Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book Winners
2022
- Akshya Saxena, Vanderbilt University, for Vernacular English: Reading the Anglophone in Postcolonial India (Princeton Univ. Press, 2022)
- Honorable mention: Douglas S. Pfeiffer, Stony Brook University, State University of New York, for Authorial Personality and the Making of Renaissance Texts: The Force of Character (Oxford Univ. Press, 2022)
- Honorable mention: Sarah M. Quesada, Duke University, for The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2022)
2021
- La Marr Jurelle Bruce, University of Maryland, College Park, for How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity (Duke Univ. Press, 2021)
- Honorable mention: Laurence Coderre, New York University, for Newborn Socialist Things: Materiality in Maoist China (Duke Univ. Press, 2021)
2020
- Allison Bigelow, University of Virginia, for Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World (Omohundro Inst. of Early American History and Culture and Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2020)
- Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel, Duke University, for Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2020)
- Honorable mention: Hwisang Cho, Emory University, for The Power of the Brush: Epistolary Practices in Chosŏn Korea (Univ. of Washington Press, 2020)
- Honorable mention: Aliyah Khan, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, for Far from Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean (Rutgers Univ. Press, 2020)
2019
- Derrick R. Spires, Cornell University, for The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
2018
- Tim Cassedy, Southern Methodist University, for Figures of Speech: Six Histories of Language and Identity in the Age of Revolutions (Univ. of Iowa Press, 2018)
- Honorable mention: Adena Spingarn, Cortez, Colorado, for Uncle Tom: From Martyr to Traitor (Stanford Univ. Press, 2018)
- Honorable mention: Robert Stilling, Florida State University, for Beginning at the End: Decadence, Modernism, and Postcolonial Poetry (Harvard Univ. Press, 2018)
2017
- Amanda Jo Goldstein, University of California, Berkeley, for Sweet Science: Romantic Materialism and the New Logics of Life (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2017)
- Melanie Yergeau, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, for Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness (Duke Univ. Press, 2017)
- Honorable mention: Corey McEleney, Fordham University, for Futile Pleasures: Early Modern Literature and the Limits of Utility (Fordham Univ. Press, 2017)
- Honorable mention: Britt Rusert, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, for Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (New York Univ. Press, 2017)
2016
- Michael Allan, University of Oregon, for In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton Univ. Press, 2016)
- Christy Wampole, Princeton University, for Rootedness: The Ramifications of a Metaphor (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2016)
2015
- Supritha Rajan, University of Rochester, for A Tale of Two Capitalisms: Sacred Economics in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2015)
2014
- Sadia Abbas, Rutgers University, Newark, for At Freedom’s Limit: Islam and the Postcolonial Predicament (Fordham Univ. Press, 2014)
- Lital Levy, Princeton University, for Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine (Princeton Univ. Press, 2014)
- Honorable mention: Eugenie Brinkema, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for The Forms of the Affects (Duke Univ. Press, 2014)
2013
- Raúl Coronado, University of California, Berkeley, for A World Not to Come: A History of Latino Writing and Print Culture (Harvard Univ. Press, 2013)
2012
- Meredith Martin, Princeton University, for The Rise and Fall of Meter: Poetry and English National Culture, 1860–1930 (Princeton Univ. Press, 2012)
2011
- Nergis Ertürk, Penn State University, University Park, for Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkey (Oxford Univ. Press, 2011)
2010
- Vivasvan Soni, Northwestern University, for Mourning Happiness: Narrative and the Politics of Modernity (Cornell Univ. Press, 2010)
2009
- Andrew Piper, McGill University, for Dreaming in Books: The Making of the Bibliographic Imagination in the Romantic Age (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2009)
- Honorable mention: Eric Slauter, University of Chicago, for The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2009)
2008
- Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, University of Maryland, College Park, for Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (MIT Press, 2008)
2007
- Dana Luciano, Georgetown University, for Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America (NYU Press, 2007)
- Honorable Mention: Matthew P. Brown, University of Iowa, for The Pilgrim and the Bee: Reading Rituals and Book Culture in Early New England (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2007)
- Honorable Mention: Martin K. Foys, Hood College, for Virtually Anglo-Saxon: Old Media, New Media, and Early Medieval Studies in the Late Age of Print (Univ. Press of Florida, 2007)
2006
- Sean X. Goudie, Vanderbilt University, for Creole America: The West Indies and the Formation of Literature and Culture in the New Republic (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2006)
2005
- Virginia Jackson, Tufts University, for Dickinson's Misery: A Theory of Lyric Reading (Princeton Univ. Press, 2005)
- Honorable Mention: Zhen Zhang, New York University, for An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005)
2004
- Elizabeth S. Goodstein, Emory University, for Experience without Qualities: Boredom and Modernity (Stanford Univ. Press, 2004)
2003
- Paul K. Saint-Amour, Pomona College, for The Copywrights: Intellectual Property and the Literary Imagination (Cornell Univ. Press, 2003)
2002
- Paul Downes, University of Toronto, for Democracy, Revolution, and Monarchism in Early American Literature (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002)
- Priya Joshi, University of California, Berkeley, for In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel in India (Columbia Univ. Press, 2002)
2001
- Bruce W. Holsinger, University of Colorado, Boulder, for Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer (Stanford Univ. Press, 2001)
2000
- Patricia Crain, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, for The Story of A: The Alphabetization of America from The New England Primer to The Scarlet Letter (Stanford Univ. Press, 2000)
- Honorable mention: Jennifer Summit, Stanford University, for Lost Property: The Woman Writer and English Literary History, 1380–1589 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2000)
1999
- Srinivas Aravamudan, Duke University, for Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688–1804 (Duke Univ. Press, 1999)
- Honorable mention: Ian Baucom, Duke University, for Out of Place: Englishness, Empire, and the Locations of Identity (Princeton Univ. Press, 1999)
- Honorable mention: Yopie Prins, University of Michigan, for Victorian Sappho (Princeton Univ. Press, 1999)
1998
- Deidre Shauna Lynch, State University of New York, Buffalo, for The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998)
1997
- Katie Trumpener, University of Chicago, for Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire (Princeton Univ. Press, 1997)
1996
- Marc Redfield, Claremont Graduate University, for Phantom Formations: Aesthetic Ideology and the Bildungsroman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1996)
- John Rogers, Yale University, for The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics in the Age of Milton (Cornell Univ. Press, 1996)
1995
- Elaine Hadley, University of Chicago, for Melodramatic Tactics: Theatricalized Dissent in the English Marketplace, 1800–1885 (Stanford Univ. Press, 1995)
1994
- Steven Justice, University of California, Berkeley, for Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Univ. of California Press, 1994)
1993
- Eric W. Lott, University of Virginia, for Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (Oxford Univ. Press, 1993)