Dissertation Fellowships and Teaching Awards Announced for Grad Students

Several graduate students earn commendation for distinguished teaching and research.

Chris Brown has been selected as a Ford Dissertation Fellow for 2010-11. Twenty fellowships were awarded this year to Ph.D. and Sc.D. students at universities nationwide. The award comes with a $21,000 stipend and, expenses paid to a conference of Ford Fellows, and access to a network of Ford Fellow mentors. Chris's dissertation, "The Shape of Incommensurability: Law and the African American Literary Tradition," is being written under the direction of Professor Mary Helen Washington.

In university and departmental fellowship news, Jennifer Wellman has been awarded a Mary Savage Snouffer Dissertation Fellowship for 2010-11.  Jennie is writing her dissertation, "Oral Storytelling and the Paradox of Modernist Narrative," under Professor Brian Richardson's direction.

Eric Curry and Joanne Roby have been awarded 2010-2011 Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowships. Eric Curry is writing his dissertation, "Strategic Imagination, Radical Circulation: Studies in African American Print Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century," under the direction of Professor Robert Levine. Joanne Roby is writing her dissertation, "Private Scandal in the Public Sphere: The Polemical Mode of the Early Eighteenth Century," under Professor Laura Rosenthal's direction.

Rebecca Lush will be the Harman-Ward Fellow for 2010-11.  Rebecca is writing her dissertation, "The 'Other' Woman: Early Modern English Representations of Native American Women," under the co-direction of Professors Ralph Bauer and Jane Donawerth.

Tanya Clement is the winner of the 2009 Carl Bode Dissertation Award.  Tanya's dissertation, "The Makings of Digital Modernism: Rereading Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans and poetry by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven," was directed by Professor Matt Kirschenbaum.

The winner of the 2009 Alice Geyer Dissertation Award is Lisa Zimmerelli.  Lisa's dissertation, "A Genre of Defense: Hybridity in Nineteenth-Century American Women's Defenses of Preaching," was directed by Professor Jane Donawerth.

The Kinnaird Prizes for the best essays written by an MA and a PhD student in 2009 go respectively to Lewis Gleich, for his essay "The Effects of Poetic Devices on Plot Construction: Toward a Theory of Response Events," and Theodore Kaouk, for "The Lure of Mastery: Sovereign Fathers and Sovereign Friends in Hamlet and Michel de Montaigne's 'Of Friendship.'"

In teaching news, the Department of English has recognized Stephanie Graham for her outstanding contributions to the teaching of literature with the James A. Robinson Prize for the Teaching of Literature.

Thomas Geary and Adam Lloyd are this year's recipients of the James A. Robinson Prize for the Teaching of Writing. Associate Chair Theresa Coletti cited in particular their "stellar work in developing ENGL278Z, Writing in a Wireless World."

In addition to the departmental awards, the university's Center for Teaching Excellence has also acknowledged the exemplary service to undergraduates provided by graduate teaching assistants in the Department. The winner of this year's CTE Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award are Maggie Fromm, Mark Hoffman, Katherine Young, Shenandoah Sowash, Jacqueline Orlando, Michelle Boswell, Amy Merritt, Andy Black, Kara Fontenot, and Elizabeth Kelly Martin.