American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Women's Caucus
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  • About
    • Board
    • Past Caucus Chairs
    • Past Caucus Panels
    • Women's Caucus History
  • Announcements
    • ASECS 2023 Women's Caucus Sessions
    • ASECS Town Hall
    • ASECS Policies on Sexual Harassment and Professional Conduct
  • Prizes and Awards
    • Émilie Du Châtelet Award
    • Women's Caucus Editing and Translation Award
    • Catherine Macaulay Graduate Student Prize
    • Women's Caucus Intersectional Award
  • Blog
  • Publications
    • CFPs
  • Members
    • Past Members of the Month
  • Mentoring
    • Invisible Service
  • Donors
  • Contact Us
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The Catharine Macaulay Prize Winner for 2023: 

Fauve Vandenberge: “Frances Brooke's Queer Forms in The Old Maid (1755-56)

This essay presents an exceptionally clear, well-argued claim that the “representations of non-normative and queer lives” in Frances Brooke’s The Old Maid (1755-56) “allow us to question the periodical genre’s supposed central role in establishing and normalizing heteronormativity.” The committee was struck at how Vandenberghe manages to both generously build on a range of previous scholarship and bring in an impressive number of close readings to bolster her argument. Her claim that the periodical’s “open-ended” nature pairs with Brooke’s eidolon Mary Singleton to rupture the progression of her orphaned niece Julia and friend Rosara “towards the logical conclusion of marriage" is particularly compelling. The piece beautifully brings together the queer potential of form and theme with a strong grounding in queer theory and recent eighteenth-century scholarship, illustrating both the expectations for women during the period and possibilities that exist beyond those expectations that were developing in relation to sentiment. The writing itself is especially clear and coherent, leading the reader through a series of complex but well-articulated points with ease and confidence. Overall, this essay represents a clear contribution to conversations around the link between periodicals and the increasing entrenchment of heteronormativity over the course of the century.
The Catharine Macaulay Prize deadline for submission: September 1, 2023

The Catharine Macaulay Prize is an annual award made by the Women’s Caucus of ASECS for the best graduate student paper on a feminist or gender studies subject presented at the ASECS Annual Meeting or at any of the regional meetings during the academic year.  In addition to special recognition, the prize carries a cash award of $1000.  

To be eligible for the prize, papers must advance understanding of gender dynamics, women’s experience, and/or women's contributions to eighteenth-century culture, or offer a feminist analysis of any aspect of eighteenth-century culture and/or society. 

The paper you submit for the prize should be the one you presented at the conference without expansion or significant revision.  

Submissions for the Catharine Macaulay Prize must be sent directly to the ASECS office for consideration.

2397 NW Kings Blvd
PMB 114
Corvallis, OR 97330
or as an email attachment (Word file or PDF) uploaded to this form: https://forms.gle/6qEPUury1SHJojJD6.

The winner of the prize will be notified soon after the committee has made its decision and will be announced at the following year’s annual meeting and the Women's Caucus luncheon. 
Past Winners
  • 2022: Ziona Kocker, "The 'Pretty Young Gentleman': Age, Embodiment, and Queerness in The Country Wife"
  • 2021: no prize given.
  • 2020: Rachel Gevlin, "Voluntary Celibates; Or, Why Sir Charles Grandison is (a) No Wanker"
  • 2019: Bethany Qualls, "Talking Statues, Treasonous Bishops, and Grave Robbery: Creating the Celebrated Sally Salisbury’s Print Afterlives”
  • Honorable mention: Erin A. Spampinato, “The Origins of the Rape-As-Aberration Plot; or, was Samuel Richardson a Second Wave Feminist?”
  • 2018: Kate Ozment, "Book History, Women, and the Canon: Theorizing Feminist Bibliography"
  • Honorable mention: Paris Spies-Gans, "'Exercising it as a profession': The Rise of the Female Artist in London and Paris, 1760-1815"
  • 2017: Cassie Childs, "Eating Local: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Italian Garden"
  • 2016: Lauren Miskin, "Stitching Selfhood: Late Eighteenth-Century Samplers and the Crafting of British Femininity"
  • 2015: Rachael Schaffner, "Matters of Imag(in)ed Memory and Happy Forgetting in Frances Burney's Camilla"
  • 2014:  Megan Hunt, "Women Without History"
  • Honorable Mentions: 
  • Michael Nicholson, "A Singular Experiment"
  • Arelene Leis, "Intellectual Collecting as Sociable Display"
  • 2013:  Glenda Goodman, “The Economy of Accomplishment: Aesthetics and Labor in Women’s Musical Lives” 
  • 2012: Kate Hamilton, “She ‘came up Stairs into the World’: Elizabeth Barry and Restoration Celebrity”
  • 2011: Susan Muse, “From Femme Covert to Feme Overt: Public Justice in Eliza Haywood’s The Distress’d Orphan” and Edward Kozaczka, “Queer Gardens: Cultivating Desire in Penelope Aubin’s Lucinda" 
  • 2010: Julia H. Fawcett, "Charlotte Charke and the Over-Expression of Gender"
  • 2009: Caroline Wigginton, "Faithful Translations: Reconsidering Coosaponakeesa's Acts of Interpretive Authorship on the Creek Frontier"
  • 2008: Sonja Boon, "Does a Dutiful Wife Write, or, Should Suzanna Get Divorced? Reflections on Suzanne Cuchod Necker, Divorce, and the Construction of the Biological Subject"
  • 2007: JoEllen DeLucia, "'Beyond the Narrow House': The Ossian Poems, Gender, and Empire"
  • 2006: No prize given.
  • 2005: No prize given.
  • 2004: Elizabeth Bennet, "Divergent Paths to Virtue in the Lives and Writings of Elizabeth Carter and Catherine Talbot"
  • 2003: Melissa Ganz, "Moll Flanders and English Marriage Law"
  • 2002: Andrew Piper, "Lost in Translation: German Women Translators around 1800"
  • 2001: Jord/ana Rosenberg, "The Bosom of the Bourgeoisie"
  • 2000: Anita de Freitas Boe, "'Neither Is It All Becoming': Edmund Burke's A Philosophic Enquiry, the Beautiful, and the Disciplining of Desire"
  • 1999: Theresa Ann Smith, "The Proposal for a Female National Dress in Eighteenth-Century Spain"
  • 1998: Lisa Zunshine: "'What door would it open to scandal...': Female Philanthropy and the London Foundling Hospitals"
  • 1997: Elizabeth Child, "Geography, Gender, and Print Culture: [Re]Locating England's Provincial Women Writers"
  • 1996: Mary Catherine Moran, "Eighteenth-Century Conduct Literature and Scottish Conjectural History on the Role of Women in the Progress of Mankind" 
  • 1995: Melissa Hyde, "Ambiguities of Gender Identity in François Boucher's Pastoral Paintings"
  • 1994: Rebecca Messbarger, "Masked Resistance: A Woman's Defense of Women's Education in Eighteenth-Century Italy"
  • 1993: Alessa Johns, "Engendering Utopias: Examples from Mid-Eighteenth-Century England"
  • 1992: Charlotte Sussman, "Consuming Anxieties: Women and the Politics of Sugar, 1792"
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