Prizes

Junior Papers in Comparative Literature are eligible for the following prizes:

  • Department of Comparative Literature Junior Paper Prize.  Award for the best second (spring term) junior paper by a Comparative Literature major.

Senior theses in Comparative Literature are eligible for the following prizes:

  • Department of Comparative Literature Senior Thesis Prize. Award for the best senior thesis by a Comparative Literature major.
  • Robert and Lynne Fagles Senior Thesis Prize. Award for the best senior thesis by a Comparative Literature major in translation or creative writing.
  • André Maman Senior Thesis Prize. The Department of French and Italian award for the most outstanding thesis on an aspect of the culture, economy, history, politics, or society of France.
  • Center for French Studies Senior Thesis Prize. The Center for French Studies award for the best thesis addressing French politics, policy, or culture.
  • American Society of the Italian Legion of Merits Senior Thesis Prize. The Department of French and Italian award for the most outstanding senior thesis in the area of Italian studies.
  • University Center for Human Values Senior Thesis Prize. Award to the senior who has written the best thesis in the areas of ethics and human values.
  • John Martyn Warbeke 1903 Senior Thesis Prize.  Award to the senior who has done the most distinguished work in the field of aesthetics.  
  • Strayer Senior Thesis Prize. For the best thesis in Medieval Studies in any department.
  • Carolyn L. Drucker Senior Thesis Prize. For the best senior thesis on a Judaic Studies topic, broadly defined.
  • Program in NES Senior Thesis Prize. For the best senior thesis on the Near East.
  • Richard D. Challener Senior Thesis Prize. The Committee for Canadian Studies award for a thesis that receives a grade of A or A+ and is on a topic of substantial relevance to Canadian culture, themes, experience, or issues.
  • Stanley J. Stein Senior Thesis Prize. The Program in Latin American Studies award for the best thesis written on a topic involving Latin America.  Must have an A or an A+ from both its readers, and primary sources in Spanish, Portuguese, or French must constitute more than 50% of all citations. 
  • Stephen Whelan '68 Senior Thesis Prize. For Excellence in Constitutional Law and Political Thought, offered by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. 
  • Peter W. Stroh '51 Senior Thesis Prize. The Princeton Environmental Institute award for the best senior thesis on an environmental topic.
  • Ruth Simmons Senior Thesis Prize. Awarded to the thesis that best exhibits excellence in research and writing within the field of African American Studies.
  • Leigh Buchanan Bienen and Henry S. Bienen Senior Thesis Prize. The East Asian Studies Department and Program award for the most outstanding thesis on an East Asian topic.  The senior thesis must be based on extensive and appropriate sources in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean as well as Western language materials.
  • Monty Raiser Senior Thesis Prize. Award for best thesis in Russian and Eurasian Studies.  Eligible theses need to incorporate materials or case studies from the geographic region between Germany and Japan, using original-language materials.
  • Kenneth Maxwell Senior Thesis Prize. The Program in Latin American Studies award for the best thesis related to Brazil.  May be in any field or discipline.
  • J. Wells Henderson ’43 Senior Thesis Prize. Award for the most outstanding thesis on a law-related subject.  An eligible thesis deals centrally with a question related to law, and may be from any discipline.  Among the topics welcome for consideration are legal history, law and public policy, law and literature, legal philosophy, sociology of law, law and politics, legal anthropology, science and law, psychology of law, law and religion, law and art, as well as law and economics.  The prize committee considers theses in international, comparative or American law, as well as theses primarily about the law of any country other than the U.S.

Senior Thesis Awardees

Comparative Literature Senior Thesis Prize Awardees

Micah Newberger  (2023)
A Great Voice: On Language from Sinai

Peter Scharer (2022)
Contested Regimes: Revolutionary Signification in Colonial Bengal (1876-1949)

Jessica Christine Blake (2014)
DIARY AFTERLIVES: Representation. Misrepresentation, and Manipulation
in the Diaries of Thomas Turner, Virginia Woolf, and Les Frères Goncourt

Christina Eugenia Perruccio (2014) Honorable Mention
The Pleasure in Power: A socio-linguistic and musical study of rap music in The United States
and France

Nellie Mav Pickett Pevton (2014) Honorable Mention
Translating Translation: A New Approach to the Bilingual Postcolonial Text

Lana Hirschfeld-Kroen (2013)
In Pursuit of the Child at Play: A Dynamic and Dangerous Myth of Modern Life

Emma Watt (2013) Honorable Mention
Hubrid Texts and the Great Globe Itself Shakespearean Afterlives in Modern Latin America

Francesca Furchtaott (2012)
"In the Beginning. All the World Was America": Musical Theater and the Snaping of American Identity

Alana Tornello (2012)
To Dream the Impossible Regime: Utopia from Page to Public Square in the Italian Risorgimento, the Russian
Revolution, and the Equptian Arab Spring

