A. Owen Aldridge Prize Competition

Comparative Literature Studies publishes an annual prize paper written by a graduate student in a comparative literature department. The competition is named in honor of A. Owen Aldridge, founder of CLS. The purpose of this competition is to encourage and recognize excellence in scholarship among graduate students, and to reward the highest achievement with publication. This project is sponsored by CLS in cooperation with the American Comparative Literature Association (www.acla.org) and supported by the Department of Comparative Literature at Penn State. In addition to publication, the award also carries a monetary prize, including a honorarium and help with travel expenses to attend next year’s ACLA meeting.

Guidelines

Any graduate student who is a current member of the American Comparative Literature Association as of November 15 and who has completed all requirements for the PhD with the exception of the dissertation may submit one paper annually.
Papers may be on any comparative topic that is aligned with the mission of CLS. They should be scholarly articles-literary research, theory, or criticism-and should not, for example, be interviews, translations, or editions of texts.
Papers should be between 7,000 to 12,000 words, including endnotes and quotations, and be written in English. Any professional citational style is acceptable, though the winner will need to revise to conform to CLS style (modified Chicago).
Submissions consist of: 1) a PDF or Word version of the essay, prepared as in #5 and 2) a note on letterhead or email with institutional domain name from the program head or faculty adviser confirming that the student has completed all requirements for the PhD except dissertation as stated in #1. The membership status of all participants will be confirmed by the ACLA Secretariat before the prize committee begins its deliberations.
Papers should be prepared for anonymous evaluation. The first page of the paper itself should include the title of the submission, but not the author’s name.
Digital submissions (Word or PDF files only) will only be accepted through our submission portal. Email submissions will no longer be accepted.
The winning paper will be copy-edited and subject to the same editorial recommendations as other CLS materials. The intention of CLS is to publish the winning paper within 12 months. A note will indicate that the paper is the winner of the Aldridge competition and that it has been selected by the ACLA in collaboration with CLS.
Papers will be evaluated anonymously by a panel of judges appointed by the ACLA.

SUBMISSIONS DEADLINE FOR THE 2025 ALDRIDGE AWARD 15 November 2024

Submit your application here and if you have any further inquiries, please email us at cl-studies@psu.edu with the subject line “2025 Aldridge Prize Submission.”

Past Winners

2024 “Between Bandung and Havana: Emergent Solidarities and the Forgotten Poetry of Viva Cuba,” by Lara Norgaard, Harvard University

2023 “The Destruction of the Voice,” by Peter Makhlouf, Princeton University

2022 “Toward Weaving/Reading Hemispheric Land and Literature,” by Laurel O’Coyne, University of Oregon

2021 “’A Nonpeaceful Coexistence’: The Plight of 1960’s Bilingual Literary Journals in Morocco and Israel,” by Lital Abazon, Yale University

2020 “Loving Sovereignty: Political Mysticism, Seyh Galib and Giorgio Agamben,” by Arif Camoglu, Northwestern University

2019 “Loan-Words: Economy, Equivalence and Debt in the Arabic Translation Debates” by Hannah Scott Deuchar, New York University

2018 “Bilingual Mistranslations: Plautus, Lorenzo da Ponte and Guillermo Cabrera Infante” by Francesca Bellei, Harvard University

2017 “Stammering Hebrew-Y.H. Brenner’s Deferred Beginnings” by Roni Henig, Columbia University

2016 “Globalizing Finance: Nostalgia, Desire, and the Market in Contemporary Shanghai” by Laura Finch, University of Pennsylvania

2015 [Issue 53.3 (2016)] “Psychological Realism in Early Prose Narrative: Dreams in The 1001 Nights and the Greek Novel” by Henry Bowles, Harvard University

2014 [Issue 52.3 (2015)]: “‘Our Natural and Original Illness’: Tracking the Human/Animal in Montaigne and Nietzsche” by James Ramsey Wallen, University of California, Santa Cruz

2013 [Issue 51.4 (2014)]: “What is a Digital Author? The Faulknerian Author Function in Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialisme” by Lauren Du Graf, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2012 [Issue 50.3 (2013)]: “The Victorian Counterarchive: Mikimoto Ryuzo, John Ruskin, and Affirmative Reading” by Joseph Lavery, University of Pennsylvania

2011 [Issue 49.3 (2012)]: “Exchange and the Eidolon: Analyzing Forgiveness in Euripides’ Helen” by Michelle Jansen, SUNY Binghamton

2010 [Issue 48.2 (2011)]: “The Task(s) of the Translators: Multiplicity as Problem in Renaissance European Thought” by Belén Bistué, University of California, Davis

2009 [Issue 47.2 (2010)]: “Havana Reads the Harlem Renaissance: Mistranslation and the Dialectics of Transnational American Literature” by John Patrick Leary, New York University

2008 [Issue 46.3 (2009)]: “When Robinson Crusoe Meets Ximen Quing: Material Egoism in the First Chinese and English Novels” by Ning Ma, Princeton University

