We are pleased to announce the winners of the VCologies Early Career Prize.
This year's Early Career Prize winner is Devin Garofalo for her paper "When Figure Fails."
An Honorable Mention goes to Kyle McAuley for his paper "'Lat.Long.': Geographic Description and the Imperial Romance."
“When Figure Fails” links a thick description of nebulae with an analysis of rhetorical failure. Our judges appreciated its brilliant account of “good” abstraction and its unique methodology. The essay, they note, offers a deft account of the precision and imprecision of nebulae in the context of figure and analogy, moving gracefully between its analysis of nineteenth-century sources and its interventions in contemporary criticism and theory.
“Lat.Long” analyzes the colonial erasure of the environment through the trope of mapping. The judges admired how it marshals unfamiliar archival documents alongside large-level claims on imperial history, the history of ecological thought, and literary genre and representation.
Many congratulations to Devin and Kyle!