Society of Early Americanists

Society of Early Americanists: Annual Essay Competition, 2011-2012

a check for $100
a certificate
immortality

Why choose?

The SOCIETY OF EARLY AMERICANISTS is pleased to announce our Fourteenth Annual Essay Competition. If you have presented or will be presenting a paper on an Americanist topic, broadly conceived, during the academic year 2011-2012 at the Society of Early Americanists Special Topics Conference: ‘Triumph in my Song’: 18th & 19th Century African Atlantic Culture, History, & Performance, University of Maryland, May 31-June 2, 2012; or at an American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference 2011-2012, or that of any of its affiliates, including the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, San Antonio, Texas, March 22-25, 2012, we invite you to consider entering.

By “Americanist topic, broadly conceived” we mean that the competition is open to papers that address America in terms of both the long and the wide (i.e., circumatlantic) eighteenth century. Our panel of judges will see each entry through a simple system of blind reviewing; your name goes only on a separate cover sheet, and we recommend that you rework any self-citation, either in the body or in notes, to the third person. Note that we accept revised papers and that the maximum length for an entry is 6,000 words.

HOW TO ENTER:

Papers should be double-spaced, 6,000 words maximum, with your name appearing only on the cover sheet, along with your institutional mailing address and e-mail address; panel title, chair’s name, date of presentation, and name of conference.

Please send essay as an email attachment to: Professor Bryan Waterman: bryan.waterman@nyu.edu

Deadline: Friday, October 5, 2012.

Please let us know if there are any questions. Thank you for your submissions!

Professor Bryan Waterman
Society of Early Americanists Essay Contest Committee Chair, 2011-2013
Department of English
New York University

SEA Essay Awards to date:

Thirteenth Annual Essay Prize, presented March 2012, at the ASECS Conference in San Antonio:

    Jennifer Heil
    Emory University
    “Imperial Pedagogy: Susanna Rowson’s Columbus for Young Ladies”

Twelfth Annual Essay Prize, presented March 2011, at the SEA Conference in Philadelphia:

    Kelly Wisecup
    University of North Texas
    “Invisible Bullets and the Literary Forms of Colonial Promotion”

Eleventh Annual Essay Prize, presented March 19, 2010, at the ASECS Conference in Albuquerque:

    Duncan Faherty
    Queens College & the CUNY Graduate Center
    “ ‘Daily and nightly disgorged upon our shores’: Revolution, Rumor, & Serial Unrest in the
    Early Republic”

Tenth Annual Essay Prize, presented March 5, 2009, at the SEA’s 6th Biennial Conference in Bermuda:

    Cristobal Silva
    Florida State University
   “Appropriating Epidemiology: Tisquantum and the Etiology of Buried Plague”

Ninth Annual Essay Prize, presented March 2008, at the ASECS Conference in Portland:

    Bryan Waterman
    New York University
   “Elizabeth Whitman’s Disappearance and Disappointment”

Eighth Annual Essay Prize, presented June 7, 2007, at the SEA Conference in Williamsburg:

    Martin Brückner
    University of Delaware
   “The Public Life of Maps in Eighteenth-Century British America”

Seventh Annual Essay Prize, presented April 1, 2006, at the Montréal ASECS:

    Anna Mae Duane
    University of Connecticut
   “Pregnancy and the New Birth in Charlotte Temple and The Coquette”

Sixth Annual Essay Prize, presented March 31, 2005, at the SEA Conference in Alexandria:

    Elizabeth Maddock Dillon
    Yale University
   “Republican Theatricality and Transatlantic Empire”

Fifth Annual Essay Prize, presented March 27, 2004, at the Boston ASECS:

    Brycchan Carey
    Kingston University
   “ ‘Accounts of Savage Nations’: The Spectator and the Americas”

Fourth Annual Essay Prize, presented April 10, 2003, at the SEA Conference in Providence:

    Vincent Carretta
    University of Maryland
   “Who Was Francis Williams?”

Third Annual Essay Prize, presented April 5, 2002, at the Colorado Springs ASECS:

    Laura M. Stevens
    University of Tulsa
   “The Anglican Quest for Compassion: American Indians and English Deists in the
   Sermons of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts”

Second Annual Essay Prize, presented April 20, 2001, at the New Orleans ASECS:

    Michael Zuckerman
    University of Pennsylvania
   “Some Asiatic Prince: Pride, Patriarchy, and the Problem of Generational Succession
   in the Early South”

First Annual Essay Prize, presented April 14, 2000, at the Philadelphia ASECS:

    Eric Slauter
    Stanford University
   “Manners and Taste in the Making of the Constitution”