The Dissertation Prize is currently paused as the Cultural Studies program transitions leadership. Keep an eye out here for updated information. In the meantime, see information about how to apply in previous years below.
The Eric O. Clarke Dissertation Prize, jointly awarded by CLST and the Department of English, recognizes graduate students in English or CLST PhD certificate-holders (from any department in the Dietrich School) whose dissertations are of high quality and which centrally address one or more of the following fields of inquiry:
- LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) studies, queer theory;
- Feminist studies, feminist theory;
- Philosophy, critical theory, literary theory; or
- British or comparative literature and culture from the 18th to the 21st centuries.
The Eric O. Clarke Dissertation Prize, first awarded in 2013, was generously created in August 2011 by Dr. Petra Dierkes-Thrun (PhD ’03) and her husband, Dr. Sebastian Thrun, in memory of Dr. Clarke, who was a faculty member in the English Department and Cultural Studies from 1992 until his death in 2010. Eric did innovative work in nineteenth-century British literary studies and sexuality studies. He joined Pitt’s faculty as an assistant professor in 1992 and was promoted to associate professor in 1998. Dr. Clarke served as the English Department’s Director of Graduate Studies from 2001 to 2006, and he taught the CLST common seminar.
To be considered for the prize, the dissertation must be nominated unanimously by the student’s dissertation committee. Self-nominations are not accepted.
Previous Winners
2022 - Brittney Knotts, “Labor, Play, and Futurity of the Twenty-First Century Girl Coder” and Jordan Bernsmeier, "Aluminum Lesbians: Recycling Lesbian Legacy in Classical Hollywood"
2018 - Laura Stamm, "Sustaining Life During the AIDS Crisis: New Queer Cinema and the Biopic" and Dominique D. Johnson, "Beyond Bare Life: Onto-Epistemic Archives, Precarity, and the Praxis of Being Human"
2015 - Amanda Phillips Chapman, "Self-consciousness and Childhood in the Long Nineteenth Century"
2013 - Colleen Jankovic, “Cinematic Occupation: Intelligibility, Queerness, and Palestine"