Naomi Levine wins 2024 NAVSA book prize for first book, The Burden of Rhyme
Levine, Assistant Professor of English, will be celebrated during an event at NAVSA's annual conference this November.
Naomi Levine, Assistant Professor of English, has been named the winner of the 2024 North American Victorian Studies Association Book Prize for Best First Book in the Field.
Levine’s book, The Burden of Rhyme: Victorian Poetry, Formalism, and the Feeling of Literary History (University of Chicago Press, 2024) examines nineteenth-century ideas about the origin of rhyme and their significance for Victorian poetry and the development of literary studies.
The NAVSA book prize committee described The Burden of Rhyme as a “transformative and profound book” and a “highly original and luminously written reframing of Victorian literary history, one that promises to shape our understanding of nineteenth-century poetry for years to come.”
Levine’s research focuses on nineteenth century poetry and poetics, aesthetics, and the history of criticism. She has published articles in journals including Literature Compass, Victorian Literature and Culture, Modern Language Quarterly, Victorian Poetry, and others.
Her next book project, “Badness in Poetry,” theorizes an aesthetic category of “badness” and “considers the entanglements of judgement, pleasure, and interpretation in the study of poetry.”
Winners of this year’s NAVSA book prizes will be recognized at an event on November 15th as part of the association’s annual conference.