Faculty and Student Awards

 

 

2014-2015 Department Awards

 

The Marilyn R. Waldman Award for best essay by an undergrad
  • Ryan Johnson, "Trans Futures: A Consideration of Transgender Youth, Transgender Visibility, and Transgender Citizenship" 
  • Honorable Mention: Will Myers, "The Ghost Incarnarte: The Commodity in Marx and Derrida"
The Richard Bjornson Award for best essay by a graduate student
  • Caroline Toy, “'The Right to Charity': The Alternative Economies of Pilgrimage"
  • Honorable Mention: Bennett Whitaker, "From Complexity to Novelty: A Non-Linear Dynamics Approach to Building Theory" 

Graduate Student Service Award: Jasmine Stork

The Margaret Lynd Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Department of Comparative Studies:
  • GTA: Nic Flores
  • Lecturer: Rita Trimble
  • Faculty: David Horn

Other Awards and Grad Student Accomplishments:

ZEYNEP AYDOGDU: Zeynep was awarded 2014-2015 Arts and Humanities Graduate Research Small Grant and a Comparative Studies Graduate Travel Grant. She presented a conference paper titled “Visualities of the Veil: Comics and the Shifting Perspectives in Muslim Self-Representation” at the 7th Annual Comparative Literature & Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM on April 3, 2015. AT the same conference, her paper was granted “The Stefania Gray Graduate Presentation Award” which is given annually as part of the UNM Department of Foreign Languages' Cultural Studies graduate student conference. 
 
CRISTINA BENEDETTI: In November, Cristina presented a paper the American Folklore Society Annual Meeting in Santa Fe titled “Festival Economics: Ludic Labor in Late Capitalism” on the panel “Thinking Through Abundance and Scarcity: Adaptations in Folk Economics.”  In March, she presented some preliminary research on her National Mall project at the DEALL-CFS Symposium on Chinese and North American Folklore. Cristina also participated in a group presentation in December for community stakeholders about Poindexter Village, as part of a public history course during fall semester.  And, as a culmination of her work as Graduate Archivist for the Center for Folklore Studies this year, Cristina is creating online galleries for the Ohio Arts Council Collections (1977-1982), which will help publicize the existence of these collections for future researchers. Cristina also received a Comparative Studies Graduate Travel Grant. Cristina also received the Gerald E. and Corinne L. Parsons Fund Award for 2015 from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The funding will support summer research at the LC and in  other DC archives for her dissertation work on the history of the Mall as a public space. Cristina will also be conducting field observations at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. 
 
KAY K. CLOPTON: Kay presented a conference paper at the National Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association on April 1, 2015. Her paper was entitled "Manga and Silent Film – Building a Bridge Between Modern Gitaigo, Giongo and the Benshi."
 
DAN DiPIERO: Dan presented “Beyond The Event: Contingency and Indeterminacy in Music and Politics” at the UC-Irvine Comparative Literature Graduate Student Conference, "N-Determination and Critical Practices of Resistance.” He also presented “No Such Thing: Rancière and Political Art” at the Ohio State University Comparative Studies Departmental Colloquium, “(Un)Disciplined: A Conference Around the Praxis of Interdisciplinarity.” He was on the organizing committee for that colloquium, and the graduate student representative for the Lecture Committee this year. Dan received an Arts and Humanities Graduate Research Small Grant and a Comparative Studies Graduate Travel Award to travel to the conference in Irvine. 
 
CAROLYN ELERDING: During the 2014-2015 academic year, Carolyn Elerding became involved with two cyberfeminist pedagogy and research organizations, FemTechNet and the Fembot Collective, and taught courses at OSU in feminist and postcolonial digital humanities, critical theory, and cultural studies of science and technology. She presented papers at two conferences, and her article "Mass Online Education: Dialectic of Enlightenment 2.0" was published in Mediations. She will attend the 2015 summer session of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University."
 
