Malcolm Bowie Prize

The judging panel for the 2019 prize comprised Judith Still, Judith Miller, Shirley Jordan, Pierre Saint-Amand and Michael Syrotinski (chair). There were 30 submissions this year, up from 20 last year: 16 from North America (including 1 from Toronto), 10 from UK (Oxford, Cambridge, Lincoln, Westminster, Nottingham, Durham, and Warwick), 2 from Belgium, 1 from Australia (Adelaide), and 1 from Denmark (Copenhagen). There was a wide international range of journals submitting nominations: French S(tudies, Nineteenth Century French Studies, Yale French Studies, French Historical Studies, Paragraph, Criticism, Fabula: LHT, Iranian Studies, FMLS, Contemporary French Civilisation, French Politics, Culture and Society, New Literary History, MethIS, Francosphères, L’Esprit créateur, and Lumen.

It was a very strong field, which was narrowed down to a shortlist of 6 after the first round. All judges read or re-read all 6 essays, and one clear winner emerged from the second round.

Outcome

We are very pleased to announce that the 2019 Malcolm Bowie prize is awarded to:

Annabel Kim (Harvard), for her article 'The Excremental Poetics of Daniel Pennac’s Journal d’un corps', published in French Studies, 67.3 (2019).

The quality of the shortlisted articles was so high that the panel agreed there should be two joint-runners up this year. These are:

Tracy Rutler (Penn State), 'Prosthetic Matters: On Blindness, Machines, and Knowledge in Diderot's Letter on the Blind', Criticism, 60.2 (2019).

Thibaut Radomme (Louvain-la-Neuve/Lausanne), 'Jeux de lettres, jeu du texte. L’hermétisme du "Roman de Fauvel" (Paris, BnF, français 146) au service de la satire', in Marion Uhlig et Martin Rohde (eds), Belles Lettres. Les figures de l’écrit au Moyen Âge (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag (Scrinium Friburgense, 44), 2019).

Warm congratulations to the winner and runners-up. The chair of the judging panel would also like to thank the panellists for offering their valuable time, for their perceptive comments and well-balanced judgements, and for continuing to give such care and attention to the prize competition in these difficult and challenging times.

The 2019 prize will be presented at next year's SFS conference in Belfast.

The Society invites nominations of articles published in 2020 from editors of learned journals, editors or publishers of collected volumes, and heads of university departments. Authors may not self-nominate (though they may ask editors, publishers, or university departments to consider nominating them). There is a limit of one entry per author per calendar year while eligible. Where more than one nomination for an author is received, the panel chair will ask for the author’s preference as to which entry goes forward. To be eligible for nomination, authors must be within five years of obtaining their PhD when their article is published. In addition, they must either have been registered for their PhD or worked since then in a Department of French/Modern Languages, or equivalent. Articles may be published anywhere in the world, but must be written in French or English.

Nominations should be submitted by email to Professor Michael Syrotinski (Michael.Syrotinski@glasgow.ac.uk), together with a statement which includes full publication details of the article concerned and an indication of how the candidate satisfies the two criteria for eligibility specified above. Nominations should be accompanied by a PDF file of the article as it appears in print. Nominations not accompanied by a PDF file will not be valid.

The deadline for receipt of nominations for the 2020 Prize (including the article itself) is 31 January 2021. Entries may be submitted immediately.

The articles are evaluated in two rounds. The competition is judged by a panel of 5 readers, including distinguished international scholars in French Studies. The panel for the 2019 competition comprised Judith Still (SFS President), Michael Syrotinski (SFS Vice-President), Shirley Jordan (Newcastle), Judith Miller (NYU), and Pierre-St. Amand (Yale). Each essay is read and evaluated by a panel member according to their area of expertise, avoiding any potential conflict of interest or personal association with the author. The articles scoring most highly in the first round are shortlisted, and progress to a second round, in which all judges read and score all articles. The prize is awarded to the article achieving the highest overall aggregate score from the panel of judges.