Commencement Award Winners 2008

We are pleased to announce the winners of spring 2008 department-sponsored prizes and awards.

These awards will be presented at the English Department’s Commencement Ceremony on Friday, May 23, 2008 at 4:00 PM in the Reckord Armory.

Graduate Student Awards

Alice Geyer Dissertation Award

2008 Geyer Awardee:  Elizabeth McClure for her dissertation titled "Sensation, Pain, and Sympathy in Victorian Literature."

The Geyer Award was established in 1996 through the generosity of Mrs. Alice L. Geyer, who earned a masters degree from this department in 1951 with a thesis on the English Romantic poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, and who was a longtime friend and supporter of the English Graduate Program here. This award is presented each year to the graduate students in English with the best dissertation on British literature.

Carl Bode Dissertation Award

2008 Bode Awardee:  Wendy Hayden for her dissertation titled "Unlikely Rhetorical Allies: How Science Warranted U.S. Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century Discourses of Sexuality."

The Bode Award is given in honor and in memory of Carl Bode, emeritus professor of English, who died in 1993. Professor Bode was a beloved teacher and invaluable member of our department for nearly forty years and he wrote prolifically in the fields of American literature and American studies. This award is presented each year to a graduate student in English for the best dissertation in American literature.

Kinnaird Essay Prizes

2008 Kinnaird Awardees
Doctoral:  Lawrence-Minh Davis for his essay titled "'I'm Nat Textuell': Clerking and Anxiety in the Canterbury Tales."
Master’s: Maggie Fromm for her essay titled "Dame Sirith: The History According to the Text.”

The Kinnaird Prizes are given in honor and in memory of John Kinnaird, formerly a professor of Romantic literature in the English Department. Professor Kinnaird was admired as both a fine teacher and scholar here; his great biography of the English essayist William Hazlitt was published only a year before his death in 1980.

James A. Robinson Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching

2008 Literature Awardee:        David Coley
2008 Composition Awardee:    Heather Brown

James A. Robinson was a professor of American drama, an expert on Eugene O’Neill, and a brilliant and dedicated teacher. Prior to his death in 1998, and in order to reward scholar-teachers during their early years of professional growth, he established and endowed two annual awards for outstanding teaching assistants, one award for the teaching of writing, the other for the teaching of literature.
 

Undergraduate Student Awards

Joseph W. Houppert Memorial Shakespeare Prize

2008 Houppert Awardee:   James Williford
2008 Honorable Mention:  Chih-Ting Chen

This prize was named for Joseph Houppert, a Shakespeare expert, scholar of the English renaissance and distinguished member of this department from 1963 until his death in 1979. Professor Houppert was always particularly concerned for the teaching of undergraduate students; 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.

Sandy Mack Award for the Outstanding English Honors Thesis

2008 Mack Awardee:  Erica Gruenewald

English Honors is a selective program within the English major, in which students develop a lengthy critical thesis or creative work over the course of the academic year. All the students graduating with honors have completed a rigorous course of study and we are proud of their extraordinary accomplishments. This award is named for the faculty member who developed the English Honors Program and guided it for many years. It is given each year to the student with the most outstanding overall record in English Honors.

Henrietta Spiegel Creative Writing Award

2008 Spiegel Awardee:  Maureen McHugh

Henrietta Spiegel was the widow of a University of Maryland faculty member who, following her husband’s death, completed her B.A. in English here in 1989 at the age of 85 with a G.P.A. of 3.9. She died in 1996 at the age of 92. She remains the oldest person ever to complete an undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland and, according to Ripley’s Believe It or Not, the oldest woman ever inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. 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.

Sara Ann Soper Undergraduate Service Award

2008 Soper Awardee:  Jordan McCraw

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 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. Shannon’s own words say the most about the link between the service award and the high regard she had for her mother: “She was my role model, my inspiration, my hero.”

Joyce Taylor Horrell Award

2008 Horrell Awardee:  Natalie Prizel 

This special award was established in 1989 by Joseph Horrell in memory of his wife Joyce Tayloe Horrell, an Honors graduate student, Henry James scholar, and master teacher in the English Department from 1960 until 1967. Ms. Horrell is remembered as a brilliant member of the department, who contributed importantly to the lives of her students, friends and colleagues. The Horrell Award is conferred annually on the English major who has demonstrated the highest academic achievement among the graduating class. 

Academic Excellence

Sarah Breeding
Luisa Tuck Cole
Margaret Anne Crenshaw
Alison Anne Daniels
Sarah Ann Espinosa
Brian James Gorman
Erica Gruenewald
Peter William Grybauskas
Marisa Katlin Holiday
Julia Kolchinsky
 Victoria Suzanne Koulakjian
Jennifer Ashley Markey
Samuel Patrick McGlone
Anne Rogers Meredith
Michele Jasmine Nagar
Liam Murphy O'Loughlin
Anne Brooke Powell
Natalie Veda Prizel
Heather Lynn Rodriguez
Pauline Tran

The English Department Academic Excellence Awards are presented each term to students graduating in English with the most outstanding academic records in their course work in the major. Winners receive a certificate and a signed book from the department; this year the book is Posthumerous Keats by Stanley Plumly.

Congratulations to all of our award winners!