KATI FITZGERALD: Kati gave the paper “Tibetan Opera as Intangible Cultural Heritage: Ownership & Agency” at The Ohio State University Mershon Research Network in Cultural Resilience conference, “Sustainable Pluralism: Linguistic and Cultural Resilience in Multi-Ethnic Societies,” on September 5, 2014. She also presented “Historicizing Scripts of Tibetan Opera: Bibliographic Significance of the Biography of Nangsa Ohbum” on March 26, 2015 at the International Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature (CHINOPERL) in Chicago. She was the recipient of the 2015 Robert L. and Phyllis J. Iles Award for Graduate Study of Myth for her upcoming project “Performative Mythology: Tibetan Opera in America.” She will be continuing her studies next fall with a generous Chinese FLAS fellowship awarded by The East Asian Studies Center. 
 
MICHAEL MURPHY: Michael has co-written with UCAT Director Alan Kalish the following chapter, which is in press: Kalish, A., & Murphy, M. "Setting and Communicating Learning Goals and Expectations." In L. L. B. Border (Ed.), Studies in Graduate and Professional Student Development XX (Vol. 16). Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press. He also co-presented a poster at the annual Professional and Organizational Development Network (POD Network) conference in November entitled “Reassessing Goals for Center Social Media: Leveraging Offline Relationships.” 
 
GABRIEL PISER: Gabriel Piser's chapter "Participation and Transformation in 21st Century Appalachian Scholarship" has been selected for inclusion in a forthcoming volume from University of Kentucky Press called Appalachia Revisited: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives On Regional Continuity And Change. He presented his paper “Conflict, Solidarity, Imagination: Affect in Appalachian Development” at the 2015 Appalachian Studies Association Conference, where he also was offered membership in a number of the Association's standing committees. He was selected as a panel participant at the 2015 Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference, where he delivered a paper entitled “Subjectivity and Resistance: Recording/Recoding Circuits of Energy in Land-based Political Movements.” He presented his paper "Becoming Bodies: Affective Circuits in the Bakken Gas Fields” with poet and scholar Brett Zehner (MFA) at the 2014 Anthropocene Feminism Conference. At the 2014 conference for the Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences he presented his paper “Engaged, Collaborative, and Transdisciplinary: Experimentation in Anthropocene Environmental Studies.” He was also recently brought by Whitman College to run a non-violent civil disobedience practicum as part of their Power and Privilege Symposium. He has received support through the Comparative Studies Graduate Travel Grant, the Appalachia Studies Conference Scholarship, and the Imagining America Conference Scholarship.
 
AMANDA RANDHAWA: Amanda Randhawa received a travel grant from the Sawyer Seminar, “Crossroads: Culture, Politics, and Belief in the Balkans and South Asia” (supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation) and a Comparative Studies Graduate Travel Grant.. In November, Amanda also presented her paper, “Meenakshi's Other Face: Agency in the Construction of the Rural Divine in Tamilnadu,” at the American Folklore Society Annual Conference. In June she presided as chair on the panel “Linking Fluidities: Rural-Grey Areas and Class Mobility,” at the Conference for the Study of Religion in India. Amanda has also been very busy with the Religious Studies Roundtable and she founded the South Asian Graduate Studies Association. 
 
AFSANE REZAEI: In November 2014, Afsane presented a paper at the American Folklore Society’s Annual Meeting in Santa Fe, NM. The paper entitled “Political Humor in Trying Times: The ‘Thanks Rouhani’ joke cycle and its conflicting interpretations” was presented as part of the panel “Common Ground, Slippery Meaning: Humor, Liminality, and Emergence in Iran, Turkey, and Armenia.” The paper was awarded the Third Annual Bill Ellis prize given by the “New Directions in Folklore” section at AFS for the best graduate essay combining research and analysis on folklore and new media. My essay has also been submitted for peer review and publication in the section’s journal, New Directions in Folklore. Afsane was awarded a Comparative Studies Graduate Travel Grant as well as the Arts and Humanities Small Grant for presenting her research at AFS. In April 2015, she presented a paper entitled “'My Stealthy Freedom': Gender, Power, and Narratives of Public Unveiling in Iran” at the 8th IU/OSU joint conference in Folklore and Ethnomusicology in Bloomington, Indiana.
 
