Awards
The Robert B. Partlow, Jr. Prize
The Robert B. Partlow, Jr. Prize is named in honor of Robert Partlow, the original Secretary-Treasurer and one of the founding members of The Dickens Society. Bob Partlow taught at Boston University, the University of New Hampshire and Southern Illinois University, where he chaired the English Department from 1957 until he retired in 1979. Bob was also responsible for founding Dickens Studies Annual, a hard-bound collection of scholarly essays, published by Southern Illinois University Press, which he edited from 1971 to 1978. Thereafter the journal moved in 1980 to New York City, where it has been published by AMS Press in cooperation with Queens College and The Graduate Center of The City University of New York and continues as Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction.
Applications are invited for this award. It may be in the form of EITHER one stipend of $500 OR two of $300 (if two recipients are chosen), and is intended to defray costs of attending the Dickens Symposium, in order to deliver a paper on any aspect of Dickens’s life or work. The registration fee and cost of the Dickens Dinner will also be waived. Eligibility is restricted to graduate students, independent scholars, and non-tenured faculty who have been accepted to the upcoming symposium. Candidates should submit a CV and a completed paper of 20-minutes duration, to the Program Committee Chair. Should the paper be of publishable quality, the Dickens Quarterly shall have first right of refusal.
Recent Winners:
2024: Dean J. Hill (University of Birmingham), “Bridging Epochs: Exploring the Confluence of Dickensian Creativity and Artificial Intelligence in a Techno-Literary Landscape”
Honorable Mention: Christian Lehmann (Bard High School Early College), “Emily’s Dickens: Engagement and Reuse”
2023: Anya Eastman (Royal Holloway, University of London), “Mediated Perceptions, Refractions and Reflections: Reading the Dickens Museum as Pepper’s Ghost”
2022: Eleonora Gallitelli (Independent Researcher), “‘If the true story of the matter is to be told’: Dickens and the Neapolitan prisoner”
2021: Sophia Jochem (Freie Universität Berlin, “Fungi and the City: Dickens’s Urban Aesthetic of Decay”
2020: Matthew Redmond (Stanford University), “Beyond the Attic: Dickens and Little Women”
Symposium Bursary Scholarships
In addition to the Partlow Prize, there will be a number of Symposium Bursary Scholarships available; amounts awarded may vary depending on successful applicants’ expense estimates and distance traveled. For more information, see the conference details here.
The David Paroissien Prize
The David Paroissien Prize is awarded each year to the best peer-reviewed essay on Dickens published in a journal or edited collection. The Prize is named for David Paroissien, a founding member of the Dickens Society and also the founder of Dickens Quarterly, which he edited from its first issue in 1983 until his final issue in December 2020. As an editor he was rigorous, tactful, and generous, particularly with younger scholars. Under his direction, Dickens Quarterly attracted contributions from Dickens scholars around the world and became a leading venue for new work in the field.
To nominate (or self-nominate) an essay for the Paroissien Prize, please provide a copy of the essay and a cover email giving the name, email address, and institutional affiliation (if any) of its author. For the inaugural 2022 competition (essays published 1 January 2022 – 31 December 2022), send these materials to the Society Secretary at dickenssocietysecretary@gmail.com by 31 January 2023. A three-person committee comprised of Officers and/or Trustees will judge submissions. Please note that, in determining an essay’s eligibility for a given year, the actual date of appearance is what matters, not the nominal date of the journal issue, since it is common for journals to lag behind their publication date. Any author may be nominated for this Prize, whether or not they are a Society member. The Prize carries a cash award of $500 and waives the registration fee for the Symposium at which the recipient will be recognized.
2024: Sharon Aronofsky Weltmann (Texas Christian University), “The Littleness of Little Dorrit.” The Review of English Studies, vol. 74, issue 316, October 2023, pp. 697-713, doi: 10.1093/res/hgad061.
2023: Eva Dima (University of Cambridge), “’Wind, Wind, Wind, Always Winding Am I’: Dickens’s Metafictional Clockwork.” The Review of English Studies, vol. 73, issue 310, June 2022, pp. 552-567, doi: 10.1093/res/hgab094.
