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, 2026. 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 ACLA Annual Meeting when meeting in person. (**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).
2025-2026 Winner
- Melissa Karp for dissertation An Enemy Within: Imagining the Collaborator in Transwar France and Korea. CITATION
2025-2026 Charles Bernheimer Prize Committee
- Chair: Lynn Itagaki (Claremont McKenna College), Term: 2023-2026
- Keya Ganguly (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities), Term: 2024-2027
- Julie Napolin (The New School), Term: 2025-2028
View past winners (2018–2025)
- 2025 Denis Topalovič (University of Oxford) for dissertation Untimely Forms: Late Modernism, War, Essayistic Form. CITATION
- 2025 Grega Ulen (Princeton University) for dissertation Nonaligned Comparisons: Peripheral Realisms and the Utopian Imagination. CITATION
- 2024 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
- 2024 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
- 2024 Honorable Mention, Aurélien Bellucci (Harvard University) for dissertation Democratic Performances: How Theater Creates The People. CITATION
- 2023 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
- 2022 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
- 2021 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
- 2020 Kritish Rajbhandari (Northwestern University) for his dissertation Anarchival Drift and the Limits of Community in Indian Ocean Fiction. CITATION
- 2019 William C. Stroebel (University of Michigan) for his dissertation "Fluid Books Fluid Borders: Modern Greek and Turkish Book Networks in a Shifting Sea" (CITATION)
- 2018 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)
Nomination Requirements
To nominate a dissertation for the 2026-2027 Bernheimer Prize, please complete the form below by August 31, 2026. Please note that email applications will not be accepted. All applications must be submitted through the acla.org website.
Committee
Committee Chair
Institution TBD
Bio pending — secretariat to provide.
Committee Member
Institution TBD
Bio pending — secretariat to provide.
Committee Member
Institution TBD
Bio pending — secretariat to provide.