Fellowships, Scholarships, and Awards | Department of English

Fellowships, Scholarships, and Awards

Mildred Kates Dissertation Fellowship

Basis of Award

  • Your Candidacy for the PhD on file with the Graduate School
  • A prospectus and at least one chapter of the dissertation
  • Letter of recommendation from the Director of your dissertation committee discussing the originality of the dissertation and the progress you are making
  • This award is intended to support completion of the dissertation during the academic year. Students planning to graduate prior to December 2016 are ineligible.
  • Deadline for submissions: Friday, August 26, 2022

Evaluation:
Submissions will be judged based on the following criteria:

  • Overall strength of the dissertation, including the quality of writing, originality of concept, and the breadth and rigor of research
  • Potential contribution to the field
  • Likelihood that the dissertation will be completed by the end of the current academic year (i.e. submitted to the Graduate School by June 30)

The Graduate Studies Committee (faculty) will judge the materials and make the award. The fellowship is $1500. Send all materials to:
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of English, UNCG
3137 Hall for Humanities and Research Adminstration
PO Box 26170
Greensboro NC 27402

2021-2022 Jay Shelat. His dissertation is entitled: “Ordering the Chaos: Family, Nation, and Terrorism in Post-9/11 Anglophone Fiction.”

2020-2021 Matt Phillips. His dissertation is entitled: “Empathy after Entropy: Chaos and Compassion in Crane, Toomer, Woolf.”

2019-2020 Gia Coturri Sorenson

2018-2019 Carl Schlachte

2017-2018 – Alicia Beeson

2016-2017 – Sara Taylor Boissonneau

2015-2016 – Matthew Carter. His dissertation is entitled: “Discovering the Kinetic Language of Violence in Early Modern English Drama.”

2014-2015 – Leah Milne. Her dissertation is entitled: “Necessary Fictions: Authorship and Transethnic Identities in Contemporary American Narratives.”

2013-2014 – Andrew Pisano. His dissertation is entitled, “‘From All Who Dwell Below the Skies’: Writers of Color, the First Great Awakening, and the Public Sphere.”

2012-2013 – Rose Brister. Her dissertation is entitled, “Global Positioning Systems: Re-Visions of Place in Contemporary Transnational Literatures.”

2011-2012 – Will Dodson. His dissertation is entitled, “Synaptic Mapping, Ethical Grounding, and Rhetorical Memory.”

2010-2011 – Stephanie Womack. Her dissertation is entitled “Dress, Decorum, and Domesticity: Fashioning Femininity from Richardson to Thackeray.”

2009-2010 – Kristen Pond. Her dissertation is entitled “The Impulse to Tell and to Know: The Rhetoric and Ethics of Sympathy and Privacy in the Nineteenth-Century Novel.”

2008-2009 – Allison Cooper Davis. Her dissertation is entitled “Reading With Faith: The ‘Phastastic’ Philosophy of the Nineteenth-Century Fantasy Novel.”

2007-2008 – Laura Alexander Linker. Her dissertation is entitled “The Female Libertine from Dryden to Defoe.”

2006-2007 – Rita Jones-Hyde. Her dissertation is entitled “Asked to Bear Their Part: Redefining the Audience in Early Modern Drama.”

2005-2006 – Heidi Hanrahan. Her dissertation is entitled “Competing for the Reader: The Writer/Editor Relationship in Nineteenth-Century American Literature.” Cameron Golden. Her dissertation is entitled “Questioning Autobiographical Figures in 20th-Century Literature.”

2004-2005 – Laura Savu. Her dissertation is entitled “Lives after Lives: Portraits of Artists in Contemporary Fiction.”

2003-2004 – Bonnie Libby awarded the Jean Gegan Fellowship for 2003-2004. Her dissertation is entitled “A Language of Incarnation: The Gospel Parables in Piers Plowman.” The Graduate Studies Committee has awarded Laura Shearer and Nick Crawford the Mildred Kates Dissertation Fellowship Award for 2003-2004. Laura’s dissertation is entitled “The Work Force: Labor and Identity in American Lifewriting.” Nick’s dissertation is entitled “Legitimacy and Subjectivity in English Renaissance Drama,” and also won the Campus-Wide Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2004.

