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.

The winner will receive complimentary conference registration and a complimentary banquet ticket, as well as full reimbursement for travel expenses related to the annual meeting, to facilitate the recipient attending the 2012 conference In Providence, RI at which the prize will be awarded.

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2012 René Wellek Prize

The the René Wellek Prize recognizes an outstanding work in the field of literary and cultural theory. The 2012 René Wellek Prize comprises books published in the triennium 2009-2011, and the award will be presented at the ACLA Annual Meeting in 2012.

HOW TO NOMINATE A BOOK

If you wish to nominate one or more titles for the 2012 René Wellek Prize, please send a brief letter to that effect and a copy of the book to each member of the 2012 René Wellek Prize Committee, including the ACLA Secretariat, Alexander Beecroft.

The 2012 René Wellek Prize Committee is Marc Redfield (Chair, Brown University), Efrain Kristal (UCLA), and Anne-Lise François (UC - Berkeley).

The deadline for submission for the 2012 Wellek Prize has passsed. 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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2013 Harry Levin Prize

Those books eligible for the Harry 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. Editions and commentaries on texts are not normally considered for this prize.  The 2013 Harry Levin Prize comprises books published in the triennium 2010-2012, and the award will be presented at the ACLA Annual Meeting in 2013.

HOW TO NOMINATE A BOOK

If you wish to nominate one or more titles for the 2013 Harry Levin Prize, please send a brief letter to that effect and a copy of the book to each member of the 2013 Harry Levin Prize Committee, including the ACLA Secretariat, Alexander Beecroft.

The 2013 Harry Levin Prize Committee is Rita Felski (Chair, University of Virginia), Gauri Viswanathan (Columbia University), and John Burt Foster (George Mason University).

You may mail submissions to the 2013 Harry Levin Prize Committee at the following addresses:

Alexander Beecroft, Secretary-Treasurer, American Comparative Literature Association, University of South Carolina Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, 1620 College Street, Rm. 813A, Columbia SC 29208

Rita Felski, Department of English, University of Virginia, PO Box 400121, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121

Gauri Viswanathan, Department of English and Comparative Literature, 602 Philosophy Hall, Columbia University, 1150 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027.

John Burt Foster, Jr. MSN 3E4 (English Department) George Mason University Fairfax VA 22030-4444

The deadline for submission is September 15, 2012. 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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Previous Levin Prize winners:

• 2011: Jahan Ramazani. A Transnational Poetics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. (CITATION)
  First Runner Up: Andrew Piper. Dreaming in Books: The Making of the Bibliographic Imagination in the Romantic Age. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. (CITATION)
  Second Runner Up: Margaret Cohen. The Novel and the Sea. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2010. (CITATION)
• 2009 Ross Hamilton. Accident: A Philosophical and Literary History. (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2007) (CITATION)
  Adam Potkay. The Story of Joy: From the Bible to Late Romanticism. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007) (CITATION)
• 2007: 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)
• 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:

• 2010: Anne-Lise François, Open Secrets: The Literature of Uncounted Experience (Stanford UP, 2007) (CITATION)
  Honorable Mention: Barbara Johnson, Persons and Things (Harvard UP, 2008) (CITATION)
• 2008: Joseph Slaughter, Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law (Fordham UP, 2007) (CITATION)
  Honorable Mention: Natalie Melas, All the Difference in the World: Postcoloniality and the Ends of Comparison (Stanford UP, 2007) (CITATION)
• 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)