Our graduate students excel as scholars, writers, and teachers. This page trumpets the awards they have won at many levels: the English Department, the College, the university, and beyond. While not an exhaustive list, it documents most recent award-winners in Research, Creative Writing, and Teaching.
Our thanks go out to the donors who have made these awards possible. For opportunities to give, please click here.
Research and Scholarship Awards
Lewis P. Simpson Distinguished Dissertation Award
(For half a century a leading voice in American letters, Professor Lewis P. Simpson edited The Southern Review for decades. This award is granted annually in his memory; it goes to the best dissertation in English defended during the previous calendar year.)
Kristi Melancon for “An African American Discourse Community in Black & White: The New Orleans Tribune," 2012
Dan Mangiavellano for "Invisible Links, Abject Chains: Habit in Nineteenth-Century British Literature," 2011
Alison Graham-Bertolini for “Home of the Brave: Vigilante Women in Contemporary American Fiction,” 2010
Sean Flory for “How to Remember Thee?: Problems of Memorization in English Writing, 1558-1625,” 2009
Lisa Costello for “Who Speaks and Who Listens? Genre, Gender, and Memory in Holocaust Discourses,” 2008
Tameka Cage for “Painful Discourses: Borders, Regions, and Representations of Female Circumcision from Africa to America,” 2007
Dallas Hulsey for “The Iconography of Nationalism: Icons, Popular Culture, and American Nationalism,” 2006
Judith Kemerait for “Routes of Freedom: Slave Resistance and the Politics of Literary Geography,” 2005
Bradley Bankston for “Against Biopoetics: On the Use and Misuse of the Concept of Evolution in Contemporary Literary Theory,” 2004
Camille Martin, for Radical Dialectics in the Experimental Poetry of Berssenbrugge, Hejinian, Harryman, Weiner, and Scalapino, 2003
Christopher Rieger, Clear-Cutting Eden: Representations of Nature in Southern Fiction, 1930-1950, 2002
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James Olney Distinguished Dissertation Award
(Awarded annually to the best dissertation by an English PhD who graduated during the previous calendar year, to honor our emeritus English Professor James Olney. A renowned autobiography theorist and scholar, Professor Olney brilliantly edited The Southern Review for many years. The winner of this award is our departmental nominee for the university-wide Josephine Roberts Award.)
James Long for Revolutionary Republics: U.S. National Narratives and the Independence of Latin America, 1810-1846, 2012
Jessica Ketcham Webber for Ephemeral Media, Persistent Action: Public Pedagogies of Collective Resistance, 2011
Lisa Moody for Religion and Realism in Late Nineteenth-Century American Literature, 2010. This dissertation also received the College-level nomination for the Josephine Roberts Award.
Josephine A Roberts Alumni Association Distinguished Dissertation Award in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
(Awarded annually to the best dissertation at LSU in non-science fields. We are proud that so many of our students have won this university-wide award. It commemorates our colleague Professor Josephine Roberts, who revolutionized the study of early modern women writers, particularly Lady Mary Wroth.)
James Weldon Long for Revolutionary Republics: U.S. National Narratives and the Independence of Latin America, 1810-1846, 2012
Lisa Costello for Who Speaks and Who Listens? Genre, Gender, and Memory in Holocaust Discourses, 2007
Anthony J. Bolden, All blues: A study of African-American Resistance Poetry, 1998
Sigrid Marika King, "Vertue vanish'd": Censorship of Early English Women Dramatists, 1994
Mary A. Villeponteaux, "Her excellence to Marre": The Problem of Feminine Authority in Spenser's “Faerie Queene,” 1990
Constance A. Douglas, Rebirth through Narrative: John Bunyan’s Autobiographies (“Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners”), 1987
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Gale Carrithers Outstanding Essay Awards
(Awarded each year for the best essay or essays written by a graduate student in English to honor the memory of Professor Gale Carrithers, our former chair and esteemed Renaissance scholar who mentored graduate students with great care.)
