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2019 News

November

CLS Faculty co-organize critical theory conference at Beijing Normal University

November 13, 2019
On September 21-22, 2019, Samuel Weber and Peter Fenves co-organized an international conference, "Aesthetics, Society and the Travels of Critical Theory" at Beijing Normal University.  The participants included scholars from around the globe, including China and the United States. Several Northwestern PhD graduates were in attendance, including: Julia Ng, now teaching at Goldsmith’s College, London, and Anthony Adler, teaching at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. A major role in the organization of the conference was played by Li Shah, who studied for two years in the German Department at Northwestern and who is currently a Lecturer at Beijing Normal and a faculty research member of  the University’s Center for the Study of Literary Theories.   Other well-known Western scholars included Martin Jay, Professor Emeritus at  UC-Berkeley, and Professor Scott Lash of Goldsmith’s.

October

CLS alumna translated novel by 2018 Nobel Laureate

October 14, 2019

Polish author Olga Tokarczuk won the postponed 2018 Nobel Prize for literature. Tokarczuk’s novel “Flights” was translated into English by Northwestern alumna Jennifer Croft, who earned her PhD in comparative literary studies in 2010.

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August

Congratulations to Mauricio Oportus! Beiling Wu Prize in Writing 2019 Recipient

August 30, 2019
Congratulations to Comparative Literary Studies PhD student, Mauricio Oportus, for receiving the 2019 Beiling Wu Prize in Writing! The Beiling Wu Prize in Writing is named for a former Northwestern graduate student in the humanities and is awarded to a doctoral student who wrote the best essay on literature or literary culture in the first year of the PhD program.

July

June

Congratulations to CLS PhD Graduates!

June 14, 2019

The following students received their PhD in Comparative Literary Studies for 2018-19. Congratulations!

  • Patricia Anzini Da Costa: " 'Welcome, American Brother': Cultural Encounters Between Walt Whitman and Brazilian Writers" | Committee: Betsy Erkkila, Reg Gibbons, Harris Feinsod, Cesar Braga-Pinto, Maria Bonetti Paro | Home Department: English
  • Ruth Curry: "Problems of Plato's Poetics" | Committee: Gary S. Morson, Robert Hariman, Richard Kraut, Leon Kass | Home Department: Rhetoric & Public Culture
  • Richard Gabri: "Love's Limits: In Persian Poetry and Film" | Committee: Regina Schwartz, Peter Fenves, Nasrin Qader, Franklin Lewis | Home Department: English
  • Kritish Rajbhandari: "Anarchival Drift and the Limits of Community in Indian Ocean Fiction" | Committee: Evan Mwangi, Susannah Gottlieb, Nasrin Qader, Dilip Gaonkar | Home Department: English
  • Ben Schacht: "The Time of Labor: Literature and Industrial Capitalism from Percy Shelley to William Morris" | Committee: Stephen Eisenman, Marcus Moseley, Vivasvan Soni | Home Department: English
  • Vincent Valour: "Les Monstres en liberté ou quand la terre fait des bulles (Petit Essai de Phénoménologie des Monstres)" | Committee: Peter Fenves, Nasrin Qader, Sam Weber | Home Department: French

CLS Major, Lois Biggs, wins Sam Weber Paper Prize

June 6, 2019

Comparative Literary Studies major, Lois Biggs, wins Fall 2018 Sam Weber Prize for Best Paper in Art, Literature, and Contemporary European Thought, Paris Program. Lois' winning paper, "We Hold the Rock: Place, Protest, and Aesthetics on Alcatraz," will be in the Fall 2019 publication of the Columbia Journal of Politics and Society. Congratulations, Lois!

March

CLS undergraduate student, Max Rowe, awarded the American Comparative Literature Association Presidential Prize for Best Undergraduate Essay

March 5, 2019

Northwestern CLS undergraduates have been awarded the ACLA Presidential Prize for Best Undergraduate Essay for three consecutive years! Mary Bradford and Emma Montgomery won the award in 2017 and 2018. This year, we congratulate Max Rowe, who was awarded the prize for his senior thesis, “Heels, Heels, Heels, Heels, Heels: Repetition and Mu Shiying's Metropolis”. We are grateful to Tristram Wolff and Susannah Gottlieb for their leadership in CLS.