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  • 2012 Margaret Church MFS Memorial Prize

The Editors are pleased to announce the winner of the 2012 Margaret Church Memorial Prize for the best essay to appear in MFS. The Church Prize was established in 1984 in memory of Dr. Church, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Purdue University and a longtime editor of this journal.

The winners for 2012 are Matthew Hart and Tania Lown-Hecht, authors of “The Extraterritorial Poetics of W. G. Sebald,” which appeared in volume 58, issue 2 (pages 214–38).

Special thanks to Timothy Melley (Miami University) for choosing this year’s winner. In making his selection, Professor Melley writes,

In an impressively wide-ranging essay, Matthew Hart and Tania Lown-Hecht reveal the crucial role of “extraterritoriality” in the writings of W. G. Sebald. Relatively overlooked and sometimes misunderstood in literary studies, extraterritoriality has been at the heart of recent debates about political sovereignty, global migration, and human autonomy. The authors move deftly across Sebald’s entire oeuvre, tracing a “poetics of extraterritoriality” that not only reveals Sebald’s deepest commitments but also influences contemporary debates about cultural translation, nationalism, and “the state of exception.” The essay’s broad and salient framework, incisive readings, and theoretical engagement make it a model of literary study.

Professor Hart and Ms. Lown-Hecht received $300 and a certificate, a copy of which appears here. [End Page 463]

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