The Charles Brockden Brown Society is proud to offer a graduate student/early career essay prize, designed to promote the work of innovative new scholars in the field of North American/transatlantic literary and cultural studies focused on the period between 1771 and 1810. We encourage thesis advisors and senior colleagues to spread the word, and eligible applicants to submit their entries.
This prize seeks to recognise and support the work of a promising early national US studies scholar at the beginning of their career. Entry is open to students who are currently enrolled on a taught or research graduate programme and untenured faculty or independent scholars who completed their MA or PhD dissertation no earlier than January 2021. We may request verification of your career status (such as a note from a thesis advisor or Head of Department) if necessary.
We welcome published and unpublished work from applicants, and both will carry equal weight in the Society’s considerations. Submitted essays should either: have appeared in a scholarly journal or an online forum between January 1st, 2021, and January 1st, 2023, and should be no more than 10,000 words excluding footnotes and bibliography; or consist of a chapter from an MA or PhD dissertation that was completed during the same period and meets the same length criteria. Submissions do not have to focus on Charles Brockden Brown or his writing but they do have to address some aspect of North American literature or circum-Atlantic culture with a primary focus in the years during which Brown lived, 1771 to 1810. We actively welcome submissions that involve interdisciplinary and transnational approaches in these areas. Applicants can refer to the programs of past Brown Society conferences at https://brockdenbrownsociety.cah.ucf.edu/past-conferences/ for an idea of the range of themes and approaches that the Society encompasses.
The winning entrant will receive $200 and free registration at the next Brown Society conference in 2025, to which they will be invited to submit a paper based on or related to their awarded research.
All entries will be anonymized before being reviewed by a panel made up from members of the Brown Society Advisory Board. Entrants can facilitate this process by taking care to remove their names and institutional affiliations from their essays.
Please email queries and submissions to the current President of the Brown Society at matthew.pethers@nottingham.ac.uk by July 1st, 2023, using the subject heading “Brown Society Essay Prize.”