SARAH JASMINE STORK: Jasmine was the graduate representative for the Undergraduate Studies Committee. She acted as panel moderator for “’I Thought if I Worked Hard...’ Women and Work in Atypical Professions” at the 2014 National Women Studies Association Conference. She also received a Ray Travel Award and a Comparative Studies Graduate Travel Grant to give a paper entitled “Asexual-izing Sherlock: Asexuality in Sherlock Fanfiction” at the 2015 Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association Conference.
 
VIDAR THORSTEINSSON: In the Fall of 2014, Vidar presented his research on the gendered cultural representation of finance capital at the annual conference of the American Studies Association as well as presenting a working paper on the history and theorization of consumer finance at the Political Theory Workshop hosted by the OSU Department of Political Science. In Spring 2015, Vidar gave a paper at the annual conference of the American Comparative Literature Association, this time on banking and finance in contemporary post-finance crash Icelandic fiction. Also, he gave a paper on the theme of circulation and economic form in Eliot’s Daniel Deronda at the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies conference. He was awarded and Arts and Humanities Small Grant and a Comparative Studies Graduate Travel Grant.
 
J. CAROLINE TOY: With assistance from the Department of Comparative Studies and an Arts and Humanities Small Grant, Caroline attended the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in New Orleans, April 1-4, where she presented a paper titled “Fan Language and Folklore: Star Trek's Tamarian Strategy in Everyday Use.” She has served the department as the graduate student representative to the Graduate Studies Committee for 2014-2015, and assisted with events for the Religious Studies Roundtable.
 
ZIQI YUAN: Ziqi presented “Does World Literature Resemble a Market?: The Idea of World Literature in 1920s China,” at the 24th Columbia Conference on East Asia in Columbia University on February 20th. 
 
ENRICO ZAMMARCHI: Enrico presented a paper at the 2015 National Council for Black Studies conference, in Los Angeles, CA. He received a Comparative Studies Graduate Travel Grant and an Arts & Humanities Graduate Research Small Grant from the College of Arts and Sciences. He was one of the members of the organizational committee for the 2015 Hiphop Literacies Conference, “Hiphop Studies Futures,” at The Ohio State University. Together with the OSU Italian Club, he coordinated the visit of Italian-Ghanaian documentary director Fred Kuwornu.

 

 

2013-2014 Department Awards

 

Marilyn R. Waldman  Award for best essay by an undergraduate:

  • John Kendall, "Re-Urbanization of the Suburban City". The committee had great difficulty ranking the excellent and diverse papers in the pool, but John's paper particularly impressed us, because it put the Columbus cityscape, social theory and policy documents into lively conversation.  Kendall contends that the problem of proliferating parking lots in Columbus is a sign of the city's de-urbanization, and city planners' solutions, while couched in the language of cultural revitalization and cloaked in nostalgia for the pedestrian-friendly "Old Urban", produce only a two-dimensional, staged environment that is marketed to the very suburbanites who have fled.  Nowhere in these plans do the needs of ordinary city residents appear.  Kendall concludes with a plea for the rights of all people, marginalized as well as privileged, to the city.  
     
2013-14 Bjornson Award for best essay by a graduate student
  • Cristina Benedetti, “Protest, Performance, Politics, and Port-A-Potties: A Preliminary Look into Public Gathering Logistics for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” (submitted to CS 5957.02, Dorry Noyes).  The paper presents remarkable insights and builds the groundwork for a much more extensive investigation into the material work of organizing political gatherings. She shows how political organizer's own attention to basic sanitary requirements and infrastructures reveals, and helps us understand, their anxieties about being heard and about their claim on public space. Her paper provides an innovative approach to accessing the implicit, but sophisticated, understanding among Civil Rights activists of the conditions for their ultimate political success (and the exclusions it required).
     
