Fall 2020 Graduate Award Winners

Department of English

Fall 2020 Graduate Award Winners

Posted on October 20, 2020

Every year, thanks to donations from generous alumni and supporters, the English department is able to recognize and celebrate the wonderful works of our graduate students. While there was no physical celebration for the Fall 2020 award recipients, we still would like to take this time to honor their achievements and dedication to the department.

Matt Philips won The Mildred Kates Dissertation Fellowship for his dissertation project, “Empathy after Entropy: Chaos and Compassion in Crane, Toomer, Woolf.”

Dr. Carolyn Brown Kates (’91) established this award in 1995 in honor and recognition of her grandmother, Mildred Kates, with the purpose of assisting a doctoral student in the English Department in the completion of his/her dissertation. The award may be used to cover expenses of the dissertation itself or to defray living expenses, tuition, or other costs that the student encounters, and is awarded at the discretion of the Department Head.

 

Paul Piatkowski won The Keith Cushman Graduate Prize for Scholarly Publications for his essay “Deterritorializing the Textual Sit in the Digital Age: Paratextual and Narrative Democracy in Mark Danielewski’s Only Revolutions.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 43 no. 1, 2019.

Keith Cushman was a professor at UNCG from 1976 through the spring semester of 2014. He was a leading American D. H. Lawrence scholar. Depending on the availability of funds, the Department will make, by the end of each fall semester, an award to a graduate student whose scholarly article has been published or has been accepted for publication in a well- established, peer-reviewed journal.

 

Jay Shelat won The James Evans Award for Graduate Service.  

Jay has served in a variety of departmental roles including the EGSA board, the New Directions Committee of the College Writing Program, and as representative on the Postcolonial Search Committee. One colleague described him “as generous a peer scholar as he is a teacher.”  Another said he “was always prepared, professional, and cheerful.”

A UNCG professor from 1971 until 2016, Jim Evans taught and wrote about eighteenth-century British literature. UNCG’s English Department presents an annual award to a PhD or MA student who has distinguished himself or herself through service to the English graduate student body and the Department. The work recognized by the Award must show commitment to both fostering a dynamic English graduate student community and to superior integration of this community into the life of the Department.

 

More information on various scholarships and awards presented by the department, and a link for giving, can be found at https://english.uncg.edu/giving/.