Malcolm Bowie Prize
In 2008 the Society for French Studies launched an annual Malcolm Bowie Prize, to be awarded for the best article published in the preceding year by an early-career researcher in the broader discipline of French Studies.
Malcolm Bowie was not only the most eminent and inspirational Anglophone scholar of French literature and theory of his generation, he was a towering figure in the field because of his tireless devotion to the scholarly community both in the UK and abroad, his service to the Society for French Studies offering but one example of this: he was President of the Society from 1994 to 1996, as well as General editor of its journal (French Studies) from 1980 to 1987. The Society felt that it was particularly appropriate to honour his memory by founding a prize for which only early-career scholars will be eligible, since he was a remarkable mentor to countless younger scholars, both in the UK and abroad.
2020 Entries
Entries for 2020 are open now. The closing date is 31 January 2021.
Please check back here for full details of the 2020 competition. The guidelines for the 2019 competition are available for reference, below.
The award includes:
- a cash prize of £1000;
- expenses-paid travel to the next annual conference of the Society for French Studies;
- mention in the French Studies Bulletin and on the Society for French Studies website.
2019 competition results
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.
Conditions and how to enter
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.
How the competition is judged
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.
Previous recipients
2019
Winner: Annabel Kim
Project | 'The Excremental Poetics of Daniel Pennac’s Journal d’un corps' |
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Institution | Harvard University |
Annabel Kim (Harvard), for her article “The Excremental Poetics of Daniel Pennac’s Journal d’un corps,” published in French Studies, Vol. LXXIII, No. 3, 2019 |
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Publication | French Studies, 73.3 (2019) |
Runner up: Tracy Rutler
Project | 'Prosthetic Matters: On Blindness, Machines, and Knowledge in Diderot's Letter on the Blind' |
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Institution | Pennsylvania State University |
Publication | Criticism, 60.2 (2019) |
Runner up: Thibaut Radomme
Project | 'Jeux de lettres, jeu du texte: l’hermétisme du "Roman de Fauvel" (Paris, BnF, français 146) au service de la satire' |
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Institution | Louvain-la-Neuve/Lausanne |
Publication | Marion Uhlig et Martin Rohde (éd.), Belles Lettres: les figures de l’écrit au Moyen Âge, Wiesbaden, Reichert Verlag (Scrinium Friburgense, 44), 2019 |
2018
Winner: Laura Hughes
Project | ‘In the library of Jacques Derrida: manuscript materiality after the archival turn’ |
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Institution | New York University |
Publication | New Literary History, 49.3 (Summer 2018), 403-424 |
Runner up: Yan Wang
Project | ‘L’écriture et le problème de l’ancienne histoire chinoise’ |
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Institution | Université Bordeaux Montaigne |
Publication | Monde français du dix-huitième siècle, 3.1 (2018), 1-20. |
2017
Winner: Eliza Zingesser
Project | Pidgin Poetics: Bird Talk in Medieval France and Occitania |
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Institution | Columbia University |
Publication | New Medieval Literatures, 17 (2017), 62-80 |
Runner up: Andrea Gadberry
Project | The Cupid and the Cogito: Cartesian Poetics |
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Institution | New York University |
Publication | Critical Inquiry, 43.3 (Spring 2017), 738-51 |
Runner up: Annabel Kim
Project | The Riddle of Racial Difference in Anne Garréta’s Sphinx |
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Institution | Harvard University |
Publication | Diacritics, 45.1 (2017), 4-22 |
2016
Winner: Tobias Warner
Project | How Mariama Bâ Became World Literature: Translation and the Legibility of Feminist Critique |
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Institution | UC Davis |
Publication | PMLA, 131: 5 (October 2016), 1239-55 |
Runner up: Dónal Hassett
Project | Pupilles de l’Empire: Debating the Provision for Child Victims of the Great War in the French Empire |
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Institution | University of Bristol |
Publication | French Historical Studies, 39: 2 (April 2016), 315-45 |
2015
Winner: Jennifer Rushworth
Project | Proust, Derrida, and the Promise of Writing |
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Publication | French Studies, 69.2 (April 2015), 205-29. |
2014
Winner: Edward Baring
Project | Ne me raconte plus d’histoires: Derrida and the Problem of the History of Philosophy |
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Institution | Harvard University, 2009 |
Publication | History and Theory, 53.2 (2014), 175-193; |