Corrie Kiesel for “Victorian Charivari and Hardy's 'Proud Piece of Silk and Wax-Work,'” 2012
Mitch Frye for "Westward Expansion, Economic Contraction: The Semi-Cowboy Politics of Fitzgerald's Last Tycoon," 2011
Jennifer Ellis West for “Technology Knows Best: The Cultural Work of Hospital Birth in 21st Century Film,” 2010
Daniel R. Mangiavellano for “The Source of First Principles: Habit, Education, and Moulding the Imagination,” 2009
Lisa Moody for “The American ‘Lives’ of Jesus: The Malleable Figure of Christ as a Man of the People,” 2008
Lisa Moody for “Mediating Social Consciousness: George Eliot’s Approach to Religion and Realism,” 2007
Ilana Xinos for “Narrating Captivity and Identity: Christophorus Castani’s Greek Exile and the Genesis of the Greek-American,” Gale Carrithers Most Outstanding Essay Award, 2006
Lisa Costello for "History and Memory in a Dialogic of ‘Performative Memorialization’ in Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale," Gale Carrithers Outstanding Essay Award, 2006
Terri Ruckel for " "'To Speak of My Own Situation': Touring the Mother Periphery in Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother",” Gale Carrithers Most Outstanding Essay Award, 2005
Sean Flory, “Politics, Prophecy, and the Poet: The Poet as Politician in The Faerie Queene,” Gale Carrithers Outstanding Essay Award, 2005
Andy Hoefer, "Tearing Down the Temple: Resistance and the Rhetoric of the Apocalypse in Wright's Uncle Tom's Children," Gale Carrithers Outstanding Essay Award, 2005
Terri Ruckel for "Ut Pictura Poesis, Ut Poesis Pictura The Painterly Texture of Tennessee Williams’s In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel,” Gale Carrithers Most Outstanding Essay Award, 2004
Sean Flory, “Putting on a Pious Show: Henry V, Sacral Kingship, and Elizabeth’s Religious Rhetoric,” Gale Carrithers Outstanding Essay Award, 2004
Ilana Xinos for “Narrating Captivity and Identity: Christophorus Castani’s Greek Exile and the Genesis of the Greek-American,” Gale Carrithers Outstanding Essay Award, 2004
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Dickens Project at LSU Essay Award
(Awarded annually in an essay competition to determine who will attend the Dickens Universe)
Jordan Stone for “Creating America from a 'Favorable Position': the Autoethnography of William Dean Howells” and to Emily Kobayashi for “Detective or Defective Fiction: A Matter of Breathing or Dying in Bleak House,” 2012
Laura Helen Marks for "Re-Sexualizing Scrooge: Gender, Spectatorship, and the Subversion of Genre in Shaun Costello's The Passions of Carol," 2011
Ali Rezaie for "Translation without Original in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner," 2011
Laura Faulk for “‘Was it Death or Life that Moved Us?’: Death and Maternity in Aurora Leigh,” 2010
Jerrod Hollyfield for “Imperial Matrimony: Domestic Epics in the Victorian Novel,” 2010
Doris Raab for “Warring Ideologies: Tennyson’s Princess and Gilbert’s Burlesque,” 2010
James Long for “Exploring Atlantic Contact: Transnational Currents in Nineteenth Century American Literature,” 2009
Laura Kiegan for “A Knights Tale: Feminine Heroism and Female Monstrosity in Anna Jameson’s Shakespeare’s Heroines,” 2009
Lisa Moody for “Mediating Social Consciousness: George Eliot’s Approach to Religion and Realism,” 2008
Corrie Kiesel for “’Don’t be a Naughty Blue Beard’: Dangerous Romances in David Copperfield,” 2008
Dan Mangiavellano, “Diagnosing the Uncontrollable Body in Joanna Baillie and Dr. John Hunter,” 2007
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Graduate School Dissertation-Year Fellowship
(University-wide competitive fellowship: we are very proud of our record of winning this award.)
