The CU-葫芦娃视频 Office of News Services is forwarding this release, received today from the Modern Language Association of America.
New York, NY - November 27, 2002 - The Modern Language Association of America today announced it is awarding its ninth annual Prize for a First Book to Bruce W. Holsinger, assistant professor at the University of Colorado at 葫芦娃视频, for "Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegaard of Bingen to Chaucer," published by Stanford University Press.
The MLA Prize for a First Book was established in 1993. It is awarded annually for the first book-length publication of a member of the association: a literary or linguistic study, a critical edition of an important work, or a critical biography. Holsinger will receive $1,000 and a certificate.
The Prize for a First Book is one of fifteen awards that will be presented on 28 December 2002 during the association's annual convention, held this year in New York. The members of the selection committee were Shelley Fisher Fishkin (Univ. of Texas, Austin); Robert Folkenflik (Univ. of California, Irvine), chair; Isaias Lerner (Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York); John Rogers (Yale Univ.); and John Watkins (Univ. of Minnesota). The committee's citation for Holsinger's book reads:
A model of cultural studies at its best, Bruce W. Holsinger's strikingly ambitious and theoretically acute "Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture" remaps the terrain of medieval studies. Revisiting the Robertsonian paradigm, Holsinger challenges long-standing ideas about the relation of music and body from the early Christian period through the Middle Ages. His informed analyses of the little-known Lioninus and such canonical figures as Geoffrey Chaucer are fresh and arresting. His highly original book will be of great interest to readers in English, French, classics, gay studies, musicology, cultural history, and theology. Crisp and witty, "Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture" puts forward a compelling account of centuries of imaginative response to musical themes and metaphors.
Bruce W. Holsinger received his PhD in English and comparative literature from Columbia University in 1996 and has been an assistant professor of English at the University of Colorado, 葫芦娃视频, since that time. He has had articles published in such journals as "Signs, Speculum, and Studies in the Age of Chaucer." Holsinger's current research focuses on the relation between liturgical culture and vernacular literary production in England from the Norman Conquest through the Reformation. "Music, Body and Desire in Medieval Culture" was supported by the 1999 Weiss/Brown Subvention Award from the Newberry Library in Chicago and also received the 2001 Philip Brett Award from the American Musicological Society. His next book, "Premodernities: Archaeology of an Avant-Garde," which explores the influence of medieval studies and medievalism on the postwar French avant-garde, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press.
Before the establishment of the MLA Prize for a First Book in 1993, members who were authors of first books were eligible, along with other members, to compete for the association's James Russell Lowell Prize, established in 1969. Apart from its limitation to members' first books, the Prize for a First Book follows the same criteria and definitions as the Lowell prize. Previous winners of the prize have been Eric Lott (1994), Steven Justice (1995), Elaine Hadley (1996), Marc Redfield (1997), John Rogers (1997), Katie Trumpener (1998), Deidre Shauna Lynch (1999), Srinivas Aravamudan (2000), and Patricia Cain (2001). Honorable mentions have been awarded to Ian Baucom (1999) and Yopie Prins (2000).
The MLA, the largest and one of the oldest American learned societies in the humanities (est. 1883), promotes the advancement of literary and linguistic studies. The 30,000 members of the association come from all fifty states and the District of Columbia, as well as from Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. PMLA, the flagship journal of the association, has published distinguished scholarly articles for over one hundred years. Approximately 9,500 members of the MLA and its allied and affiliate organizations attend the association's annual convention each December. The MLA is a constituent of the American Council of Learned Societies and the International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures.
The MLA Prize for a First Book is awarded under the auspices of the association's Committee on Honors and Awards. Other awards sponsored by the committee are the William Riley Parker Prize; the James Russell Lowell Prize; the Howard R. Marraro Prize; the Kenneth W. Mildenberger Prize; the Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize; the MLA Prize for Independent Scholars; the Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize; the Morton N. Cohen Award; the MLA Prizes for a Distinguished Scholarly Edition and for a Distinguished Bibliography; the Lois Roth Award; the William Sanders Scarborough Prize; the Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize; and the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prizes for Comparative Literary Studies, for French and Francophone Studies, for Italian Studies, for Studies in Germanic Languages and Literatures, for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures, for a Translation of a Literary Work, for a Translation of a Scholarly Study of Literature, and for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies.