Graduate Awards

Each year, the English Department honors outstanding scholarship and teaching through its Graduate Awards.


Kiara Kharpertian Award

This award was established to honor the memory of our colleague Kiara Kharpertian, who earned her doctorate in English in 2015. Open to M.A. and Ph.D. students, it encourages and supports graduate students who take intellectual and professional risks that extend the limits of their interests. Graduate students can be nominated by faculty or can submit proposals on their own to support travel, research, or any aspect of a scholarly project or endeavor.

Cash award. Deadline: December 1.

  • 2022–23 Recipient: Jocelyn Rice

Von Hendy Award for Graduate Writing

This award honors our longtime colleague Andrew Von Hendy. Designed to recognize the high quality of graduate student writing, it is given to the best paper written by a graduate student. Two prizes are awarded each year, one for an M.A. student and one for a Ph.D. student.

  • 2022-23 M.A. Recipient: Jessica Oyler, "Malignant Marginality: Medical Spaces & Genre inThe God Squad and Unsettled"
  • 2022-23 Ph.D. Recipient: Hannah Clay, "Crying/Laughing: On Institutional Child Abuse andthe Rhetorics of Laughter in Oliver Twist"

Donald White Teaching Award

This award is given in recognition of outstanding teaching by a M.A. and Ph.D. student.

  • 2022-23 M.A. Recipient: Megumi DeMond & Angela Muir
  • 2022-23 Ph.D. Recipient: Lauren Crockett-Girard & Kelly Gray
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