2002-2003 – Gretchen Martin. Her dissertation is entitled “The Humor of the Old Southwest: Great Escapes.”

2001-2002 – Beth Howells. Her dissertation is entitled “Facing the Page: A Study of the Prefaces of Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers.”


The Cloninger-Stout Family Scholarship

In 2007 Amelia Cloninger Stout and Charles William Cloninger, Jr., established the Cloninger-Stout Family Scholarship to honor the memory of their mother, Helen Boren Cloninger Kiser, who attended UNCG (then North Carolina College for Women) in the 1920s. The donors believe education leads to happiness, personal good fortune, and well-being.
The Cloninger-Stout Family Scholarship is awarded in alternating years to a graduate student in the MFA and PhD Programs in English with the two programs having their own descriptions and criteria for the award.
For the doctoral student award, excellent academic standing in the PhD program is the primary criteria.  However, the selection committee will give priority to those students who have also established a strong record of service to the program, department, university and/or the surrounding community.
Service contributions might include (but are not limited to):  editorial work for the Greensboro Review, serving on the Executive Committee of the English Graduate Student Association, serving as a student member of a department faculty committee, and/or volunteering for local programs such as the Urban Ministries food bank.

The awards typically range from $1500 to $2000.

Eligibility: All doctoral students in English who have a minimum GPA of 3.0 and who will not graduate in the calendar year of the award process (May, August, or December 2022).

Nomination Documents:

  • A letter of nomination from a member of the faculty, staff, or community or from a colleague (not to exceed 500 words) evaluating the nominee’s academic excellence and service activities.
  • A statement from the nominated doctoral student that briefly explains their academic qualification and details their service activities and the impact their involvement has had on the department, university, and/or the surrounding community (not to exceed 750 words).
  • Supplemental materials that demonstrate impact of service activities (optional, not to exceed 5 pages)

Calendar:

  • January-February: Call for Nominations
  • 1 March 2023: Deadline for nomination letters and materials
  • 1 April 2023: Award Announced for Doctoral Student

The Department Head in consultation with the faculty on the Graduate Studies Committee will evaluate the nomination packets and decide the doctoral scholarship recipient.

Deadline for Postmark of 2023 Nominations and Materials:
1 March 2023

Send materials to:
Alyson Everhart
Department of English
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
3143 MHRA
1111 Spring Garden Street
Greensboro, NC 27412

2018-2019 – PhD: Matt Phillips

2017-2018 – MFA: Emily Cinquemani

2016-2017 – PhD: Brenta Blevins

2015-2016 – MFA: Caitlin McCann

2014-2015 – PhD: Melissa Elmes

2013-2014 – MFA: Lauren Smothers

2008-2009 – PhD: David Rogers

2007-2008 – MFA: Jenna Dietzer


Graduate Student Essay Awards

Deadline for Submission: March 6, 2023

Guidelines:

Students enrolled in graduate degree programs in the English Department are eligible to submit a critical or scholarly essay written for a course at UNCG during Spring or Fall 2022. (Theses and dissertations are excluded.) You may submit only one essay, up to 30 pages (double-spaced). Two clean copies of the essay must be submitted to the Director of Graduate Studies. The cover sheet includes title of the essay, your name, the course/professor for which it was written. The title should also appear on the first page of the essay, but not your name, the course/professor for which it was written. Be sure your name does not appear in headers or footers on subsequent pages.

Evaluation Procedure

The Director of Graduate Studies oversees the process. Each essay undergoes a “blind submission” and is read by two professors acquainted with the subject. The winner will be awarded $200.

2020 – Mohammad Ataullah Nuri. Nuri’s essay, “A ‘Blysful place’: The Park as a Bioregion in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Parliament of Fowls”, was written for Dr. Amy N. Vines, ENG 608-01: Chaucer’s Other Works.

