also always has time to advise her graduate students. She gives generous and productive feedback, and encourages students in many ways."

Kandice Chuh Mentorship Award: Bob Levine & Christina Walter

Named for former UMD Professor Kandice Chuh, the award seeks to honor a faculty member for their intellectual generosity, support, and commitment to graduate students and their causes.

"Christina is a godsend. . . . Her unfailing commitment to this department’s students—including but crucially not limited to her advisees—deserves to be recognized. . . . What is unique about Christina is that she is as committed to helping students achieve success in the academy as she is to helping students achieve success in their desired field. Jobs in a non-profit, a library, a federal agency are as worthy of celebration as a postdoc or a tenure-track position. Christina uses her network and her attention to detail to help students achieve the opportunities and jobs that they aim for—she is incredibly supportive of each individual student’s chosen path."

"Bob is unfailing, and unfailingly cheerful, in his energies on behalf of graduate students. . . . Bob is the kind of professor you're glad to know—the kind of person who keeps you in mind as he’s going about his business, forwards you relevant opportunities, and actively promotes your interests. . . . He models the exact values [this award] was designed to celebrate."

Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins Society Scholarship Award: Edlie Wong

The Pauline Hopkins Society awards the best scholarly publication—book, essay, or book chapter—on Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins published between January 1, 2018 and November 1, 2022.

Charles A. Caramello Distinguished Dissertation Award: Nahid Ahmadian

The award is for dissertations completed in 2022. It recognizes original work that makes an unusually significant contribution to the discipline.

PTK Teaching Excellence Award: Rebecca Holden and Benjamin Baker
 

Graduate Student Awards

Kwiatek Fellowship: Erin Green

Wylie Dissertation Fellowship: Valentina Rosales & Shalom Rosenberg

Grad School Summer Research Fellowship: Mehdy Sedaghat Payam, Valentina Rosales, Erin Green, Fernando Duran, Elizabeth Dinneny

Kinnaird Award (M.A.): Noah Mastruserio

Kinnaird Award (Ph.D.): Himadri Agarwal

Department Summer Fellowship: Alexis Walston, Dominique Young, Kerishma Panigrahi, Kristofer Reed, Natalie McGartland

Carl Bode Dissertation Prize: Katie Bramlett

Alice L. Geyser Dissertation Prize: Danielle Griffin

James A. Robinson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching: Annemarie Mott Ewing and Jeannette Schollaert

Academy of American Poets Poetry Prize (MFA): Ava Serra

Katherine Anne Porter Fiction Prize (MFA): Meghan Collins
 

Undergraduate Student Awards

The Henrietta Spiegel Creative Writing Award: Caleb O’Neil Hurley (Fiction) and Madison Marie Yoest (Poetry)

Each year, we honor outstanding creative writing minors with the Henrietta Spiegel Creative Writing Award. Henrietta Spiegel was the widow of a UMD faculty member. After her husband’s death, she completed her B.A. in English in 1989 at the age of 85 with a GPA of 3.9. Upon the completion of her degree, she established this award to honor undergraduate work in creative writing judged by the creative writing faculty to be the most outstanding.

The Sandy Mack Award for the Outstanding English Honors Thesis: Hadrian Lupul and Madison Marie Yoest

English Honors is a selective program within the English major, one in which students take intensive writing and research seminars, and develop a lengthy critical thesis or creative workover the course of three semesters. An award is given each year to the student with the most outstanding overall record in English Honors. This award is named for Sandy Mack, the faculty member who developed the English Honors Program and guided it for a decade. This year, we have two winners: Hadrian Lupul, for their thesis, “A Feast of Freaks: Using Food Words to Reconstruct the Medieval ‘Other’,” and Madison Marie Yoest, for her poetry collection, “When Cage Becomes Nest.”

The Joseph W. Houppert Memorial Prize: Amy Hui Zhong

The Joseph W. Houppert Prize was named for Joseph Houppert, a scholar of the English Renaissance and a distinguished member of this department from 1963 until his death in 1979. Professor Houppert was always very concerned with the teaching of undergraduate students and particularly for the teaching of good writing. Consequently, his colleagues established this competition in his memory, with a prize to be awarded annually to the undergraduate who has written the best essay on Shakespeare during the academic year. The Houppert Prize for 2023 was awarded to Amy Hui Zhong for her essay entitled “Women, Whiteness, and Rank: Redirecting Lineage in All’s Well that Ends Well.”

Sara Ann Soper English Undergraduate Service Award: Andrea Morelia Garcia

The Sara Ann Soper English Undergraduate Service Award was established by Shannon Altman, who graduated in 1999 with a double degree in English and Education. While she was an undergraduate, Shannon designed and implemented an undergraduate tutoring service at nearby Eleanor Roosevelt High School. Two years after she graduated, she gave the department a significant gift to endow the Sara Ann Soper English Undergraduate Service Award to honor a graduating senior who has volunteered time, energy, and commitment to community service. Shannon named the award after her mother, as a testimony to her achievements as a role model for others.

The Mike Angel Award: Shaheen Wadea Beheri

The Mike Angel Award recognizes a student who has faced extreme hardship in completing his or her degree, and has demonstrated distinction, extraordinary merit, and perseverance as an English major. It was established by faculty and students in 1984 to honor the achievements of Mike Angel, a fine student and wonderful human being who overcame great obstacles in order to earn a B.A. in English.

The Joyce Tayloe Horrell Award: Saxon James Brown

The Joyce Tayloe Horrell Award is the largest award by the department to any student, and was established in 1989 through the generosity of Joseph Horrell in memory of his wife Joyce Tayloe Horrell. Tayloe Horrell was an Honors graduate student, a scholar of the works of the writer Henry James, and a teacher in the English Department from 1960 until 1967. The Horrell Award is conferred annually on the English major who has demonstrated the highest academic achievement overall among the graduating class.