Elizabeth Dietz Memorial Award
The Elizabeth Dietz Memorial Award, established in 2005 in memory of Professor Dietz of Rice University, is given in alternate years to either the best recent study in English Renaissance literary studies or the best recent study in Tudor and Stuart Drama. The award consists of a certificate to the author and the publishing house and a monetary award to the author.
Elizabeth Dietz died of cancer in the spring of 2005. She had only been a member of the Department of English for a few years but she had come to mean a great deal to her colleagues in the department and the School of Humanities. She held creative writing and scholarly graduate degrees from the University of Iowa, and left a surprisingly forceful impact on the department and her students given the relative brevity of her time at Rice. Her courage in the face of successive illnesses and drastic treatments, her enthusiasm for Renaissance literature and art, and her devotion to her students moved her colleagues and friends to establish a memorial in her memory.
The award, made possible largely through gifts from her family and friends and resources from the Dean of Humanities at Rice University, is intended to honor Professor Dietz's capacity to inspire creative and innovative scholarship fully aware of the traditions from which it emerges.
The award is sponsored by an endowed fund under direction of the Office of the Dean of Humanities and the Department of English at Rice University and managed by SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900. Those seeking more information about the award process, or information on how to donate to the award fund, should contact SEL at 713-348-4697 or brownin@rice.edu.
All review copies received by our office are automatically placed in the running for the Dietz or Patten awards. There is no special application or submission process, other than to see that the journal has received your book or books to process for our omnibus reviews.
2019 Award Recipients:
Rachel Eisendrath
Barnard College
Poetry in a World of Things: Aesthetics and Empiricism in Renaissance Ekphrasis
University of Chicago Press
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Catherine Bates
University of Warwick
On Not Defending Poetry: Defence and Indefensibility in Sidney's "Defence of Poesy"
Oxford University Press
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Previous Award Recipients:
2018: Jeffrey Masten, Northwestern University
Queer Philologies: Sex, Language, and Affect in Shakespeare's Time
University of Pennsylvania Press
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2017: Henry S. Turner, Rutgers University
The Corporate Commonwealth: Pluralism and Political Fictions in England, 1516-1651
University of Chicago Press
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2016: Zachary Lesser, University of Pennsylvania
Hamlet after QI: An Uncanny History of the Shakespearean Text
University of Pennsylvania Press
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2015: Laurie Shannon, Northwestern University
The Accommodated Animal: Cosmopolity in Shakespearean Locales
University of Chicago Press
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2014: Brian Cummings, University of York
Mortal Thoughts: Religion, Secularity, and Identity in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture
Oxford University Press
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2013: Andrew Hadfield, University of Sussex
Edmund Spenser: A Life
Oxford University Press
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2012: Richard Dutton, The Ohio State University
The Oxford Handbook to Early Modern Theatre
Oxford University Press
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2011: Gary Taylor, Florida State University and John Lavagnino, King's College London
Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works and Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture
Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press
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2010: Margreta de Grazia, University of Pennsylvania
"Hamlet" without Hamlet
Cambridge University Press
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2009: Alison Shell, Durham University UK
Oral Culture and Catholicism in Early Modern England
Cambridge University Press
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2008: Charles Whitney, University of Nevada – Las Vegas
Early Responses to Renaissance Drama
Cambridge University Press
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2007: Robert Watson, University of California - Los Angeles
Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late Renaissance
University of Pennsylvania Press
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2006: Zachary Lesser, University of Pennsylvania
Renaissance Drama and the Politics of Publication: Readings in the English Book Trade
Cambridge University Press