2016 – Ben Compton. Ben’s essay, “Bioexceptionalism as National Identity,” was written for Dr. Ali Moore’s Spring 2015 course, ENG 663: Postcolonial Literary and Cultural Theory.

2015 – Matt Carter. Matt’s essay, “The Play of the Axe,” was written for Dr. Amy Vines’s Spring 2014 course, ENG 537: Studies in Middle English Literature.

2014 – Abigail Lee. Abigail’s essay, “Collapsed Long Space,” was written for Dr. Ali Moore’s Spring 2013 course, ENG 729: Postcolonial Literatures.

2013 – Melissa Ridley Elmes. Melissa’s essay, “What’s So Funny? Humor and the Construction of a Human Rights Ethos in the Old French Fabliaux,” was written for Dr. Moore’s ENG 729: Postcolonial Literatures in Fall 2012.

2012 – April Williams. April’s essay, “Whoring for Virtue, Reconciling ‘Public’ and ‘Private’ Tension in Swift’s Stella Poems,” was written for Dr. Jennifer Keith’s Fall 2011 course: ENG 717: Studies in 18th Century British Literature.

2011 – Wade Gum and Lauren Shook. Wade’s essay, “An Apologie for Poets: The Workes of Benjamin Jonsonand the Value of Authorship,” was written for Dr. Hodgkins’s ENG 713: Studies in Seventeenth-Century British Literature. Lauren’s essay, “Britomart’s ‘Famous Progenee’: The Birth of Female Authority in Book III of The Faerie Queene,” was written for Dr. Feather’s ENG 710: Studies in English Renaissance Literature. Each winner will receive $100.

2010 – Dan Burns, Scott Gibson, and Rae Ann Meriwether. Dan’s essay, “The Performance Model: Rhetoric and Composition in Stanley Fish’s Late Foundationalist Turn,” was written for Dr. Stephen Yarbrough’s ENG 691: History of Rhetoric, Enlightenment through contemporary. Scott’s essay, “Invisibility and the Commodification of Blackness in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Percival Everett’s Erasure,” was written for Dr. Christian Moraru’s ENG 740: Studies in Contemporary and Postmodern American Literature. Rae Ann’s essay, “‘Morality Without Any Touch of Politicks’?: Cultural Dislocation and Subjectivity in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Lettersand Beyond,” written for Dr. Jennifer Keith’s ENG 717: Studies in Eighteenth-Century British Literature. Each winner will receive $100.

2009 – Mary Beth Pennington. Mary Beth’s essay, “The Persistence of ‘Country’: An Ethnographic Study and Reflection on Being Rural and Academic,” was wrtten for Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater’s English 590: Literacy, Learning and Fieldwork. She will receive a $200 prize.

2008 – Will Dodson for “Clare at Play: Enclosure and Accessible Mythology.” He wrote the essay for Dr. Anne Wallace’s ENG 719: Studies in British Romanticism course. He will receive a $200 prize.

2007 – Tonya Hassell and Angus Bennett. Their collaboratively written essay is entitled “Notes from the Underclassed.” They will share the $200 prize.

2006 – Deidre Hall. Deidre’s essay, “‘That miserable devil, the singer’: David Gamut and Racial Alchemy in The Last of the Mohicans,” was written for Karen Weyler’s English 731 class. She will receive a $200 prize.

2005 – Linda Gretton and Liz Wilkinson. Linda’s essay, “The Secret Diary of Cathy Locke,” was written for Dr. Eve Widerhold. Liz’s essay, “Sarah Winnemucca: ‘PostIndian Warrior’ Writing for the Land,” was written for Dr. Jeanne Follansbee. They will share the $200 prize.

2004

2003 – Heidi Hanrahan and Chip Smoak. Heidi submitted “Resisting, Revising, and Rewriting: Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as a Retelling of Child’s “The Quadroons.” Chip submitted “Sex, Birds, and Paradigms: Kate Chopin Rewriting Charles Darwin.” They will share the $200 prize.

