2009 Commencement Award Winners

Department sponsored prizes and awards were announced at the spring commencement ceremony on May 22, 2009.

Graduate Student Awards

Alice Geyer Dissertation Award

2009 Geyer Awardee:  David Coley for his dissertation "The Wheel of Language: Representing Speech in Middle English Narrative, 1377-1422." Now an Assistant Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, Coley wrote his dissertation under the direction of Theresa Coletti.

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

2009 Bode Awardee:  Misun Dokko for her dissertation "Dirty Bodies: Filth and Marginal Characters in Asian American Literature." Dokko will begin an Assistant Professorship in English at Shippensburg University in Fall 2009, and wrote her dissertation under the direction of Kandice Chuh.

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

2009 Kinnaird Awardees
Doctoral:  R. Lindsay Dunne for her essay "Public Cure/Counterpublic Cause: Rhetorics of the Breast Cancer Movement"
 
Master’s: Michelle Boswell for her essay "Choosing Comedy and Philosophy: Constance Naden's Hylo-Idealist Poetics"

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

2009 Literature Awardee:        Laura Heninger Hill
2009 Composition Awardee:    Jasmine Lellock

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

2009 Houppert Awardee:   Walter Andrew Shephard

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

2009 Mack Awardee:  Walter Andrew Shephard

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

2009 Spiegel Awardee:  Reginald Dwayne Betts

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.

Joyce Taylor Horrell Award

2009 Horrell Awardees:  Brian Anthony Cognato and Daniel Marcus Greene

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

John Barkmeyer
Brian Anthony Cognato
Kaitlyn M. Curtis
Alyssa Luanne Dubov
Emily Feldman
Talia Shoshana Goldman
Daniel Marcus Greene
Laura Ann Hoffmaster 
Sophia Delima Iem
Amali Kumari Liyanarachi
Zachary John Perret
Matthew John Phillips
Walter Andrew Shephard
Julie Christine Smith
Dale Catherine Trumbore
Rebecca Zahradnik 

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.

Congratulations to all of our award winners!