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Nominations for this prize are now closed.
Award Description
The Bernheimer Prize goes to the best dissertation nominated by a department or program. The dissertation must have been defended in the year prior to July 1, 2023. Each institution may nominate one dissertation in the field of comparative literature, identified as the best without regard to actual departmental affiliation. We regret that we are unable to adjudicate dissertations in languages other than English at this time.
The prize carries an award of $1,000 and a certificate, complimentary registration for the Annual Meeting, as well as airfare and hotel accommodations** (not including food) to facilitate the recipient attending the 2024 ACLA Annual Meeting. (**roundtrip economy-class airfare will be covered and hotel accommodation for up to 2 nights at the conference hotel rate, or rough equivalent thereof if the conference hotel is booked).
2023-2024 Winners
Jessica Copley (University of Toronto) for dissertation Forms of War: Capitalism, Representation and the State in Post-45 Literatures from France, Japan, and the United States. CITATION
Honorable Mention: Allison Leigh Kanner-Botan (University of Chicago) for dissertation Maddening Love: Islamic Thought and the Ethics of Desire in the Legend of Layla and Majnun. CITATION
Honorable Mention: Aurélien Bellucci (Harvard University) for dissertation Democratic Performances: How Theater Creates The People. CITATION
Nomination Requirements
To nominate a dissertation for the 2023-2024 Bernheimer Prize, please notify the ACLA Secretariat (info@acla.org) by October 23, 2023.
Nominators should submit a letter or report of one or two pages, outlining the exceptional qualities of the nominated dissertation. Copies of the nominating letter should be emailed, along with copies of the dissertation, to each member of the committee. Please note that we will not accept hard copies this year and ask that all documents are emailed.
2023-2024 Charles Bernheimer Prize Committee
Previous Bernheimer Winners
Hannah Cole (Yale University) for dissertation A Thorny Way of Thinking: Botanical Afterlives of Caribbean Plantation Slavery. CITATION (2023)
Honorable Mention, Vedran Catovic (University of Michigan) for dissertation Narrative Satire in Context: The Journey and Wisdom in West and East Europe. CITATION (2023)
Honorable Mention, Ahmad Nadalizadeh (University of Oregon) for dissertation Repetition Beyond Representation: Media, History and Event in Iran, 1951-1990. CITATION (2023)
Helen Makhdoumian (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) for dissertation A Map of This Place: Memory and The Afterlives of Removal. CITATION (2022)
Honorable Mention, Františka Schormova (Charles University) for dissertation African American Poets Abroad: Black and Red Allegiances in Early Cold War Czechoslovakia. CITATION (2022)
Maziyar Faridi (Northwestern University) for dissertation On an Aporetic Poetics of Relation: Translation, Difference and Identity in Modern Poetry and New Wave Cinema of Iran. CITATION (2021)
Emily Sibley (New York University) for dissertation Uncivil Tongues: Genealogies of Adab in Arab Culture. CITATION (2021)
Kritish Rajbhandari (Northwestern University) for his dissertation Anarchival Drift and the Limits of Community in Indian Ocean Fiction. CITATION (2020)
William C. Stroebel (University of Michigan) for his dissertation "Fluid Books Fluid Borders: Modern Greek and Turkish Book Networks in a Shifting Sea" (CITATION) (2019)
Katherine “Katie” Kadue, (University of California, Berkeley), for her dissertation Domestic Georgic from Rabelais to Milton (CITATION) (2018)
Amir Khadem (University of Alberta) for his dissertation Endemic Pains and Pandemic Traumas: The Narrative Construction of Public Memory in Iran, Palestine, and the United States (CITATION) (2018)
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