R. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize
A prize will be awarded by the Society for French Studies for an essay in English or French, up to 6,000 words in length, on any subject within the scope of French studies. The award will be for outstanding academic merit at postgraduate level, and the judges will be a subcommittee of the Trustees of the Society for French Studies.
The award includes: a cash prize of £750; 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 (www.sfs.ac.uk).
2024 Entries
Entries for 2024 are now closed.
Conditions of entry
To be eligible for submission the essay must be:
- Entirely the student’s own work and submitted in unrevised form;
- Written in the current academic year by a postgraduate student currently registered (or within six months of registration having terminated) at a university based in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland;
- Addressing a topic within the scope of the discipline of French studies;
- Written in either English or French, with any quotations from French supplied in the original language;
- Up to 6,000 words in length (including notes but excluding bibliography);
- Word-processed with numbered pages;
- Submitted without the name of the student, or institution, appearing in the essay;
- Submitted by the university, with the student’s agreement, as one of up to three annual submissions per university;
- Accompanied by a separate coversheet;
- Submitted on the understanding that no correspondence will be entered into by the Society regarding individual essays.
If a draft thesis chapter is entered, candidates are reminded to ensure that it can be read as a stand-alone essay. Entries must be accompanied by the coversheet available via the button below, and must adhere strictly to the presentation guidelines given on that sheet.
Please note that there is a limit of three entries per department and one per person. This limit applies to both collegiate and non-collegiate universities.
These criteria (and the cover-sheet linked below) were updated on Friday 1st November to correct a discrepancy regarding the maximum permitted length of time between registration elapsing and a student submitting an essay, and to clarify that this prize is open only to students who are (or were) based at a university in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland.
How to enter
A copy of each entry should be emailed, with a completed coversheet, by 30 November 2024, to Professor Richard Scholar (richard.scholar@durham.ac.uk).
How the competition is judged
The competition is judged in two rounds. In the first round every essay is judged anonymously by two appropriately selected members of the Executive Committee of the Society for French Studies who are unaware of the submitting university but who are made aware of relevant contextual information supplied on the coversheet.
The five best essays from that first round then undergo a second round of judging by a panel normally comprising the Society’s President, the Co-ordinator of the R. Gapper Undergraduate Essay Prize, the Co-ordinator of the R. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize, the Editor of the French Studies Bulletin, and a member of the editorial team of French Studies.
To avoid conflicts of interest, in both rounds no essay is judged by someone from the same institution as the author of the essay. In the second round, this sometimes requires that one or more substitute judges be selected from the wider Executive Committee to assess all of the five essays.
The prize is awarded for an essay of outstanding merit at postgraduate level and which is also the best essay submitted in its year. The winning essay will be exceptionally distinguished work for that level: critically or theoretically sophisticated, intellectually adventurous, original in its approach and expressed in sophisticated and elegant English or French. It will also be worthy of publication without major revision.
Previous recipients
2023
The Society for French Studies is very pleased to announce that the winners of this year’s R. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize.
The Society offers its congratulations to both scholars on their achievement. The Society for French Studies gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the R. Gapper Charitable Trust for this prize.
Winner: Hannah Scheitauer
Project | 'Cycles of Violence and Fictions of the ‘Grey Zone’ in Jérôme Ferrari’s Où j’ai laissé mon âme (2010)' |
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Runner up: Margaux Emmanuel
Project | ‘Qu’est-ce que peut un corps?’ : Body, Language, and the Problem of Immanence in the Philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari’ |
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2022
The Society for French Studies is very pleased to announce that the winner of this year’s R. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize is Benoît Loiseau, a doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh.
The Society offers its congratulations to Benoît on his achievement, and also to the runner-up for this year’s award.
The R. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize consists of an award of £750 together with expenses-paid participation in the Annual Conference of the Society, to be held this year at the University of Newcastle from 26th-28th June 2023.
The Society for French Studies gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the R. Gapper Charitable Trust for this prize.
Winner: Benoît Loiseau
Project | ‘Ce livre n’est pas une autofiction’: Paul B. Preciado’s Queer Critique of Psychoanalysis’. |
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Institution | University of Edinburgh |
Runner up: Neil Malloy
Project | '« Seuls demeurent » : poétique de l’impersonnel chez Duras et Blanchot’ |
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Institution | University of Warwick |
2020
Winner: Anton Joseph Bruder
Project | ‘Topoi of the Philological Imagination from the Renaissance to the Revolution: Claude Fauchet (1530-1602) and Charles de Pougens (1755-1833)’ |
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Institution | University of Cambridge |
Runner up: Callista McLaughlin
Project | ‘Rhyme and form impact upon meaning even in the most straightforward of troubadour lyrics; in more complex compositions meaning may dissolve under the proliferation of possibilities’ |
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Institution | King's College London |
2021
We are delighted to announce that the winner of this year's R. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize is Eleanor Lischka of Oxford University for her essay ' "Ma vision harmonieuse et transparente": sound and the power of language in Proust’s argument against obscurity'. Warmest congratulations to Eleanor!