Winner: Chad B. Denton
Project | Steel of Victory, Scrap of Defeat: Mobilizing the French Home Front, 1939-40 |
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Institution | PhD (University of California, Berkeley, 2009) |
Publication | War & Society, 33.2 (2014), 98-130. |
Runner up: Katie Hornstein
Project | Suspended Collectivity: Horace Vernet’s The Crossing of the Arcole Bridge(1826)’ |
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Institution | PhD (University of Michigan, 2010) |
Publication | Art History, 37.3 (2014), 428-53; |
Runner up: Robert St. Clair
Project | Laughing Matter(s): Poetics, Politics, and Ethics of the (Utopian) Body in Rimbaud’s Effarés |
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Institution | PhD (University of Minnesota, 2011) |
Publication | Romanic Review, 104.1-2 (2013), 117-38 [article published in 2014] |
2013
Winner: Christopher Churchill
Project | ‘The Unlikely Barrèsian Inheritance of Albert Camus’ |
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Institution | Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario |
Publication | , Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada 23:2 (2012), 251-297. [Journal year 2012, number published in 2013.] |
Runner up: Jennifer Edwards
Project | ‘“Man Can be Subject to Woman”: Female Monastic Authority in Fifteenth-Century Poitiers' |
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Institution | Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
Publication | Gender & History 25:1 (2013), 86-106 |
Runner up: Michael Meere
Project | ‘La violence sur la scène classique: une question de (dé)goût’ |
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Institution | University of Virginia |
Publication | L’Invention du mauvais goût à l’âge classique (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle), ed. Carine Barbafieri and Jean-Christophe Abramovici (Éditions Peeters, 2013), 123-40 |
2012
Winner: Hannah Freed-Thall
Project | 'Prestige of a Momentary Diamond: Economies of Distinction in Proust’ |
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Institution | University of California at Berkeley |
Publication | New Literary History (2012) |
Runner up: Elizabeth Everton
Project | ‘Scenes of Perception and Revelation: Gender and Truth in Anti-Dreyfusard Caricature’ |
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Institution | UCLA |
Publication | French Historical Studies (2012) |
2011
Winner: Andrew Counter
Project | ‘One of Them: Homosexuality and Anarchism in Wilde and Zola’ |
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Institution | University of Cambridge |
Publication | Comparative Literature 63.4 (Fall 2011), 345-65. |
Runner up: Maria Muresan
Project | ‘Wittgenstein in Recent French Poetics: Henri Meschonnic and Jacques Roubaud’ |
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Publication | Paragraph 34.3 (November 2011), 423–40. |
2010
Winner: Frédérique Aït-Touati
Project | ‘Penser le ciel à l’âge classique: Fiction, hypothèse et astronomie de Kepler à Huygens' |
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Publication | Annales HSS (March–April 2010), 325–44. |
Runner up: Rowan Tomlinson
Project | ‘“Intelligible sans discipline”: enumeration, observation, and communication in Montaigne's Apologie de Raimond Sebond’, |
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Publication | in Stephen Bamforth (ed.), Nouveaux Départs: Studies in Honour of Michel Jeanneret, Nottingham French Studies, 49:3 (2010), 87–109. |
2009
Winner: Dorian Bell
Project | ‘The Jew as Model: Anti-Semitism, Aesthetics, and Epistemology in Manette Salomon’ |
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Institution | University of California at Irvine |
Publication | Modern Language Notes, 124:4 (September 2009), 825–47 |
2008
Winner: Luke Sunderland
Project | ‘Le Cycle de Renart: From the Enfances to the Jugement in a Cyclical Roman de Renart Manuscript’ |
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Institution | Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge |
Publication | French Studies, 62 (2008), 1–12 |
Runner up: Simon Kemp
Project | ‘Darrieussecq’s Mind’ |
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Institution | St John's College, Oxford |
Publication | French Studies, 62 (2008), 429–41 |
2007
Winner: Miranda Gill
Project | ‘The Myth of the Female Dandy’ |
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Institution | University of Cambridge |
Publication | French Studies 61 (2007), 167–81 |
Winner: Hugh Roberts
Project | ‘La tête de Bruscambille et les métaphores mentales au début du XVIIe siècle’ |
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Institution | University of Exeter |
Publication | Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, 107 (2007), 541–57 |
Professor Michael Syrotinski
School of Modern Languages and Cultures
Hetherington Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow
G12 8RS
Entries for 2020 are open now. The closing date is 31 January 2021.