The Rutledge Prize 2009: For Graduate Students Giving Papers at the scla Conference

Each year the Southern Comparative Literature Association offers a prize of $100 for the most promising work presented at its annual conference by a graduate student. The essay is also considered for publication in The Comparatist.

You may submit a paper for consideration for this award by sending it as an email attachment to the scla vice president. The deadline for submissions is November 15, 2010 with the prizewinner to be announced in the 2011 issue of The Comparatist. Send to: Dr. Paul Allen Miller, pamiller@sc.edu.

Since conference papers are often shortened from longer projects, students are encouraged to submit an essay-length version of their work that would be suitable for journal publication (no longer than 7,500 words). If publishable, prize essays normally appear in the next issue after the official announcement (i.e., a year and a half after the conference presentation), thus allowing ample time for feedback and advice from the editor.

Rutledge Prize Winner 2009

Leihua Weng, University of South Carolina

“Phenomenological/Hermeneutic Approach to Plato and Chinese Modernity”

Judges’ Citation

“This paper is clearly compelling and takes on issues of great weight. It’s also highly original. No one in English is currently doing work on the reception of Plato in modern China, even as reception is becoming an increasingly important topic in Classics and Comparative Literature both in the United States and the United Kingdom. Leihua’s focus on the paradoxical importance of a Straussian reading of Plato in post-Communist China is of particular interest to those interested in political theory as well as the politics of translation.”

Yi-Ling Lin, University of Illinois Champaign Urbana

“Plagiarism and Intertextuality: Ibuse Masuji’s Black Rain Reconsidered”

Judges’ Citation

“This paper is a well-documented and clearly argued intervention into the debate over Black Rain’s intertextual borrowings and the extent to which these borrowings can be considered plagiarism.”

Harry C. Rutledge, Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and an internationally recognized classicist, was the guiding spirit behind the founding of the Southern Comparative Literature Association March 28–30, 1974. He served as President, Board Member, and Conference Coordinator, but is best remembered for his enthusiasm in encouraging comparative work of all kinds. He also helped inspire the founding of The Comparatist.