Nicholas Hubel (2012) Honorable Mention
Political Reautv: Aesthetic Political Theory in Machiavelli Nietzsche and Heart of Darkness

Michelle Joseph (2011)
Reading the Poe-tic "Art" of Murder and Drawing Geometric Conclusions in Walsh's Variaciones en Rojo

Ting Bok (2011) Honorable Mention
The Self Reflective Actor: Literal and Figurative Mirrors in and between Eileen Chang's Se, Jie and Ang Lee's Lust, Caution

Devin Blair Kennedy (2011) Honorable Mention
Contested Body: Identity, Anatomy, Sign

Alexandra Jayne Dantzlerward (2010)
Georg Lukács on the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel: A Logical Amendment

Paavana Lakshmi Kumar (2010)
Musical Alchemy, Temporal Analogy: The Hidden Compositional Models of The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus

Anthonv Audi (2010) Honorable Mention
William Blake's Heaven and Hell in the American West: A Study of Dead Man's Promiscuous Referentiality

Zachary Michael Wider (2010) Honorable Mention
In the Shadow of Words: Three Modes of Literary Translation and the Bilingual Writer

Molly Borowitz (2009)
Between the Lines: Grotesque Allegory and Sociopolitical Commentary in Baudelaire, Orozco, Kafka, and Casey

Elizabeth Rene Lemoine (2009) Honorable Mention
Petrified Nonsense

Ömer Zival (2008)
Aby Warburg' Method: A Contextual Reading

Jesse Max Creed (2007)
Subjects of Alteration: The Indeterminacy of the "I" in Charles d'Orléans and Francois Villon

Zachary Edward Woolfe (2006)
Century of Death: Clothes and Commodification Anxieties in Nineteenth-Century French Culture


Robert & Lynne Fagles Senior Thesis Prize Awardees

Luca Morante (2023)
Le occasioni / The Occasions

Meigan Clark (2022)
Lia

Brenda Theresa Hayes (2022)
mary stuart: a new translation

Patience Elizabeth Haggin (2014)
The Moonstone: Scenes from the Countryside A translation and study

William Turner Howard (2014)
Perpendicular Lives by Alvaro Enrigue with a Critical Afterword by the Translator

Lily Akerman (2013)
Something Rich and Strange: The Tempest with Humans and Marionettes

Ben Barron (2013) Honorable Mention
Silsie: A Theatrical Adaptation in English and French of the Novel Silsie by Marie Redonnet

M. Derek Gideon (2012)
Strange Land: Poems

Maria Luzarraga (2011)
Due Unto Others
A Play and Critical Afterword

Molly Silberberg (2011)
Moving Between the Lines: Directing the Ensemble in Caryl Churchill' The Striker

Laura Parker Fletcher (2010)
After by Annie Saumont: A Translation

Anna Catherine Shaffer (2010)
The Moth Collector: Short Stories

Chenxin Jiang (2009)
Das leise knacken im inner: A translation and critical study of Jan Wagner's poems

Fiona Rachel Miller (2009) Honorable Mention
What It Has to Do With

Maryam Wasif Khan (2008)
Nazir Ahmad's "Education of the Eleven Sisters": A translation and critical introduction

George Harrington Butts (2008) Honorable Mention
1 Once Was Lost, But Now Am Found: (The Story of) A Golfer, Golf Ball, and 9/11

Joshua Drew Montgomery Williams (2007)
The Window House: A Novel & Maps of Contagion/Maps of Community: A Prolegomenon To Future Work On The Literatures of AIDS

Noelle Elizabeth Lyle (2006)
My Dance and Other Stories: Selected Short Stories by Shi Tiesheng

Silas Reilly Riener (2006)
Fugue State: The Idea: Poems, Dance, Theories of Congruence

The Andre Maman Senior Thesis Prize

Nellie May Pickett Peyton (2014)
Translating Translation: A New Approach to the Bilingual Postcolonial Text

Comparative Literature Junior Paper Prize

Brian Sheng-Kai Li (2023)
Brittle Lives, Brittle Knowledge, and Brittle Bodies: Scholarly Identity and Glass Delusions in Early Modern Europe

Brian (2022)
The Sense is Experimenting: Concretism, Curtains and Cage

Luca Morante (2022)
The Sense is Experimenting: Concretism, Curtains and Cage

Darya Koltunyuk (2014)
Reading through Music and Dance:
Turgenev, Chopin, and A Month in the Country

Joel Newberger (2013)
The Manuscript History of Charles Olson's "Letter 27"

Audrey Hall (2012)
A Tattered Copy of Eternity: Theories of Time in Borges Fiction

Emma Austenfeld (2011)
The Incompatibility of Masculinity and Love