2007 [Issue 45.3 (2008)]: “Apprenticeship of the Novel: The Bildungsroman and the Invention of History, ca. 1770-1820″ by Tobias Boes, Yale University

2006 [Issue 44.1-2 (2007)]: “Reading With One Eye, Speaking With One Tongue–On the Problem of Address in World Literature” by Michael Allan, University of California – Berkeley

2005 [Issue 43.1-2 (2006)]: “To the Letter: The Material Text as Space of Ajudication in Pope’s First Satire” by Katherine Mannheimer, Yale University

2004 [Issue 42.1 (2005)]: “Captain Cook and the Discovery of Antarctica’s Modern Specificity: Towards a Critique of Globalization” by Mariano Siskind, New York University

2003 [Issue 41.2 (2004)]: “Parasitism and Pale Fire’s Camouflage: The King-Bot, the Crown Jewels, and the Man in the Brown Macintosh” by James Ramey, University of California – Berkeley

2002 [Issue 40.1 (2003)]: “Anagrams in Psychoanalysis: Retroping Concepts by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Jean-Francois Lyotard” by Andrea Bachner, Harvard University

2001 [Issue 41.2 (2002)]: “Stalled Flight: Baudelaire’s Rewriting of Horace’s Memorial Swan” by Kate Elkins, University of California – Berkeley

2000 [Issue 38.2 (2001)]: “Translating Ruskin: Marcel Proust’s Orient of Devotion” by Daniel Simon, University of Oklahoma

1999 [Issue 37.3 (2000)]: “Nietzche: Utility, Aesthetics, History” by Robert Herbert Doran, Stanford University

1998 [Issue 36.3 (1999)]: “Spectacular Desires: Orpheus and Pygmalion as Aesthetic Paradigms in Petrarch’s Rime sparse” by Théresè Migraine-George, University of Colorado

1997 [Issue 35.1 (1998)]: “Allegorical Dismemberment and Rescue in Book III of The Faerie Queene” by Mary Frances Fahey, University of California – Davis

1996 [Issue 33.4 (1996)]: “Benjamin and Zola Narrative, the Individual and Crowds in an Age of Mass Production” by Nicholas Rennie, Yale University

1995 [Issue 33.1 (1996)]: “Writing China: Legitimacy and Representation 1606-1773” by David Porter, Stanford University

1994 [Issue 32.3 (1995)]: “Enlightenment’s Other in Patrick Süskind’s Das Parfum: Adorno and the Ineffable Utopia of Modern Art” by Bradley Butterfield, University of Oregon

1993 [Issue 31.2 (1994)]: “The Leopardskin of Dao and the Icon of Truth: Natural Birth Versus Mimesis in Chinese and Western Literary Theories” by Liang Shi, University of Massachusetts

1991 [Issue 29.3 (1992)]: “Deconstruction and Taoism: Comparisons Reconsidered” By Hongchu Fu, University of California – Los Angeles

1990 [Issue 28.1 (1991)]: “Socrates as Untragic Hero: Satyric Pedagogy in Modern European Narrative” by Lynne S. Vieth, University of Illinois – Chicago

1989 [Issue 27.2 (1990)]: “Nothing: Reading Paul Celan’s ‘Engführung’” by Aris Fioretos, Yale University

1988 [Issue 25.4 (1988)]: “Proustian Time and Modern Drama: Beckett, Brecht, and Fugard” by Edward S. Brinkley, Cornell University

In Memoriam

Alfred Owen Aldridge
December 16, 1915 – January 29, 2005

A man of many facets and talents, A. Owen Aldridge will be remembered by some as a pioneer of colonial American literary studies, by others for his explorations in East-West literary relations, and by still others as a former president of the American Comparative Literature Association. For those of us associated with this journal however, he will forever be remembered as the founder of Comparative Literature Studies.

Perhaps Owen’s many interests were reflected in the different forms of his name appearing at the top of the CLS masthead from 1963 to 1986: Alfred Owen Aldridge; A. O. Aldridge; and A. Owen Aldridge, as though he had packed three scholarly lives into the space of one–which may indeed be true enough. His name has continued at the top since the first issue of 1987 (26.1), but as editor emeritus. This journal, then, and the Aldridge Prize for the best comparative essay by a graduate student that is associated with it, the fruits of his own efforts and genius, memorialize Owen better than our own poor power to do so. Turn the pages of our journal to find Owen’s name on the Aldridge Prize essay, and indeed in all the learned prose of this issue. It is perhaps the best memorial an academic could hope for–the living word.

*At the request of his surviving daughter, those wishing to remember A. Owen Aldridge may send donations to be used towards the Aldridge Prize, which pays an honorarium and travel expenses to the ACLA Convention for prizewinners. Checks should be made payable to “Penn State University” and sent to the CLS editorial address. (Comparative Literature Studies, 442 Burrowes Building, University Park, PA 16802)