Honors and Awards 2018

Honors Day awards recognize the excellent work of our undergraduate and graduate students within the department, as well as the superb teaching by our faculty and teaching assistants. Our annual event also serves as the departmental graduation ceremony, where we recognize our majors in the more intimate setting of the Fine Arts Theatre. This year our speakers included a graduating senior, Emma Murphy, and Janet Geddis, who delivered the Keynote Address. Ms. Geddis is the founder and owner of Athens’ Avid Bookshop, which was named a top-five finalist in the Bookstore of the Year competition sponsored by Publishers Weekly in 2017. She holds a BA in English from NYU and a n M.Ed. in Educational Psychology from UGA.

Faculty Recognition

Bedingfield Excellence in Teaching Award

Eric Morales-Franceschini

First Year Composition Awards

Donald E. Barnett Awards 

ENGL 1101: Jack Froistad, “How Technology Changed the NBA,” nominated by Al Dixon

ENGL 1102: Alex Hines, “Does John Donne Dream of Electric Sheep,” nominated by Andrew Nance

Michael G. Moran e-Portfolio Awards

ENGL 1101: Lacey Walker, nominated by Christa Rampley

ENGL 1102: Amelia Johnson, nominated by Al Dixon

Honorable Mention: Kendal Bushner, nominated by Nathan Camp

Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards

Renee Buesking, Jaydn DeWald, Holly Fling, Holly Gallagher, Kristen Gleason, Ward Risvold, and Elizabeth Swails

Undergraduate Program Awards

Joshua Brown Scholarship

Megan Powell

Honorable Mention: Kelsey McQueen

Virginia Rucker Walter Scholarship

Kate Huller

Honorable Mention: Brittany Hayes 

Upper Division Essay and Project Awards

Digital Humanities Scholarship

Julia Koslowsky, “Pride and Prejudice and the Contemporary Era: Translating Nineteenth-Century Literature into Tweets and Vlogs” 

For Essays Focused on Primary Sources

Brianna Phillips, “‘I have nothing to tell’: Speech and Social Spaces in Sense and Sensibility”

Honorable Mention: Amy Pan, “Narrative Voices in Allah is Not Obliged and May Son’s Story”

For Essays Using Secondary Sources

Marianna Hagler, “‘gorgeous reticence’: Abstraction and Ambivalence in Mina Loy’s ‘Brancusi’s Golden Bird’”

Alexandre Tchaykov, “The Performance of Lyric in Whitman and Dickinson”

H. Grady Hutcherson Memorial Scholarship

2017 Awardees: Rachael Dier, Alexandra Ibarra, and Michael Lockwood

2018 Awardees: Alexandra Ibarra, Julia Koslowsky, Sally Smith, and Lukas Woodyard

R. Baxter Miller Undergraduate Award

Lukas Woodyard

Creative Writing Program Awards

Judged by Ida Stewart, author of Gloss and winner of the 2011 Perugia Press Prize. Ida Stewart holds an MFA in creative writing from Ohio State University and a PhD from the University of Georgia.

Virginia Rucker Walter Poetry Award 

Jeanne Davis, “What is What”

Diann Blakely Poetry Award

Shamala Gallagher, “In a Cathedral of Only Dark”

Graduate Student Program Awards

Alice C. Langdale Awards (for exceptional English graduate students)

Kacie Hittel, nominated by Nicholas Allen

Henna Messina, nominated by Christy Desmet

Robby Nadler, nominated by Christy Desmet

Elizabeth Swails, nominated by Cody Marrs

Robert H. West Award

Outstanding graduate student in Creative Writing

Kristen Gleason, nominated by the Creative Writing Faculty

Outstanding graduate student in Literary Criticism

Sidonia Serafini, nominated by Barbara McCaskill

Robert E. Park Essay Award

Philip Gilreath, “‘The art itself is Nature’: Dissolution of the Human Form in Shakespeare’s Green Worlds,” nominated by Sujata Iyengar

James B. Colvert English Graduate Awards (supports advanced graduate student research)

Jacob Syersak and Bridget Dooley

R. Baxter Miller Graduate Award

Sidonia Serafini

English Department Travel Award

Alyssa Leavell

Graduating Doctoral and Masters Students

Henna Messina, PhD

Major Professor: Beth Tobin

Dissertation: “Dislocated Women: Disinheritance, Mobility, and Domestic Subjectivity in British Fiction (1753-1855)”

Robby Nadler, PhD

Major Professor: Reginald McKnight

Dissertation: “The Gastroliths of Sapèlo”

Ward Risvold, PhD

Major Professor, Sujata Iyengar

Dissertation: “Printing Identities: Studies in Social Bibliography and Social Networks in Early Modern England’s Print Culture”