Honors Day awards recognize the excellent work of our undergraduate and graduate students within the department, as well as the superb teaching by our faculty and teaching assistants. Our annual event also serves as the departmental graduation ceremony, where we recognize our majors in the more intimate setting of the Fine Arts Theatre. This year our speakers included a graduating senior, Emma Murphy, and Janet Geddis, who delivered the Keynote Address. Ms. Geddis is the founder and owner of Athens’ Avid Bookshop, which was named a top-five finalist in the Bookstore of the Year competition sponsored by Publishers Weekly in 2017. She holds a BA in English from NYU and a n M.Ed. in Educational Psychology from UGA.
Faculty Recognition
Bedingfield Excellence in Teaching Award
Eric Morales-Franceschini
First Year Composition Awards
Donald E. Barnett Awards
ENGL 1101: Jack Froistad, “How Technology Changed the NBA,” nominated by Al Dixon
ENGL 1102: Alex Hines, “Does John Donne Dream of Electric Sheep,” nominated by Andrew Nance
Michael G. Moran e-Portfolio Awards
ENGL 1101: Lacey Walker, nominated by Christa Rampley
ENGL 1102: Amelia Johnson, nominated by Al Dixon
Honorable Mention: Kendal Bushner, nominated by Nathan Camp
Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards
Renee Buesking, Jaydn DeWald, Holly Fling, Holly Gallagher, Kristen Gleason, Ward Risvold, and Elizabeth Swails
Undergraduate Program Awards
Joshua Brown Scholarship
Megan Powell
Honorable Mention: Kelsey McQueen
Virginia Rucker Walter Scholarship
Kate Huller
Honorable Mention: Brittany Hayes
Upper Division Essay and Project Awards
Digital Humanities Scholarship
Julia Koslowsky, “Pride and Prejudice and the Contemporary Era: Translating Nineteenth-Century Literature into Tweets and Vlogs”
For Essays Focused on Primary Sources
Brianna Phillips, “‘I have nothing to tell’: Speech and Social Spaces in Sense and Sensibility”
Honorable Mention: Amy Pan, “Narrative Voices in Allah is Not Obliged and May Son’s Story”
For Essays Using Secondary Sources
Marianna Hagler, “‘gorgeous reticence’: Abstraction and Ambivalence in Mina Loy’s ‘Brancusi’s Golden Bird’”
Alexandre Tchaykov, “The Performance of Lyric in Whitman and Dickinson”
H. Grady Hutcherson Memorial Scholarship
2017 Awardees: Rachael Dier, Alexandra Ibarra, and Michael Lockwood
2018 Awardees: Alexandra Ibarra, Julia Koslowsky, Sally Smith, and Lukas Woodyard
R. Baxter Miller Undergraduate Award
Lukas Woodyard
Creative Writing Program Awards
Judged by Ida Stewart, author of Gloss and winner of the 2011 Perugia Press Prize. Ida Stewart holds an MFA in creative writing from Ohio State University and a PhD from the University of Georgia.
Virginia Rucker Walter Poetry Award
Jeanne Davis, “What is What”
Diann Blakely Poetry Award
Shamala Gallagher, “In a Cathedral of Only Dark”
Graduate Student Program Awards
Alice C. Langdale Awards (for exceptional English graduate students)
Kacie Hittel, nominated by Nicholas Allen
Henna Messina, nominated by Christy Desmet
Robby Nadler, nominated by Christy Desmet
Elizabeth Swails, nominated by Cody Marrs
Robert H. West Award
Outstanding graduate student in Creative Writing
Kristen Gleason, nominated by the Creative Writing Faculty
Outstanding graduate student in Literary Criticism
Sidonia Serafini, nominated by Barbara McCaskill
Robert E. Park Essay Award
Philip Gilreath, “‘The art itself is Nature’: Dissolution of the Human Form in Shakespeare’s Green Worlds,” nominated by Sujata Iyengar
James B. Colvert English Graduate Awards (supports advanced graduate student research)
Jacob Syersak and Bridget Dooley
R. Baxter Miller Graduate Award
Sidonia Serafini
English Department Travel Award
Alyssa Leavell
Graduating Doctoral and Masters Students
Henna Messina, PhD
Major Professor: Beth Tobin
Dissertation: “Dislocated Women: Disinheritance, Mobility, and Domestic Subjectivity in British Fiction (1753-1855)”
Robby Nadler, PhD
Major Professor: Reginald McKnight
Dissertation: “The Gastroliths of Sapèlo”
Ward Risvold, PhD
Major Professor, Sujata Iyengar
Dissertation: “Printing Identities: Studies in Social Bibliography and Social Networks in Early Modern England’s Print Culture”