  • Honorable Mention: Seth J. Josephson, “Boundaries of Affection: Immigration, Non-monogamy, and American Buddhist Identity” (submitted to CS 7380, Theresa Delgadillo)

The Margaret Lynd Award for excellence in teaching: 

  • Dr. Katey Borland (Faculty)
  • Dr. Nancy Jesser (Lecturer)
  • Brian Murphy (GTA)

Graduating Students:

BA:
Nicholas Anstine
Alycia Buenger, Summa Cum Laude
Christopher Capuano
John French
John Gattermeyer
Chelsea Heimlich
Jordan Kelsey
Jaz Robinson
Amira Siddiqi
Bradley Watkins
Adam Carl, Magna Cum Laude
Oliver Fisher, Magna Cum Laude
Andrew Philip, Cum Laude

BA, Religious Studies:
Yeshua Tolle, Summa Cum Laude
Amelia Troutman|
Carrie Zwayer

BA, World Literatures:
Alexandra Piccioni

MA:
Maria Barbero (MA)               Su’14
Nic Flores (MA)                     Su’14 (cont to PhD)
Matthew O’Malley (MA)         Su’14
Divya Sundar (MA)                Su’14


Damon Berry (PhD)            S’14
Tahseen Kazi (PhD)           S’14
Josh Kurz (PhD)                 S’14
Brian Murphy (PhD)            S’14
Rashelle Peck (PhD)          S’14
Ricky Crano (PhD)             Su’14
Oded Nir (PhD)                  Su’14

More Photos:

 

2012-13 Department Awards

 

Marilyn R Waldman Award for best essay by an undergraduate :  

  • Tamira Stephens, “Media Discourse and the Shroud of Turin,” in Comp St 651, Mike McVicar
  • Honorable Mention: Jordan Kelsey, “Altering Representations: An Analysis of Afro-Latin@s in Visual Media,” in Comp St 4802, Theresa Delgadillo

Richard Bjornson Award for best essay by a graduate student:  

  • Matthew O’Malley, “From Romanticism to Supermodernity and Back Again: Sections on the ordinary, the uneventful, and the scenes of genre in Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism & the work of Stanley Cavell,” in Philip Armstrong’s Comp St 8866, Culture and Capital.
  • Honorable Mention: Matthew Campbell, “‘Not Soundin’ like Yourself’”: Thoughts on the Adaptation of Other Communicative Genres in the Formation of an Auditory Media Ideology during the Vietnam War,” in Dorothy Noyes, CS 7350.01 Theorizing Folklore: Tradition and Transmission.

Graduate Student Teaching Award:  Vidar Thorsteinsson

Faculty/Lecturer Teaching Award:  Michael McVicar

Graduate Student Departmental Student Award: Joshua Kurz

Other Awards, Faculty:
American Academy of Religion Research Grant (2012), Hugh Urban
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2013), Hugh Urban
Arts and Humanities International Travel Grant, Julia Watson
 
Other Awards, Graduate Students:

Ray Travel Award (2), Lindsay Bernhagen
American Institute for the History of Pharmacy grant, Amy Gregg
Visiting Scholar, University of Oulu, Finland, Joshua Kurz
Arts and Humanities Graduate Small Research Grant, Joshua Kurz
Ray Travel Award, Joshua Kurz
Mershon Center for International Security Studies Graduate Student Travel Grant, Joshua Kurz
Dr. Gordon P.K. Chu Memorial Scholarship, Joshua Kurz
Acceptance to Futures of American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College, Brian Murphy
Arts and Humanities Graduate Small Research Grant, Brian Murphy
OSU-Marion Teaching Grant for travel to India, Conrad Robinson
FLAS Fellowship, Kelly Schultz
Patrick B. Mullen Award, Joanna Spanos
Coca Cola Critical Difference for Women Grant, Joanna Spanos
Mortar Board and Sphinx Faculty and Staff Recognition Award, Joanna Spanos
Daniel Walden Prize, Best graduate student paper Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association Conference, Lee Wiles

Other Awards, Undergraduate Students:
Outstanding Senior, Ohio Union Leadership Awards, Jordan Kelsey
Campus Impact Award, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Jordan Kelsey
Scarlet and Gray Grant, Danielle Lang
Election to Phi Beta Kappa, Stephen Meil
Maximus Scholarship, William Myers
Wolfe Study Abroad Scholarship, Katherine Petro
DISCO Research Grant, Andrew Philip
ASC Undergraduate Research Scholarship, Judith Rodriguez
Harvard Divinity School Grant, Tamira Stephens
Robert E. Reiter Prize for Critical Analysis (English Dept), Yeshua Tolle
Rosemarie Sena Scholarship, Yeshua Tolle