Winner: Eleanor Lischka
Project | "Ma vision harmonieuse et transparente": sound and the power of language in Proust’s argument against obscurity. |
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2019
Winner: Helen Craske
Project | 'Periodicals as Proxénètes: Erotic Complicity in Don Juan (1895-1900)’ |
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Institution | Merton College, University of Oxford |
2018
Winner: Madeleine Chalmers
Project | ‘The Surreal Technics of André Breton and Gilbert Simondon' |
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Institution | University of Oxford |
Runner up: Rebecca Sugden
Project | 'Sand and Rancière: Artisan Socialism and the Inadequacies of Idealism’ |
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Institution | University of Cambridge |
2017
Winner: Charlotte Thevenet
Project | Réponse du 'Juif' à l'antisémite: Derrida, commentateur de Hegel et Genet' |
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Institution | University College London |
Runner up: Liam Lewis
Project | Sight, Sound, and the 'Cri' of the Mandrake in the Bestiary by Philippe de Thaon |
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Institution | University of Warwick |
Runner up: Rebecca Sugden
Project | Malicious Fictions and Secret Histories in Balzac's Une ténébreuse affaire |
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Institution | University of Cambridge |
2016
Winner: Daisy Gudmunsen
Project | ‘On the Representation of Jewishness in Denis Guénoun’s Un Sémite and Jacques Derrida’s Le Monolinguisme de l’autre’ |
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Institution | King’s College London |
Runner up: Vittoria Fallanca
Project | ‘The Design of the Essais: Montaigne and the language of "dessein"' |
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Institution | University of Oxford |
2015
Winner: Blake Gutt
Project | ‘An Infestation of Signification: Narrative and Visual Parasitism on the Manuscript Page’ |
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Institution | King’s College, Cambridge |
2014
Winner: Matthew Siôn Lampitt
Project | ‘On the Use of, and Responses to, Troubadour Lyric in the work of Julia Kristeva’ |
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Institution | King’s College London |
Runner up: Gillian Ní Cheallaigh
Project | ‘Bad Mothers, Mad Sisters and Queer Maternity in the work of Linda Lê’ |
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Institution | King’s College London |
Runner up: Alexandra Tranca
Project | ‘From Pompeii to Paris: Ghostly Cityscapes and the Ruins of Modernity in Théophile Gautier and Eugène Atget’ |
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Institution | University of Cambridge |
2013
Winner: Sarah Hickmott
Project | ‘(En) Corps Sonore’ |
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Institution | University of Oxford |
Runner up: Edmund Birch
Project | ‘Maupassant’s Bel-Ami and the Secrets of Actualité’ |
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Institution | University of Cambridge |
Runner up: Emma Claussen
Project | ‘“Pour cognoistre les Politiques”: A Study of the Term “Politique” in the Dialogue d’entre le Maheustre et le Manant and the Satyre Ménippée’ |
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Institution | University of Oxford |
2012
Winner: Albertine Fox
Project | ‘Constructing Voices in Jean-Luc Godard’s Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1979)' |
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Institution | Royal Holloway |
Runner up: Emma Claussen
Project | ‘Examine Critically Bakhtin’s Idea of Carnival Laughter, and Analyse its Deployment in the Work of Rabelais’ |
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Institution | King’s College London |
Runner up: Jessica Stoll
Project | ‘Imagining Translation Through the Plastic Arts in the Prose Troy Tradition’ |
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Institution | King’s College London |
2011
Winner: Orlene Denice McMahon
Project | ‘Musicalising Moving Photographs: An Analysis of Pierre Barbaud’s Film Score for Agnès Varda’s La Pointe Courte’ |
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Institution | University of Cambridge |
Runner up: Eliana Maestri
Project | ‘Orality, Performativity and the Body in Jamaica Kincaid’s Autobiographie de ma mère’ |
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Institution | University of Bath |
Runner up: Samuel Ferguson
Project | ‘Gide’s Paludes: A Diary Novel?’ |
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Institution | University of Oxford |
2010
Winner: Claire White
Project | ‘Dominical Diversions: Jules Laforgue on Sundays' |
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Institution | University of Cambridge |
Runner up: Natalie Orr
Project | ‘The Clerk and the Courtier: Two Different Responses to the Tristan Problem in Chrétien de Troyes’s Cligès and Lancelot' |
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Institution | University of Reading |
Runner up: Jessica Stoll
Project | ‘Discuss the usefulness of the notion of hybridity for analysis of two Occitan texts.’ |
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Institution | King's College London |
2009
Winner: Tanya Raie Filer
Project | ‘Skinner in Tandem: Against Methodological “Servitude Volontaire”' |
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Institution | University of Oxford |
Runner up: Cécile Bishop
Project | ‘The Emperor’s Old Clothes: A Reading of Henri Lopes’s Le Pleurer-Rire.’ |
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Institution | King's College London |
2008
Winner: Kathrin Yacavone
Project | ‘Reading through Photography: Roland Barthes’s “Proust et la photographie”' |
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Institution | University of Edinburgh |
Runner up: Clemence O’Connor
Project | ‘Translating Pure Visuality: Heather Dohollau’s Poems on Non-Figuration.’ |
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Institution | University of St Andrews |