SYMPOSIUM 2015

2015 Papacosma Graduate Student Essay Announcement

The committee evaluating the 2015 Papacosma Graduate Student Essay Competition, consisting of Artemis Leontis (Professor of Modern Greek, University of Michigan), chair, Matthew Gumpert (Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Department of Western Languages and Literatures, Bogazici University), and Eugenia Georges (Professor of Anthropology, Rice University), has read this year’s entries and arrived at its decisions.

First Prize goes to Panayotis League (Harvard University, ethnomusicology) for his paper: “The Poetics of Meráki: Dialogue and Speech Genre in Kalymnian Songs.”

• The committee found this to be a well-argued, beautifully polished essay, offering a particularly fine-grained ethnographic description of the performance of mantinades as a musically enacted, competitive form of speech genre, and contributing to the study of performers as experts and the social and aesthetic expertise they embody.

Honorable Mention is given to Etienne E. Charrière (University of Michigan, Comparative Literature) for his paper: “A Greek Novel ‘Clad in an English Dress’: Stephanos Xenos’ Devil in Turkey (1851) as Transnational Text.”

• The committee recognized this as cutting edge work in world literature contributing to the study of the global novel through its analysis of the ways the genre traveled to the Ottoman Empire and was transformed through translations, multi-lingual publications, and other forms of adaptation.

Congratulations to the winners!  They will be formally congratulated at the MGSA 2015 Symposium on Thursday, October 15, 2015 at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Panayiotis League will present a version of his paper at the Symposium in Atlanta, while Etienne Charrière is on the program to read another paper.

The committee also wishes to thank the graduate students who submitted work and to recognize its excellence. The papers submitted represent the best in current scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.

The Prize honors S. Victor Papacosma, who taught History at Kent State University until his retirement. Victor served the MGSA with dedication in many capacities. As Executive Director from 2004 to 2014, he moved the association forward through his effective and ever-gracious collaborative spirit of inclusiveness.

Finally this note: papers were reviewed blindly, the arms’ length rule was followed, and no reviewers on this committee served on any other prize committee.

Sincerely,

Artemis Leontis