Laura Jones and Laura Marks, 2012-2013
Mitch Frye, 2011-2012
James Long, 2010-2011
Jessica Ketcham Weber, 2009-2010
Joseph Brown and Alison Graham Bertolini, 2008-2009
Denise Millstein, 2006-2007
American Association of University Women (AAUW) Doctoral Scholarship
Cara Jones, 2012
Jessica Ketcham Weber, 2008
Tom W. Dutton Scholarship Award
Jessica Ketcham Weber, 2007
Harvey Jay and Betty Adele Jacobs Schwartzberg Fellowship
Anna Wilson, 2012
Emily Nemens, 2011
Creative Writing Awards
(Please see the Creative Writing Awards page for descriptions of each award)
Robert Penn Warren MFA Thesis Award
(Our most coveted Creative Writing Award, this recognizes the best MFA thesis in memory of our former LSU colleague, the author and literary theorist Professor Robert Penn Warren, co-founder and editor of The Southern Review.)
Afton Wilky and Alison Grifa, 2012
William Burke and Lauren Tussing-White, 2011
Jennifer Tamayo and Tyler Smith, 2010
Kristin Sanders and Jennifer Nunes, 2009
Shane Noecker for “The Manes,” 2008
Bobbi Parry and Frank W. Hardie, 2007
Kent Gramm MFA Award for Nonfiction
Emily Nemens for “The Unfinished Grid: A Personal History of Art in New York,” 2012
James Claffey for "Scenes from a Receding Irish Life," 2011
David Newman for “Flight Plan,” 2010
Shelby Goddard for “The Great State of Jefferson,” 2009
Shane Noecker for “Rainbow Lane,” 2008
Craig Brandhorst for “Noble Rot,” 2007
David Madden MFA Award for Fiction
Lee Tyler Williams for “Leechdom: A Daybrook of the Colony,” 2012
John David Harding for "Improvising," 2011
John David Harding for “Giving Sister Away,” 2010
Shelby Goddard for “Minor Tragedies,” 2009
Jane Stubbs for “Poker Night,” 2008
Bret Anthony Johnston, for “Hot Box,” 2007
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William Jay Smith MFA Award for Poetry
Aeron Kopriva for “E Muet,” 2012
Benjamin Pelhan for "Afternoons," 2011
Jennifer Tamayo for “Permanent Resident Card,” 2010
Kristin Sanders for “This Poem is not Sad, nor is it Lonely,” 2009
Penelope Dane for “Lesbian Potential,” 2008
Claire Dixon for “10th Grade Math Lessons at Myrtle Scott’s House,” 2007
Ruth Elizabeth McClain Cassidy MFA Award for Screenwriting
Rachel Van Sickle for Making a Miracle, 2012
Rachel Van Sickle for As Good As Dead, 2011
Taylor Smith for Kudzu Boy—Episode 101 (Pilot), 2010
Jane Stubbs for The Somnambulist, 2009
Stephanie Nash for Morte D’Arthur: Dragon’s Crown, 2008
Frank W. Hardie for Against the Spread, 2007
Romulus Linney MFA Award for Playwriting
Jenny Lentz Brosseau for “A House Divided,” 2012
Adam Atkinson for "Big Forest," 2011
Susan Kirby-Smith for “Game On,” 2010
Susan Kirby-Smith for “Household,” 2009
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Teaching Awards
Department of English Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award
Kevin Casper and Kris Mecholsky, 2012
Laura Helen Marks, 2011
Corrie Kiesel, 2010
Jennifer West, 2009
Alison Graham-Bertolini, 2008
Jessica Ketcham Weber, 2007
Lisa Costello, 2006
Erica Locklear, 2005
Terri Ruckel, 2004
Margaret Clark, 2003
Nat Hardy, 2002
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College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award
Corrie Kiesel, 2010
Jennifer West, 2009
Alison Graham-Bertolini, 2008
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LSU Alumni Association Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award
Kevin Casper, 2012
Kristi Melancon, 2010
Casey Kayser, 2009
Jennifer West, 2008
Sarah Liggett Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award
(Awarded annually by the English Graduate Student Association, this prize honors Professor Sarah Liggett, Director of Communication across the Curriculum and formerly Director of University Writing.)
Amanda Wicks, 2012
Erin Breaux, 2011
Laura Marks, 2010
Jennifer West, 2009
Dan Mangiavellano, 2008
Sean Flory, 2007