Graduating Students   SU2012-SP2013:

PH.D.
Lindsay Bernhagen
Jennifer Black
Kate Dean-Haidet
Peggy Reynolds
Elo-hanna Seljamaa
Beth Shively

MA
Amy Picknell

BA COMPARATIVE STUDIES
Raghe Ali Cum Laude
Katherine Ayers
Aaron Banks
Clayton Buffer
Matthew Grady Summa Cum Laude
Jordan Green
Dorothy Hauff
Shine Hawramani
Brooke Hoop
Konggrit Jarupan
Nathaniel Kralik Magna Cum Laude
Danielle Lang
Stacie Laparo Summa Cum Laude
Shelly Martin
Chelsea Mazik
Victoria McDonald Magna Cum Laude
Wesley Merkes Cum Laude
Jacqueline Perry Cum Laude
Brittany Regula
Judith Rodriguez Cum Laude
Tamira Stephens Magna Cum Laude
Susan Stute
John Wyman

BA RELIGIOUS STUDIES
Breonna Carter
Jordan Emmons

BA WORLD LITERATURES
Amy Bidlack
Jillian Ferrello

2011-2012 Department Awards


Marilyn R. Waldman Award for best essay by an undergraduate: 

  • Katerine Petro, "Starbucks' Contribution to Radicalized Modernity", CS 398, Nina Berman. 
  • Honorable Mention to Juwon Lee, South Korea, France, and Queer: Hello, My Love, thesis chapter, revised in CS 598, Julia Watson 
  • Honorable Mention to Wilfredo Santamaria, "Developing Sexuality: Arguelles' Crazy Wisdom", CS 242, Theresa Delgadillo 

Richard Bjornson Award for best essay by a graduate student: 

  • Lee Wiles, "Monogamy Underground: The Burial of Mormon Polygamy in the Graves of Joseph and Emma Smith", CS 826, Religion and Sexuality, Hugh urban. 
  • Honorable Mention to Vidar Thorsteinsson, "The Materialism of Indebted Absence", CS 711, Kwaku Korang

Graduate Student Teaching Award: Rita Trimble, Recognition to Vidar Thorsteinsson

Lecturer Teaching Award: Lucia Bortoli 

Faculty Teaching Award: PHilip Armstrong 

Other Awards: 

  • Presidential Fellowship: Ricky Crano (2011-2012) and Andrew Culp (2012-2013)
  • Siddens Distinguished Faculty Advising Award: Philip Armstrong 
  • The Arts and Humanities Research and Creative Activity (RCA) Grant: Philip Armstrong 
  • Mershon Grant for study in Finalnd: Josh Kurz 
  • Graduate Associate Teaching Award: Lindsay Bernhagen
  • Fulbright Award (Germany): Barry Shank 
  • G. Micheal Riley International Travel Award: Rashelle Peck 
  • Dr. Gordon P.K. Chu Memorial Award: Josh Kurz
Graduating Students   SU2011-SP2012:
 
• Ph.D. 
Saeed Honarmand
Wamae Muriuki
Rachel Wortman
Kate Dean-Haidet (expected end-of-quarter)
 
• MA
Seth Josephson
 
• Candidacy Exams
Andrew Culp
Amy Gregg
Tahseen Kazi
Drew Lyness
 
• MA
Kay Clopton
 
• BA 
Michelle Mendel
Maria Noah
Jessica Riley, Summa Cum Laude
Mercedez Thompson, Magna Cum Laude
John Bennett
Joshua Tisonyai
Shawna Hammond
Robert Jones, Cum Laude
Stephanie Brooke
Joshua Driesbach
Saehee Kim
Brett Weisman
Zachary Smith
Erik Hills
Michael Holbert
Aaron Hatchett, Magna Cum Laude
James Reising
Katie Connelly
Gabrielle Stanley, Cum Laude
Danielle Raub
Gerald Morton
Andrew Mayer
Jordan Kirk
Anthony DeLuca
Marina Trent
Christopher Burney
Victor Johnson
Katelyn Black
Lee Pepper
Alex McCue
Molly Saks, Summa Cum Laude
Megan Hernandez
Juwon Lee, Magna Cum Laude
Karla Figueroa-Gonzalez
Sunha Kim
Sarah Brower
Aaron Rau
 
