The Monroe Kirk Spears Award

The Monroe Kirk Spears Award is presented annually to honor the distinguished and humane career of the late Professor Monroe K. Spears, sometime editor of the Sewanee Review and Libbie Shearn Moody Professor Emeritus at Rice University.

Because everything Professor Spears wrote is marked by clarity, economy, and felicity of expression and by elegant and discerning interpretation, the award recognizes the essay published in each volume of SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 that most nearly achieves these qualities and that has given the editors the greatest pleasure to read.

Volume 55 Award Recipient—Shannon Kelley for her Winter 2015 essay, “Amber, the Heliades, and the Poetics of Trauma in Marvell’s ‘The Nymph Complaining’”

The endowment to support this award has been generously provided by the Hobby Family Foundation.