Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies Winners
2022
- Noémie Ndiaye, University of Chicago, for Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
- Honorable mention: Mackenzie Cooley, Hamilton College, for The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2022)
- Honorable mention: Edward Tyerman, University of California, Berkeley, for Internationalist Aesthetics: China and Early Soviet Culture (Columbia Univ. Press, 2022)
2021
- Karla Mallette, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, for Lives of the Great Languages: Arabic and Latin in the Medieval Mediterranean (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2021)
- Honorable mention: Nathan Brown, Concordia University, for Rationalist Empiricism: A Theory of Speculative Critique (Fordham Univ. Press, 2021)
- Honorable mention: Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb, Dartmouth College, for Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror, 1817–2020 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2021)
2020
- Ralph R. Bauer, University of Maryland, College Park, for The Alchemy of Conquest: Science, Religion, and the Secrets of the New World (Univ. of Virginia Press, 2019)
- Honorable mention: Monica Popescu, McGill University, for At Penpoint: African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, and the Cold War (Duke Univ. Press, 2020)
Please note that books published in 2020 were eligible for this year’s award, as were books published in 2019 but submitted in 2020 while the MLA offices were closed because of the pandemic.
2019
- Hoda El Shakry, University of Chicago, for The Literary Qur’an: Narrative Ethics in the Maghreb (Fordham Univ. Press, 2019)
- Honorable mention: Melissa E. Sanchez, University of Pennsylvania, for Queer Faith: Reading Promiscuity and Race in the Secular Love Tradition (New York Univ. Press, 2019)
2018
- Seeta Chaganti, University of California, Davis, for Strange Footing: Poetic Form and Dance in the Late Middle Ages (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2018)
2017
- Siraj Ahmed, Graduate Center and Lehman College, City University of New York, for Archaeology of Babel: The Colonial Foundation of the Humanities (Stanford Univ. Press, 2017)
2016
- Haun Saussy, University of Chicago, for The Ethnography of Rhythm: Orality and Its Technologies (Fordham Univ. Press, 2016)
2015
- Steven S. Lee, University of California, Berkeley, for The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution (Columbia Univ. Press, 2015)
- Ayesha Ramachandran, Yale University, for The Worldmakers: Global Imagining in Early Modern Europe (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2015)
2014
- Silke-Maria Weineck, University of Michigan, for The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West (Bloomsbury, 2014)
2013
- Carmen Nocentelli, University of New Mexico, for Empires of Love: Europe, Asia, and the Making of Early Modern Identity (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)
2012
- David Spurr, Université de Genève, for Architecture and Modern Literature (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2012)
2011
- Frédérique Aït-Touati, University of Oxford, Saint John’s College, for Fictions of the Cosmos: Science and Literature in the Seventeenth Century (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2011)
2010
- Donna V. Jones, University of California, Berkeley, for The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Négritude, Vitalism, and Modernity (Columbia Univ. Press, 2010)
2009
- Alexa Huang, Pennsylvania State University, for Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange (Columbia Univ. Press, 2009)
2008
- Sahar Amer, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, for Crossing Borders: Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)
2007
- Daniel Heller-Roazen, Princeton University, for The Inner Touch: Archaeology of a Sensation (Zone Books, 2007)
- Honorable mention: Richard Helgerson, University of California, Santa Barbara, for A Sonnet from Carthage: Garcilaso de la Vega and the New Poetry of Sixteenth-Century Europe (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2007)
2006
- Toril Moi, Duke University, for Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy (Oxford Univ. Press, 2006)
2005
- Evelyne Ender, Hunter College, for Architexts of Memory: Literature, Science, and Autobiography (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2005)
2004
- Loren Kruger, University of Chicago, for Post-imperial Brecht: Politics and Performance, East and South (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004)
- Honorable mention: Neil Kenny, University of Cambridge, for The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and Germany (Oxford Univ. Press, 2004)
2003
- Alessia Ricciardi, Northwestern University, for The Ends of Mourning: Psychoanalysis, Literature, Film (Stanford Univ. Press, 2003)
- Honorable mention: Barbara Johnson, Harvard University, for Mother Tongues: Sexuality, Trials, Motherhood, Translation (Harvard Univ. Press, 2003)
- Honorable mention: Susanne Kord, University College of London, for Women Peasant Poets in Eighteenth-Century England, Scotland, and Germany: Milkmaids on Parnassus (Camden House, 2003)
2002
- Ian Balfour, York University, for The Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy (Stanford Univ. Press, 2002)
- Honorable mention: Charles Bernheimer, University of Pennsylvania; Naomi Schor, Yale University, editor; and T. Jefferson Kline, Boston University, editor, for Decadent Subjects: The Idea of Decadence in Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Culture of the Fin de Siècle in Europe (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2002)
2001
- Victoria Nelson, Albany, California, for The Secret Life of Puppets (Harvard Univ. Press, 2001)
- Honorable mention: Barbara Fuchs, University of Washington, Seattle, for Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001)
- Honorable mention: Avital Ronell, New York University, for Stupidity (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2001)
2000
- Marie-Laure Ryan, Bellvue, Colorado, for Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2000)
1999
- Leonard Barkan, New York University, for Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture (Yale Univ. Press, 1999)
- Honorable mention: Sharon Marcus, University of California, Berkeley, for Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London (Univ. of California Press, 1999)
1998
- Dorrit Cohn, Harvard University, for The Distinction of Fiction (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999)
1997
- Linda Haverty Rugg, Ohio State University, Columbus, for Picturing Ourselves: Photography and Autobiography (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1997)
- Honorable mention: Ursula K. Heise, Columbia University, for Chronoschisms: Time, Narrative, and Postmodernism (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997)
1996
- Chana Kronfeld, University of California, Berkeley, for On the Margins of Modernism: Decentering Literary Dynamics (Univ. of California Press, 1996)
1994
- Mitchell Greenberg, Miami University, Oxford, for Canonical States, Canonical Stages: Oedipus, Othering, and Seventeenth-Century Drama (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1994)
- Honorable mention: Renata R. Mautner Wasserman, Wayne State University, for Exotic Nations: Literature and Cultural Identity in the United States and Brazil, 1830–1930 (Cornell Univ. Press, 1994)
1993
- John T. Irwin, Johns Hopkins University, for The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993)
1992
- Jean H. Hagstrum, Northwestern University, Emeritus, for Esteem Enlivened by Desire: The Couple from Homer to Shakespeare (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992)