B.A, World Lit
Bryan Brush
Angela Smith
Leah Delaney,  Magna Cum Laude
 

2010-2011 Departmental Awards
 

Marilyn R. Waldman Award for best essay by an undergraduate :
  • Marvin Brown, for “Making Politics Artful: Dizzy Gillespie’s 1963 Run for the Presidency.” Written for Michael McVicar in Comp St 651, American Conservatism in the 20th Century.  
  • Honorable mention to Emily Chen and Kelsey Griffiths.
Richard Bjornson Award for best essay by a graduate student:  
  • Vidar Thorsteinsson, “‘You cannot be in love with a word’: Immanent Love as Suspension of Legal Disjuncture in Breaking the Waves,” written for German 960, Christopher Menke  
Graduate Student Teaching Award:  Drew Lyness, Recognition  to Rita Trimble and Amy Gregg  
 
Lecturer Teaching Award: Michael McVicar, Recognition to Jason Payne and Susan Hanson
 
Faculty Teaching Award:  Leo Coleman, recognition to Maurice Stevens and Brian Rotman
 
Other Awards:  
• Critical Difference for Women Research Grant: Rashelle Peck, Lindsay Bernhagen
• Office of Diversity and Inclusion Education Award: Rashelle Peck.
• Ray Travel Grant to attend the Berkshire Conference of Women’s Historians: Joanna Spanos
• Department travel grant:  Lindsay Bernhagen
 
Graduating Students   SU2010-SP2011:
 
• Candidacy Exams
Damon Berry
Andrew Culp
Josh Kurz
Michael Murphy
Rashelle Peck
 
• MA
Kay Clopton
 
• BA 
Clara Alden-Coe, Summa Cum Laude, With Honors in Liberal Arts
*Philip Allen, Cum Laude, With Distinction. Second place in Humanities, Denman Research Forum “One Story at a Time” (Nina Berman), Pelotonia Research Grant, Arts and Sciences Honors research grant
Carl Baxter
*John Bennett
*Brittny Berry
Jonathan Blewitt
*Johanna Bogart, Magna Cum Laude, Honors and Scholars Outstanding Senior Award
*Chris Bowman
*Marvin Brown, Summa Cum Laude, With Distinction, Denman Research Forum “The Shifts of Métèque: Foreignness, Otherness, and National Identity in France,” (Maurice Stevens, Danielle Marx-Scouras);  Arts and Science Honors Undergraduate Research Scholarship for $5,500; Arts and Science Honors International Research Grant for $2,500; Todd A. Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male Certificate of Academic Achievement; 2011 College of Arts and Sciences Certificate for Excellence in Scholarship
Emily Brumit
Laura Burke
*Yu (Emily) Chen, Summa Cum Laude, College of Arts and Sciences Certificate for Excellence in Scholarship 2011 and 2nd Place for Global Health Initiative’s 5th Annual International Photo Exhibit, Photo Title “Pediatric In-Patient Wing”
Kaycie Clymer, Cum Laude
*Hadley Cluxton
Natalie Ciminello
*Nick Dominique, Cum Laude, With Distinction, Alpha Phi Omega, Alpha Iota Chapter Distinguished Service Key
*Jamie Freed
Joshua Getzinger
*Rachel Hershberger
Ashley Hines
*Brock Howard
*Antonette Hrycyk, Phi Beta Kappa and College of Arts and Sciences Certificate for Excellence in Scholarship
Kathleen Hurst-Kumpala  Cum Laude
Tad Inboden
*Luke Jones, Cum Laude
Matthew Katz
Leah Kavalec
*Valerie Kohlwey, Magna Cum Laude
*Jeremy Lutjens
*Emily Maggard, Cum laude
*Amanda Merritt
Erin Michaels
*Sam Pollak, Summa Cum Laude
*Nichole Moon
John Newman
*James Reising
*Sarah Schulze, Cum Laude
Corey Washer
*Leticia Wiggins, Magna Cum Laude
 

2009-2010 Departmental Awards

 

Marilyn R. Waldman Award for best essay by an undergraduate :   
Marvin Brown, for“Lil Wayne, the artist, Dwayne Carter, the boy, in The Carter” 
Written for Maurice Stevens in Film and Literature as Narrative Art.
 
