Graduate Essay Prize Recipients
Since 2000, the Center has awarded two annual essay prizes to graduate students who produce a paper in a course in one of the Center's participating departments. Two judges, often drawn from the visiting medieval fellows or affiliated faculty, assess the essays, which are nominated by graduate faculty instructors. The First-Year Essay Prize is awarded to a paper, no longer than 25 pages, that is written on a medieval topic by a graduate student in their first year of study. The Joseph O'Callaghan Essay Prize goes to an essay of any length written by a graduate student on a medieval topic.
2024: Brittany Lugo (First Year Essay Prize)
From Metaphor to Hierarchy: Augustine's Theology of Light and Shadow as a Precursor to Medieval Racial Thought
2024: Elias Holmquist (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Expecting the Unexpected Guest: Strange and Mundane Hospitality in late Medieval Romance and Household Accounts
2023: James Terrasi (First Year Essay Prize)
Oimais digam de·ls eretgues: Early evidence of “Good Men” in Lo codi?
2023: Carmeliz Ramas-Fisk (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Inheritance and Memory: A Case Study of the County of Tripoli from the Lignages d’Outremer
2022: Maria Carriere (First Year Essay Prize)
Narrative Composition and Dynastic Memory: Angevin Women in Ernoul-Bernard
2022: Alice Grissom (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
"Mi Bodi Henge Wið Þi Bodi": Dying with Christ in Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerd
Honorable Mention 2022: Elissa Johnston (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Tasting the Fruit of the Orchard: Translating Catherine of Siene in Late Medieval England
2021: Isabelle Bunten (First Year Essay Prize)
Love in the Garden/Death on the Cross: Uncovering Patron Influence in a Book of Hours from Rouen
2021: Alana Kilcoyne (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Written on Hands and Feet: Comownycacyon and Connection in The Book of Margery Kempe
2020: Co-Winner: Iris Loritz (First Year Essay Prize)
Two Systems of Priestly Sexuality in the Inquisitorial Register of Jacques Fournier
2020: Co-Winner: Frances Eshleman (First Year Essay Prize)
Epicurus and Dante's Vision of Heresy
2020: Co-winner: Jason Ray, (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Queer Recognition and Reparative Reading in The Wanderer
2020: Co-winner: Camila Marcone, (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Textiles and Morals: Searching for Hugh of St. Victor in the Divina Commedia
Honorable Mention 2020: Peyton Seabolt (First Year Essay Prize)
Intersectionality of Horses and Religious Institutions in the Chancery Records of Edward III
2019: No essay prizes awarded.
2018: Doug Hamilton (First Year Essay Prize)
Tension in the Margins: Flagellants and Anticlerical Imagery in the Glazier Peacock Manuscript
2018: Rachel Podd (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Women 'in travell': Reconsidering Maternal Mortality in Late Medieval England
2017: Ashley N. Newby (First Year Essay Prize)
'Jeo vous pri Jhesu o simple voyz': Recovering a Woman's Prayers from the Alphonso Psalter
2017: Kevin Vogelaar (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Sonic Exorcism: The Bell as object of spiritual Purification in the Polemic of Eulogius and Albar of Cordoba
2016: Stephen Powell (First Year Essay Prize)
The 'Descriptio Scotie': Geography as Propaganda in the Contesxt of Plimpton MS 266
2016: Kevin Vogelaar (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Painted Reminiscence: Expressing 13th Century Syriac Christian Nostalgia for ‘Abbasid Rule in Pierpont Morgan MS M.235
2015: Katherine Briant (First Year Essay Prize)
Beholding broken bodies: pain as a theological framework in Julian of Norwich's Vision and Revelation
2015: Alexander Profaci (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Ars Brevis, Vita Longa: Brevitas, Norman Identity and the Beginnings of Vernacular Historiography in the Thirteenth Century Prose Chronique de Normandie
2014: Ruth Whaley (First Year Essay Prize)
Story-Telling at Sea: Changes in the Crusade Chronicle