2002 – Sheryl Clouse and George Upper. Sheryl submitted “Making the Myth Viable: Milton’s Reformation of the Masque.” George submitted “Discovering Unknown Complexity, Recovering Forgotten Texts:  Gender in the Early Fiction of Carroll John Daly.” They will share the $200 prize. Heidi Hanrahan wins an Honorable Mention and a $50 honorarium for her essay, “‘Thanne was he bothe in lordship and servage’: Arveragus as Ideal Husband.”

2001 – Cameron Golden and Nick Crawford are co-winners of the Graduate Student Essay Award 2001. Cameron Golden submitted “From Punishment to Possibility: Reimagining Hitchcockian Paradigms in The New York Trilogy.” Nick Crawford submitted “Chaucer’s Drama of Disjunction: Inverting the Dramatic Principle in The Canterbury Tales.” They will share the $200 prize. Lara Savu receives a Honorable Mention and a $50 honorarium for her essay “In Desire’s Grip: Gender, Politics, and Intertextual Games in Updike’s Gertrude and Claudius.”


Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Awards

The English department is accepting nominations for the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award. These nominations with supporting documentation are due to the Director of College Writing prior to the College deadline. This year, the College deadline is January 20, 2023; therefore, the English department deadline is Friday, January 13, 2023 at 5:00 PM. Please note that portfolios should now be submitted electronically to risa_applegarth@uncg.edu

Faculty members, students, staff, and alumni can make nominations. The College Writing Committee will select a recipient for this Award. The recipient will receive $200.00.

Nominees must be graduate teaching assistants during the 2016-2017 academic year, must be classified as TAs on the PD7 form that is submitted for their assistantship, and must have participated in the mandatory TA training arranged by the Graduate School. Nominees should be selected on the basis of the high quality of their teaching as defined by the guidelines for distinguished teaching in the University Handbook for Faculty.

NOMINATIONS AND SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION MUST INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING ITEMS, WHICH FOLLOW THE COLLEGE GUIDELINES:

  • Nomination letter (not to exceed two typewritten pages).
  • Letter seconding the nomination (not to exceed two typewritten pages).
  • Evaluation of the nominee’s teaching by their faculty supervisor, the Department Head, or the Graduate Director
  • Teaching portfolio – which should include a statement of teaching philosophy, methods, and syllabus or syllabi.  In addition, the portfolio might include letters from students and fellow faculty members which discuss teaching style and student success, teaching evaluations, assignments, and samples of student work. Supplementary materials should not exceed 20 pages.
  • Nominee’s student id number.

The teaching portfolio must be prepared by the nominee and is evaluated by the College Writing Committee.

Please contact Dr. Risa Applegarth, Director of College Writing at risa_applegarth@uncg.edu with any questions.

2022 – Catherine Bowlin.

2021 – Elena Makarion and Jay Shelat.

2020 – Leah Haynes.

2019 – Emily Dolive and Carl Schlachte.

2018

2017 – Crystal Matey.

2016 – Meghan McGuire.

2015 – Melissa Elmes and Alison Johnson.

2014 – Leah Milne.

2013 – Jacob Babb. He is also the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences for 2013.

2012 – Matt Mullins. He is also the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences for 2012.

2011 – Belinda Walzer. She is also the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences for 2011.

2010 – William Duffy. He is also the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences for 2010.

2009 – Kristen Pond and Charles Tedder.

2008 – John Pell. Michael Peterson is the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences for 2008.

2007 – Liz Vogel. David Rogers is the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences for 2007.

2006 – Rita Jones-Hyde and Temeka Carter. Liz Wilkinson is the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences for 2006.

2005 – Michelle Johnson. She is also the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences for 2005.

2004 2003 – Amy Gerald

2002 – Rebecca Jones. Jackie Grutsch-McKinney is the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences for 2002.


Graduate Student Association Funding

The Graduate Student Association offers a number of grants for travel, professional development, and thesis/dissertation costs. For more information about these opportunities, please see https://graduatestudentassociation.uncg.edu/funding/