Graduate Award History 

Shirley Bard Rapoport Essay Prize

This essay prize is awarded every year for the best essay by a graduate student in the English Department. Morris Rapoport established this endowed prize as a memorial to honor his beloved wife and lifetime partner, Shirley Bard Rapoport, and her love of writing and literature.

Joanna O'Leary for her essay, "Two For One? Twins and the Anxieties of (Re)Productions in Dickens," 2011.

Jon Nelson for his essay, "Counterfeiting Romance in Robert Greene's Rogue Pamphlets," 2010.

Michael Griffiths for his essay, "Advertising American Cinema: Commodifying the Kuleshov Effect in North by Northwest," 2009.

Amelia Scholtz for her article, “The Giant in the Curio Shop: Unpacking the Cabinet in Kipling's Letters from Japan,” 2008.

Kevin Morrison for his essay, “Foregrounding Nationalism: Mary Russell Mitford’s Our Village and the Effects of Publication Context,” 2007.  
                                                                                                                                                                 

Bruce Dunlevie Teaching Awards, 2011

These awards are designed to develop teaching opportunities for graduate students at the 100 level courses with an intensive writing component.

Anna Dodson & Joanna O'Leary
 

Margaret C. Ostrum Summer Research Grants, 2011

Heather Miner will travel to England to pursue archival research to aid the first section of her dissertation, which is structured by two chapters, "Narrativizing the North: Constructing the City-State in lancashire and Yorkshire" and "Midland Pastorality and Modern Englishness."

Caroline S. and David L. Minter Summer Research Grant, 2011

Michael Giffiths will travel to regional and rural parts of Western Australia to conduct interviews with Stolen Generation survivors--those indigenous children who were forcibly removed from their homes in order to assimilate them into colonial life. Many of these interviews and empirical researches will be used in the fourth and fifth chapters of his dissertation, which will deal with tthe aesthestics of trauma in post settler-colonial spaces.

Kate Sullivan will travel to conduct researcg at the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the USC Warner Bros. Archive. This research will expand on a current work in progress, "The Aesthetics of the Inkwell: (Post)modern Art in Comic Animation - 1900-1928." This paper will critique animation's transition to sound and will contribute to her future dissertation work on the 20th century.

Laura Richardson will travel to the Rosenbach Museum and Library, which holds the largest collection of the poet Marianne Moore's papers, letters, and personal items. There she will conduct research focused on the odd aesthetics of preservation in Moore's poetry and life.

Humanities Research Fellowship

The Humanities Research Center awards four competitive fellowships to advanced doctoral students who are completing research and writing their dissertations. It is expected that these awards will enable students to complete their dissertations and graduate at the end of the award year.

Cory Ledoux for his dissertation, “Race and Revolutions: The Idea of Haiti in 19th-Century US Literature” 2009.

Kara Marler-Kennedy for her dissertation, "Mourning, Violence, and the Historical Novel in Nineteenth-Century Britain." 2008.

David Messmer for his dissertation, "Aural Fictions: Sound in African American Literature" 2007.

Humanities Reseach Center Sarofim Teaching Fellowship

The Humanities Research Center awards a year long fellowship to an advanced doctoral student allowing them to work on their dissertation and in return the student teaches one course during the academic year.

Andy Klein for his dissertation, "Priests of the Invisible: The Aporetographies of American Poetry, from Emerson to Ashberry" 2010.

Jill Delsigne for her dissertation, "Affective Art: Animating Statues in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton" 2010.

Jeff Jackson for his dissertation, “Withdrawing from History: Scott, Wordsworth, and Dickens and the Afterlife of the Scottish Enlightenment” 2009.

Chair’s Best Dissertation Prize

This award is give out each year by the Department Chair to the best dissertation completed in that same year as determined by a committee of English faculty.

Jennifer Rickel, "Narrative States: Human Rights Discourse in Contemporary Literature" 2012. Director: Betty Joseph

Elizabeth Womack, "Secondhand  Economies: Recycling, Reuse, and Exchange in the Victorian Novel" 2011. Director: Helena Michie

Victoria Ford Smith, “Between Generations: Imagination, Collaboration and the Nineteenth-Century Child” 2010. Director: Robert L. Patten

Molly Robey, “Sacred Geographies: Religion, Race, and the Holy Land in U.S. Literature, 1819-1920” 2009. Director: Caroline Levander

Janna Smartt-Chance, “Obeying God Rather than Men: Protestant Individualism and the Empowerment of Victorian Women” 2008. Director: Helena Michie

Shubha Joshi, “The Closet in the Colony: British Colonialism, Indian Nationalism and (Re)Definitions of Gender and Sexuality” 2007. Director: Betty Joseph

John Gardner Prize for Best Dissertation in the Humanities

Elizabeth Womack, "Secondhand  Economies: Recycling, Reuse, and Exchange in the Victorian Novel" 2011. Director: Helena Michie

Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughn Fellowship

This award provides a one year fellowship for a graduate student whose record at Rice shows evidence of outstanding achievement and promise. Up to three awards may be given in the Humanities each year.

Michael Griffiths
Received Award for academic year 2011-2012

Amelia Scholtz
Received Award for academic year 2009-2010

Victoria Ford Smith
Received Award for academic year 2008-2009

Molly Robey
Received Award for academic year 2007-2008

Ayse Celikkol
Received Award for academic year 2004-2005

Ronit Berger
Received Award for academic year 2003-2004

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