NEW: ACLA announces new structure for Levin and Wellek Book Prizes!

In order better to reflect developments in the field, and in order to provide more recognition for early-career scholars, the American Comparative Literature Association is pleased to announce a major change in the way its book prizes will be awarded.

From the year 2012 forward, the ACLA will be awarding two different book prizes each year: the René Wellek Prize for the best book published in the field of comparative literature, and the Harry Levin Prize for the best first book published in the field of comparative literature. First books will also be eligible for the Wellek Prize, but no book may be nominated for both prizes. Please note that only single-author books may be nominated for either prize. Publishers and authors are invited to submit nominations for both prizes. Further information on both prizes is available below; questions or comments are welcome and may be sent to the Secretary-Treasurer, Alexander Beecroft.

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2013 René Wellek Prize

The René Wellek Prize recognizes an outstanding book in the discipline of comparative literature; fields may include literary or cultural theory or history, or any other field of comparative literature. The 2014 Wellek Prize will be awarded to a book published in the triennium 2011-13, and will be awarded at the ACLA annual meeting in 2014 in New York City.

Congratulations to the 2013 winner of the René Wellek Prize:

Kader Konuk. East West Mimesis: Auerbach in Turkey. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. (CITATION)

Congratulations to the 2013 honorable mention winners of the René Wellek Prize:

Karen Thornber. Ecoambiguity: Environmental Crises and East Asian Literatures. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012. (CITATION)

Subramanian Shankar. Flesh and Fish Blook. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. (CITATION)

HOW TO NOMINATE A BOOK

If you wish to nominate one or more titles for the 2014 René Wellek Prize, please send a brief letter to that effect and a copy of the book to each member of the 2014 René Wellek Prize Committee, including the ACLA Secretariat, Alexander Beecroft

The 2014 René Wellek Prize Committee will be announced shortly.

You may mail submissions to the 2014 René Wellek 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

OTHER COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND ADDRESSES TO BE REVEALED SHORTLY.

The deadline for submission will be announced shortly. 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

The Harry Levin Prize recognizes an outstanding first book in the discipline of comparative literature; fields may include literary or cultural theory or history, or any other field of comparative literature. The 2014 Levin Prize will be awarded to a book published in the triennium 2011-13 as the author's first book-length publication, and will be awarded at the ACLA annual meeting in 2014 in New York CIty.

Congratulations to the 2013 winner of the Harry Levin Prize:

Mary Franklin-Brown. Reading the World: Encyclopedic Writing in the Scholastic Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. (CITATION)

Congratulations to the 2013 honorable mention winners of the Harry Levin Prize:

Jacob Edmond, A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry, Cross-Cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature. New York: Fordham UP, 2012. (CITATION)

Shaden M. Tageldin, Disarming Words: Empire and the Seductions of Translation in Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. (CITATION)

HOW TO NOMINATE A BOOK

If you wish to nominate one or more titles for the 2014 Harry Levin Prize, please send a brief letter to that effect and a copy of the book to each member of the 2014 Harry Levin Prize Committee, including the ACLA Secretariat, Alexander Beecroft.

The 2014 Harry Levin Prize Committee will be announced shortly.

You may mail submissions to the 201 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

OTHER COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND ADDRESSES TO BE REVEALED SHORTLY.

The deadline for submission is September 15, 2013. 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:

• 2012: Lauren Berlant. Cruel Optimism. (Durham: Duke UP, 2011). (CITATION)
• 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)