2014: Tobias Hrynick (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
The Customs of Romney Marsh: Compromise and Common Interest in Wetland Administration
2013: Abigail Sargent (First Year Essay Prize)
A New Homeland for Authentic Armenians: Vahram of Edessa's Rhymed Chronicle and the Construction of a Cilician Armenian Identity
2013: Jeffrey Doolittle (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
The Logic of Early Medieval Medicine: The Design and Use of Medical Texts from Montecassino (MS 69 and MS 97)
2012: Louisa Foroughi (First Year Essay Prize)
"They reputyth Englysch pepyll for none nac[iou]n": Scriptural Translation and Nationhood in Columbia University Library Plimpton MS 259
2012: Jeffrey Doolittle (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Negotiating Murder in the Historiae of Gregory of Tours
2011: Co-Winner: John Burden (First Year Essay Prize)
Petrarch and the Pursuit of Fame in "Ascent of Mount Ventoux"
2011: Co-Winner: Br. John Glasenapp, OSB (First Year Essay Prize)
Unsounded Number: Music, Architecture, and Meaning at the Dedication of the Cathedral of Florence
2011: Camin Melton (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
The Embedded Cross in Andreas: Pointing to a New Kind of Punctuation in Old English Poetry
2010: William Little (First Year Essay Prize)
The Virtues, Friendship, and Rhetoric in Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni
2010: Sarah Townsend (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Illustrating Social Status: Fashion in the Marginal Drawings of a Fourteenth Century Breviary from Tavistock, Devonshire
2009: Carlo DaVia (First Year Essay Prize)
Augustine and the Secularization of the Polity
2009: Richard P. Hresko (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
London Arms and Armor-Makers in the Fourteenth Century: A Portrait of a Medieval Industrial Sector
2008: Peter Slonina (First Year Essay Prize)
A Critical Treatment of Plimpton MS 04
2008: M. Christina Bruno (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
The Canon Law of Indulgences and its Audience: Franciscan Observant Sermons in Late Fifteenth-Century Italy
2007: Kevin T. Mallon (First Year Essay Prize)
To Realize, Rectify, and Release: The Purpose of Reading in Petrarch's Secretum
2007: Samantha Sagui (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Crime and Conviviality: The Social Space of Urban Drinking-Houses in Medieval England Prophecy in Welsh Manuscripts
2006: Nicole Brennan (First Year Essay Prize)
Two Versions of the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos
2005: James Manning (First Year Essay Prize)
Judging a Book by its Covers: An Analysis of a "Mass Produced" Book of Hours
2005: Ken Mondschein (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
A Matter of Time
2004: Heather Blatt (First Year Essay Prize)
Memory and the City in Troilus and Criseyde
2004: Jonathan Armstrong (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Text and Tradition: The Journey to the Idea of the New Testament
2003: Heidi Febert (First Year Essay Prize)
"Roland is Brave and Oliver is Wise": The Meaning of Vassalage in The Song of Roland
2003: Heidi Febert (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Buckled, Wired and Pinned: The Mass Consumption of Metal Dress Accessories in Late Medieval England
2002: James S. Tedford (First Year Essay Prize)
A Case for the Interpolation of the Genesis 1:26 Periscope in the Sefer ha Berit of Rabbi Joseph ben Isaac Kimhi
2002: Rebecca Slitt (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Dedicated to Peace: Political Allegory in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae
2001: Co-Winner: Denise Griggs (First Year Essay Prize)
Chrétien in Context: Bibliothéque Nationale f.fr 1450
2001: Co-Winner: Thomas Zahora (First Year Essay Prize)
Laughing in the Cloister with the Philosopher
2001: Janine Larmon Peterson (O'Callaghan Essay Prize)
Ephemeral Boundaries: The Transmission of Alberic of Montecassino's Breviarum de Dictamine
2000: Maureen Horgan (First Year Essay Prize)
The Beguines of Leuven and the Crib of the Infant Jesus: A Closer Look