The Harry Levin and René Wellek Prizes, given in alternate years, are this country's most prestigious book awards in the discipline of comparative literature. Editions, collections of essays, and reference works are not eligible for these prizes.

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2009 Harry Levin Prize

Those books eligible for the Levin Prize emphasize literary history or criticism as opposed to theory; in the spirit of comparative literature, they are engaged with more than one national literature or with issues of literary study in general. The 2009 Levin Prize comprises books published in the triennium 2006-2008, and the award will be presented at the ACLA Annual Meeting at Harvard University in March 2009.

HOW TO NOMINATE A BOOK

If you wish to nominate one or more titles for the 2009 Wellek Prize, please send a brief letter to that effect and a copy of the book to each member of the 2009 Levin Prize Committee, including the ACLA Secretariat. The 2009 Levin Prize Committee will be announced shortly.

ACLA Secretariat
University of Texas at Austin
Program in Comparative Literature
1 University Station B5003
Austin, TX 78712-0196

The deadline for submission corresponds to the eligibility period and thus is December 31st 2008. The ACLA encourages the submission of titles as early as possible, as the committee usually receives a large number of submissions at the end of the year, and can devote proportionately less time to them than to those that arrive early.

A selective approach to nominations is also recommended, in order that a few books of superior quality may stand out.

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2008 René Wellek Prize

The Wellek Prize recognizes an outstanding work in the field of literary and cultural theory. The 2008 Wellek Prize comprised books published in the triennium 2005-2007.

Congratulations to the 2008 winner of the René Wellek Prize:

Joseph Slaughter. Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law. New York: Fordham UP, 2007. (CITATION)

Honorable Mention:

Natalie Melas. All the Difference in the World: Postcoloniality and the Ends of Comparison. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007. (CITATION)

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2007 Harry Levin Prize

Those books eligible for the Levin Prize emphasize literary history or criticism as opposed to theory; in the spirit of comparative literature, they are engaged with more than one national literature or with issues of literary study in general. The 2007 Levin Prize comprised books published in the triennium 2004-2006.

Congratulations to the 2007 winner of the Harry Levin Prize:

Lois Parkinson Zamora. The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006. (CITATION)

Honorable Mention:

Wai Chee Dimock. Through Other Continents: American Literature Across Deep Time. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006. (CITATION)

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Previous Levin Prize winners:

• 2005: Seth Lerer, Error and The Academic Self: The Scholarly Imagination, Medieval To Modern (Columbia UP, 2002) (CITATION)
• 2003: Julie Stone Peters, Theatre of the Book, 1480-1880: Print, Text and Performance in Europe (Oxford UP, 2000) (CITATION)
• 2001: Leonard Barkan, Unearthing the Past: Archeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture (Yale UP, 1999) (CITATION)
• 1999: Gauri Viswanathan, Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief (Princeton UP, 1998) (CITATION)
• 1997: Paul Alpers, What Is Pastoral? (U of Chicago P, 1996) (CITATION)
• 1995: Marie-Hélène Huet, Monstrous Imagination (Harvard UP, 1993) (CITATION)
• 1993: J. Hillis Miller, Illustration (Harvard UP)
• 1990: Mary E. Wack, Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: The Viaticum and Its Commentaries (U of Pennsylvania P, 1990) (CITATION)
• 1987: Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valéry (U of California P, 1987) (CITATION) and David Hayman, Re-Forming the Narrative: Towards a Mechanics of Modernist Fiction (Cornell UP, 1987) (CITATION)
• 1985: Virgil Nemoianu, The Taming of Romanticism: European literature and the age of Biedermeier (Princeton UP, 1985)

Previous René Wellek Prize winners:

• 2006: Peggy Kamuf, Book of Addresses (Stanford UP, 2005) (CITATION)
• 2004: Barrett Watten, The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics (Wesleyan UP, 2003) (CITATION)
  Honorable Mentions: Margaret W. Ferguson, Dido's Daughters: Literacy, Gender and Empire in Early Modern England and France (U of Chicago P, 2003) (CITATION) and Eric L. Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life: Reflections on Freud and Rosenzweig (U of Chicago P, 2001) (CITATION)
• 2002: Rei Terada, Feeling in Theory: Emotion after the 'Death of the Subject' (Harvard UP, 2001)
• 2000: N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman (U of Chicago P, 1998)
• 1998: Geoffrey H. Hartman, The Fateful Question of Culture (Columbia UP, 1997) (CITATION)
• 1996: Haun Saussy, The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic (Stanford UP, 1993) (CITATION) and Gary Saul Morson, Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (Yale UP, 1994) (CITATION)
• 1994: John Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (U of Chicago P, 1993)
• 1992: Umberto Eco, The Limits of Interpretation (Indiana UP, 1990) (CITATION) and Thomas G. Pavel, The Feud of Language: A History of Structuralist Thought (Basil Blackwell, 1989) (CITATION)
• 1988: Barbara A. Johnson, A World of Difference (Johns Hopkins UP, 1987)
• 1986: Suzanne Gearhart, The Open Boundary of History and Fiction (Princeton UP, 1985) (CITATION)