Three FAS Faculty recognized by Modern Language Association

Three FAS faculty members have been recognized by the Modern Language Association (MLA) for publications and contributions in their fields.

Priyasha Mukhopadhyay, Assistant Professor of English, was awarded the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for South Asian Studies for her book Required Reading: The Life of Everyday Texts in the British Empire (Princeton University Press, 2024). The book investigates how ordinary forms of writing—including manuals, petitions, almanacs, and magazines—shaped the way colonial subjects understood their place in empire. The prize, now in its third year, is awarded annually for an outstanding scholarly work in South Asian or South Asian diaspora literary or linguistic studies.

Naomi Levine, Assistant Professor of English, was shortlisted for the Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book for The Burden of Rhyme: Victorian Poetry, Formalism, and the Feeling of Literary History (University of Chicago Press, 2024). Founded in 1993, the MLA Prize for a First Book is awarded annually for the first book-length publication by a member of the association that is a literary or linguistic study, a critical edition of an important work, or a critical biography. In The Burden of Rhyme, Levine examines nineteenth-century ideas about the origin of rhyme and their significance for Victorian poetry and the development of literary studies.

Alex Gil, Senior Lecturer II and Associate Research Faculty of Digital Humanities in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, received an honorable mention for the Lois Roth Award for Translation of a Literary Work for his translation of Aimé Césaire’s . . . . . . And the Dogs Were Silent / . . . . . . Et les chiens se taisaient (Duke University Press, 2024). The committee described Gil’s translation as “an edition that will be of great value to anyone studying colonialism, postcolonialism, and the legacy of the Haitian and French Revolution vis-à-vis the notion of equality.”

The Lois Roth Award went to Paul Reitter, ASC Distinguished Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Ohio State University, for his translation of Karl Marx’s Capital, Volume 1 (Princeton University Press, 2024). Reitter’s translation was co-edited by Yale's Paul North, Maurice Natanson Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures.