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A. Owen Aldridge Prize

Award Description

Comparative Literature Studies, published at the Pennsylvania State University Press, announces that it will publish an annual prize-paper written by a graduate student. The competition is named in honor of A. Owen Aldridge, founder of CLS. The purpose of this competition is to encourage and recognize excellence in scholarship among graduate students in comparative studies and to reward the highest achievement by publication. This project is sponsored by CLS in cooperation with the American Comparative Literature Association and supported by the Department of Comparative Literature at Penn State. The award carries a monetary prize, depending on the winner’s eligibility to receive such awards.

2023-2024 A. Owen Aldridge Prize Winner

  • Lara Norgaard (Harvard University), "Between Bandung and Havana: Emergent Solidarities and the Forgotten Poetry of Viva Cuba." (CITATION)
  • Honorable Mention: Tianyun Hua (UC Davis), "Body, Dream, and Poetic Justice: Migrant Labor in Late Qing Anti-Exclusion Novels Bitter Society (1905) and Golden World (1907)."
  • Honorable Mention: Varol Kahveci (Columbia University), "Homes in Crisis: Exploring Narratives of Loss and Homelessness in Leo Spitzer’s 'En Apprenant le Turc.'"

2024-2025 Aldridge Prize Committee

  • Chair: J. Daniel Elam (University of Hong Kong), Term: 2022-2025 
  • Jessica Hurley (George Mason University), Term: 2023-2026
  • Christophe Koné (Williams College), Term: 2024-2027

Submission Guidelines
1. Any graduate student who is a current member of the American Comparative Literature Association as of November 15 and who has completed all requirements for the PhD with the exception of the dissertation may submit one paper annually.
 
2. Papers may be on any comparative topic that is aligned with the mission of CLS. They should be scholarly articles—literary research, theory, or criticism—and should not, for example, be interviews, translations, or editions of texts.
 
3. Papers should be between 7,000 to 12,000 words, including endnotes and quotations, and be written in English. Any professional citational style is acceptable, though the winner will need to revise to conform to CLS style (modified Chicago).
 
4. Submissions consist of: 1) a PDF or Word version of the essay, prepared as in #5 and 2) a note on letterhead or email with institutional domain name from the program head or faculty adviser confirming that the student has completed all requirements for the PhD except dissertation as stated in #1. The membership status of all participants will be confirmed by the ACLA Secretariat before the prize committee begins its deliberations.
 
5. Papers should be prepared for anonymous evaluation. The first page of the paper itself should include the title of the submission, but not the author's name.
 
6. Digital submissions (Word or PDF files only) will only be accepted through the submission portal. Email submissions will no longer be accepted.
 
7. The winning paper will be copy-edited and subject to the same editorial recommendations as other CLS materials. The intention of CLS is to publish the winning paper within 12 months. A note will indicate that the paper is the winner of the Aldridge competition and that it has been selected by the ACLA in collaboration with CLS.

8. Papers will be evaluated anonymously by a panel of judges appointed by the ACLA.

The deadline for receipt of submissions for the 2025 Aldridge Prize was November 15, 2024. Please check back in summer 2025 for submission information for the 2026 prize!


Editor-in-Chief
Comparative Literature Studies
427 Burrowes Building
University Park, PA 16802
cl-studies@psu.edu / https://cl-studies.la.psu.edu/

Previous Aldridge Winners

  • Peter Makhlouf (Princeton University), The Destruction of the Voice. (CITATION) (2023)
  • Laurel Sturgis O'Coyne (University of Oregon), "Toward Weaving/Reading Hemispheric Land and Literature." (CITATION) (2022)
  • Lital Abazon (Yale University), 'A Nonpeaceful Coexistence': The Plight of 1960s Bilingual Literary Journals in Morocco and Israel. (CITATION) (2021)
  • Arif Camoglu (Northwestern University), "Loving Sovereignty: Political Mysticism, Seyh Galib and Giorgio Agamben." (CITATION) (2020)
  • Hannah Scott Deuchar (New York University) for her essay enttitled "Loan-Words:  Economy, Equivalence and Debt in the Arabic Translation Debates" (CITATION) (2019)
  • Honorable Mention: Maria Dikcis (Northwestern University) for her essay enttitled "Gertrude Stein Learns to Code:  Brian Kim Stefan's Kluge:  A Meditation and the Corruptibility of Modernist Time" (CITATION) (2019)
  • Francesca Bellei (Harvard University) for her essay enttitled "Bilingua Translations:  Plautus, Lorenzo da Ponte, and Guillermo Cabrera Infante" (2018) (CITATION)
  • Roni Henig (Columbia University), for her essay entitled "Stammering Hebrew - Y.H. Brenner's Deferred Beginnings." (2017) (CITATION)
  • Laura Finch (University of Pennsylvania), for her essay "Globalizing Finance: Nostalgia, Desire, and the Market in Contemporary Shanghai" (2016) (CITATION)
  • Henry Bowles (Harvard University), for his essay, "Psychological Realism in Early Prose Narrative: Dreams in The 1001 Nights and the Greek Novel" (2015) (CITATION)
  • James Wallen (University of California, Santa Cruz), for his essay, ""Our Natural and Original Illness”: Tracking the Human/Animal Distinction in Montaigne and Nietzsche" (2014) (CITATION)
  • Lauren DuGraf (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), for her essay, "’Droits d¹auteur’: The Faulknerian Author-Function in Godard’s Film Socialisme" (2013) (CITATION)
  • Grace Lavery (University of Pennsylvania), for her essay, "Counterarchiving Ruskin" (2012) (CITATION)
  • Michelle Jansen (SUNY ­ Binghamton), for her essay, "Exchange and the Eidolon: Analyzing Forgiveness in Euripides’s Helen" (2011) (CITATION)
  • Belén Bistué (University of California at Davis), for her essay, "The Task(s) of the Translators: Multiplicity as Problem in Renaissance European Thought" (2010). (CITATION)
  • John Patrick Leary (New York University), for his essay, "Havana Reads the Harlem Renaissance: Mistranslation and the Dialectics of Transnational American Literature" (2009). (CITATION)
  • Ning Ma (Princeton University), for her essay, "When Robinson Crusoe Meets Ximen Qing: Material Egoism in the First Chinese and English Novels" (2008). (CITATION)
  • Tobias Boes (Yale University), for "Apprenticeship of the Novel: The Bildungsroman and the Invention of History, ca. 1770-1820" (2007). (CITATION)
  • Michael Allan (University of California - Berkeley), for "Reading With One Eye, Speaking With One Tongue – On the Problem of Address in World Literature" (2006). (CITATION)
  • Katherine Mannheimer (Yale University), for "To the Letter: The Material Text as Space of Adjudication in Pope's First Satire of the Second Book of Horace" (2005). (CITATION)
  • Mariano Siskind (New York University), for "Captain Cook and the Discovery of Antarctica’s Modern Specificity: Towards a Critique of Globalization" (2004). (CITATION)
  • James Ramey (University of California - Berkeley), for "Parasitism and Pale Fire's Camouflage: The King-Bot, the Crown Jewels and the Man in the Brown Mackintosh" (2003).
  • Andrea Bachner (Harvard University), for "Anagrams in Psychoanalysis: Retroping Concepts by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Jean-Francois Lyotard" (2002).
  • Kate Elkins (University of California - Berkeley), for "Stalled Flight: Baudelaire's Rewriting of Horace's Memorial Swan" (2001).
  • Daniel Simon (University of Oklahoma), for "Translating Ruskin: Marcel Proust's Orient of Devotion" (2000).
  • Robert Herbert Doran (Stanford University), for "Nietzsche: Utility, Aesthetics and History" (1999).
  • Théresè Migraine-George (University of Colorado - Boulder), for "Specular Desires: Orpheus and Pygmalion as Aesthetic Paradigms in Petrarch's Rime sparse" (1998).
  • Mary Frances Fahey (University of California - Davis), for "Allegorical Dismemberment and Rescue in Book III of The Faerie Queene" (1997).
  • Nicholas Rennie (Yale University), for "Benjamin and Zola: Narrative, the Individual, and Crowds in an Age of Mass Production" (1996).  
  • David Porter (Stanford University), for "Writing China: Legitimacy and Representation 1606-1773" (1995).
  • Bradley Butterfield (University of Oregon), for "Enlightenment’s Other in Patrick Süskind’s Das Parfüm: Adorno and the Ineffable Utopia of Modern Art" (1994).
  • Liang Shi (University of Massachusetts), for "The Leopardskin of Dao and the Icon of Truth: Natural Birth Versus Mimesis in Chinese and Western Literary Theories" (1993).
  • Hongchu Fu (UCLA), for "Deconstruction and Taoism: Comparisons Reconsidered" (1991) .
  • Lynne S. Vieth, (University of Illinois - Chicago), for "Socrates as Untragic Hero: Satyric Pedagogy in Modern European Narrative" (1990).
  • Aris Fioretos (Yale University), for "Nothing: Reading Paul Celan’s ‘Engführung’" (1989).
  • Edward S. Brinkley (Cornell University), for "Proustian Time and Modern Drama: Beckett, Brecht, and Fugard" (1988).