Richard Bjornson Award for best essay by a graduate student: 
Oded Nїr for “Criticize &Punish: Critical Power/Knowledge & the poetry of Mohja Kahf,”  written for David Horn in seminar on Foucault.
 
Graduate Student Teaching Award: Amy Gregg  
 
Faculty Teaching Award:   Barry Shank
 
Other Awards:  
• Critical Difference for Women Research Grant: Rita Trimble
• Arts and Humanities Post-Prospectus Research Award: Rachel Wortman
• Consortium of Institutional Cooperation-American Indian Studies Consortium Graduate Student Fellowship; OSU’s Alumni Grant for Graduate Research and Scholarship; and the Heanon Wilkins Fellowship in American Studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, expected to lead to tenure-track position in 2011-12: Sande Garner
 
Graduating Students   SU2009-SP2010:
 
• PhD 
Tracy Carpenter
Kirsi Haenninen
 
• Candidacy Exams
Lindsay Bernhagen
Ricky Crano
Joanna Spanos
Rita Trimble
 
• MA
Keith Padgett
Talia Weisz
Lee Wiles-Op
 
• BA 
Jennifer Adkins
Samuel Beavers
Rebecca Boroff
Jeremy Cather
Todd D’Andrea
Samantha De Silva  - Magna cum laude
Andrew Fenton  - Cum laude
Christopher Fortney
Sarah Gange  - Magna cum laude
Nicholas Geisen
Cameron Goodyear  - Magna cum laude
Chelsea Guinty
Heather Hasbrouck
Christen Ireland
Christina Jackson  - Cum laude
Lindsey Jackson
Christine Johnson
Valarie Johnson
Bridgette Kreuz
Michael Alexander McDougall-Webber
Ryan McGuire - Cum laude
Nicole Musgrave - Summa cum laude
Gabriella Neuhart
Lauren Smith
Kyla Snow  - Magna cum laude
Haley Steed
Michael Wente
Michael Wiatrowski - Cum laude
Daniel Wigginton - Cum laude
Tiffany Wilhelm
Michelle Wirth
Brett Zehner
 

2008-2009 Departmental Awards
 

Marilyn R. Waldman Award for best essay by an undergraduate:
• Winner: Adrienne Coley (Tanya Erzen), paper on Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis
• Honorable Mention: Debra Van Camp (Peggy Reynolds), “A Tale of Two Big Macs”
• Honorable Mention: Haroon Iqbal (Tanya Erzen), “Gender and Sexuality in the Creation Museum” 
 
Richard Bjornson Award for best essay by a graduate student
• Winner:  Lee Wiles-Op (Hugh Urban), “If You Could Hie to Kolob: Mormonism and the World Religions Discourse”
 
Graduate Student Teaching Award:  Andrew Culp
 
Lecturer Teaching Award:  Jason Payne
 
Faculty Teaching Award:  Nina Berman
 
Graduating Students   SU2008-SP2009:
 
• PhD 
Rebecca Adelman
Alana Kumbier
Kennedy Waliaula
 
• Candidacy Exams
Kate Dean-Haidet
Saeed Honarmand
Peggy Reynolds
Beth Shively
Radhel Wortman
 
• MA
Carlotta Blackmon
Jessica Crusham
Andrew Culp
Sumiko Eguchi
Nicole Rearick
 
• BA 
Brent Biglin
Katherine Brewer
Adrienne Coley
Lydia Fleming-Wehausen
Jennifer Forestal
Aiysha Gatson
Tabitha Green
Sarah Ho
Leah Homan
Amanda Ihrig
Haroon Iqbal
Lindsay Jackson
Andrew King
Jason Lewis
Megan McGlone
Courtney Mericle
Michael Mohler
Katarina Nahs
Jason Newsome
Brian Packert
Steven Payten
Sean Robinson
Stacey Schlanger
Amanda Sykes
Rebecca Testerman
Jacqueline Wirtz
Ed Worso
Kathleen Wilson
Kelly Yingling
Kelly Young