Category: Prizes

Jo Alvarado wins the American Cultures Essay Prize

Published date July 25, 2022

Berkeley English honors student Jo Alvarado has received the American Cultures Essay Prize for her essay “Loving What Goes Away: Ross Gay’s Gratitude for Loss and Life.” Alvarado’s essay was written in Professor John Alba Cutler’s 166AC course “Racial Joy,” offered in the Department of English this past Spring. Congratulations, Jo! The prizewinning essay responds to a prompt from the...

The Bedri Distinguished Writer Series – Fall 2021

Published date October 8, 2021

For information on the Bedri Distinguished Writer Series, including past and forthcoming events, please visit the Series’ website. Join us for a public lecture with Jennifer Egan, the Fall 2021 Bedri Distinguished Writer, on Thursday, November 4th at 5:00 PM in 315 Wheeler Hall (the Maud Fife Room). A smaller, department-only Q&A will take place the following day (Friday, November...

Nadia Ellis Wins the 2020 Distinguished Teaching Award

Published date April 23, 2020

Professor Nadia Ellis is one of four UC Berkeley faculty members to win the 2020 Distinguished Teaching Award. The Distinguished Teaching Award is the campus’s most prestigious honor for teaching and is intended to recognize individual faculty for sustained performance of excellence in teaching. Above and beyond an individual exemplary class, this kind of sustained excellence in teaching incites intellectual...

Mark Danner wins 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship

Published date April 15, 2019

Mark Danner, a professor in both the English and Journalism departments, is one of five Berkeleyans to become a 2019 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellow. Read more here.

Amanda Jo Goldstein Wins MLA Prize for a First Book

Published date January 3, 2019

The MLA Prize for a First Book has been awarded to Amanda Jo Goldstein for her book Sweet Science: Romantic Materialism and the New Logics of Life. The committee’s citation for Goldstein’s book reads: Ambitious, learned, and extraordinarily precise, Sweet Science: Romantic Materialism and the New Logics of Life magnificently reshapes our understanding of life and the forms through which it is given to...

To Tell the Truth … To Be Seen: Poet Javier Zamora (’12) on Unaccompanied

Published date November 29, 2018

UC Berkeley alumnus Javier Zamora (’12) published his first book of poetry, Unaccompanied, in 2017. Fleeing a civil war and gang violence in El Salvador, Zamora’s parents immigrated to the United States when he was two, leaving him with his grandparents until his own migration, alone, at age nine. The poems of Unaccompanied explore that family history, its larger contexts,...

Robert Hass receives 2018 Truman Capote Award

Published date October 12, 2018

The Truman Capote Award Ceremony will take place at 4 p.m. Oct. 17 in the Old Capitol Senate Chamber. The event will feature remarks by Robert Hass and a reception in the Old Capitol Museum. Both events are open to the public. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass won the 2018 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin...

Daniel Gumbiner nominated for National Book Award

Published date September 27, 2018

Department alum Daniel Gumbiner has been longlisted for the National Book Award in fiction for his novel, The Boatbuilder. The National Book Foundation, which presents the National Book Awards, writes: “In Daniel Gumbiner’s The Boatbuilder, a twenty-eight-year-old man who has moved easily through the world sustains a concussion with lingering effects, opening a door to opioid addiction and quickly leading to...

Catherine Gallagher wins American Philosophical Society Jacques Barzun Prize

Published date June 6, 2018

The American Philosophical Society has announced that Professor Catherine Gallagher has been selected as the 2018 recipient of the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History for her book, Telling It Like It Wasn’t: The Counterfactual Imagination in History and Fiction. The American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States, was founded in 17 43 by Benjamin Franklin for...

Josie Saldaña wins American Studies Association John Hope Franklin Prize

Published date November 6, 2017

Professor Josie Saldaña’s recent book Indian Given: Racial Geographies Across Mexico and the United States received this year’s American Studies Association John Hope Franklin Prize for the most outstanding book published in American Studies. The prize committee’s citation: The committee selected Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States from well over 100 books that we reviewed. We...

Coloring Outside the Lines

Published date May 7, 2015

Amy Clark is a graduating senior, and was recently awarded the Charlene Conrad Liebau Library Prize for her English honors thesis, “More than Meets the Eye: Cultural Color Resonances in Old English Literature.”

“Homesick for Horror”: Introducing the Winner of the R1B Essay Prize

Published date September 8, 2014

Every year, graduate students in the English department teach numerous sections of R1B, an introductory reading and composition course. At the end of the year, teachers submit their best students’ papers to be considered for an essay prize. This year’s winner was Celina Maiorano, whose essay, “Homesick for Horror: The Gothic of Nostalgia,” was written for Katie Fleishman’s course “American Beauties.”

“Two Ways to Sell Children”: Meet the Winner of the R1A Essay Prize

Published date August 18, 2014

Every year, graduate students in the English department teach numerous sections of R1A, an introductory reading and composition course. At the end of the year, teachers submit their best students’ papers to be considered for an essay prize. This year’s winner was Clare Kim, whose essay, “Two Ways to Sell Children,” was written for Jesse Cordes Selbin’s course “Narratives We Live By.”

Robot Anatomy: Bonnie Kim’s Adventures with Isaac Asimov

Published date July 22, 2013

Below is a reflection from Bonnie Kim (’13), finalist for this year’s Bronson Prize, on her work with Isaac Asimov’s robot novels.

Why Milton?: Reflections from the Winners of the Bertrand H. Bronson Prize

Published date July 5, 2013

At the end of every spring semester, the English Department awards the Bronson Prize to the graduating senior, whose thesis is deemed the best that year. In 2013, it looks like we couldn’t choose: both Stephanie Ranks and Lily Rosenthal received the prize. Remarkably, both wrote on 17th-century poet John Milton. In separate reflections, Stephanie and Lily discuss the pleasures and difficulties of reading and writing about Milton.