Émilie Du Châtelet Award
Deadline: January 15, 2025
Award: $500
The Émilie Du Châtelet Award is an annual prize made by the ASECS Women’s Caucus to support research in progress by an independent or adjunct scholar on a feminist or women's studies subject. Projects typically fall within the period of 1660-1820 though projects spanning a longer time period will also be considered.
The award is open to ASECS members who have earned a Ph.D and do not currently hold a tenured, tenure-track, or job-secure position in a college or university, nor any permanent position that requires or supports the pursuit of research. Faculty emeritae are not eligible.
Eligible projects must advance the understanding of women's experiences and contributions to eighteenth-century culture or offer a feminist analysis of any aspect of eighteenth-century culture and/or society. The award is meant to fund works in progress, commensurate in scope with a scholarly article or book chapter, for which some research is already under way. The award carries a prize of $500.
The award will be publicly announced at the annual ASECS meeting Women's Caucus luncheon. Historically, the award winner has served on the award selection committee for the subsequent year.
Within a year of the award announcement the winner must submit to the caucus chairs a brief written report on the progress of the project. Then the winner will receive the prize by check or direct deposit from the ASECS office.
Applications must include a curriculum vitae, a one-to-three page research proposal outlining the project and the candidate's plans for using the funds, and evidence of progress on this project (e.g., an accepted conference paper, a related publication, an essay submitted for publication).
Please submit your application here.
Deadline: January 15, 2025
Award: $500
The Émilie Du Châtelet Award is an annual prize made by the ASECS Women’s Caucus to support research in progress by an independent or adjunct scholar on a feminist or women's studies subject. Projects typically fall within the period of 1660-1820 though projects spanning a longer time period will also be considered.
The award is open to ASECS members who have earned a Ph.D and do not currently hold a tenured, tenure-track, or job-secure position in a college or university, nor any permanent position that requires or supports the pursuit of research. Faculty emeritae are not eligible.
Eligible projects must advance the understanding of women's experiences and contributions to eighteenth-century culture or offer a feminist analysis of any aspect of eighteenth-century culture and/or society. The award is meant to fund works in progress, commensurate in scope with a scholarly article or book chapter, for which some research is already under way. The award carries a prize of $500.
The award will be publicly announced at the annual ASECS meeting Women's Caucus luncheon. Historically, the award winner has served on the award selection committee for the subsequent year.
Within a year of the award announcement the winner must submit to the caucus chairs a brief written report on the progress of the project. Then the winner will receive the prize by check or direct deposit from the ASECS office.
Applications must include a curriculum vitae, a one-to-three page research proposal outlining the project and the candidate's plans for using the funds, and evidence of progress on this project (e.g., an accepted conference paper, a related publication, an essay submitted for publication).
Please submit your application here.
Émilie Du Châtelet Award Winner for 2024:
Kelly Plante: "Death Writing: Consolidating Power in the Atlantic World"
We are pleased to award Kelly Plante the Émilie du Châtelet prize for 2024. Kelly’s project, Death Writing: Consolidating Power in the Atlantic World (1730-1840) examines a category of writing about death that Kelly describes as initially comprised of a variety of death-related genres, including hagiography, epitaph, eulogy, and death notices, that gradually became consolidated into one genre, the obituary. Kelly uses examples of death writing from the Gentleman’s Magazine, which published the first death notices section to be labeled “Obituaries” in 1780, and examines the ways in which death notices intersected with the novel. The committee was particularly interested in Kelly’s focus on gender, race, and indigeneity in death notices across the Atlantic world, and we look forward to learning more about Kelly’s conception of death writing as a genre that is particularly insightful with respect to eighteenth-century ideas of bodily sovereignty as a result of the work done as part of this award. Congratulations, Kelly, and enjoy your time working at the Oakland University Library and at the Clements Library in Ann Arbor!
Kelly Plante: "Death Writing: Consolidating Power in the Atlantic World"
We are pleased to award Kelly Plante the Émilie du Châtelet prize for 2024. Kelly’s project, Death Writing: Consolidating Power in the Atlantic World (1730-1840) examines a category of writing about death that Kelly describes as initially comprised of a variety of death-related genres, including hagiography, epitaph, eulogy, and death notices, that gradually became consolidated into one genre, the obituary. Kelly uses examples of death writing from the Gentleman’s Magazine, which published the first death notices section to be labeled “Obituaries” in 1780, and examines the ways in which death notices intersected with the novel. The committee was particularly interested in Kelly’s focus on gender, race, and indigeneity in death notices across the Atlantic world, and we look forward to learning more about Kelly’s conception of death writing as a genre that is particularly insightful with respect to eighteenth-century ideas of bodily sovereignty as a result of the work done as part of this award. Congratulations, Kelly, and enjoy your time working at the Oakland University Library and at the Clements Library in Ann Arbor!
Past Winners
- 2023: Jennifer Golightly: "Genre, Gender-Bending, and the Marriage Plot in British Fiction of the Late 18th Century
- 2022: Kimary Fick: ‘Gedanken über die Musick’: Duchess Anna Amalia (1739–1807) as
Enlightened Musikkennerin” - 2021: Sarabeth Grant, "Frightful Extravagancies: Passion, Society, and the Self in Eliza Haywood"
- 2020: Cristina Martinez, "Jane Hogarth: The Untold Story of an 18th-Century Printseller and Defender of Copyright Law"
- 2019: Freya Gowerly, "Collage before Modernism? Periodization, Gender and Eighteenth-Century Women's Collage"
- 2018: Kristin O'Rourke, Toilettes
- 2017: Nicole Garret, "'Alter'd Courses of Action': Maternal Grief and Radical Change on the Eighteenth-Century English Stage"
- 2016: No prize given.
- 2015: Dr. Anna Ezekiel, Karoline von Günderrode
- 2014: No prize given.
- 2013: No prize given.
- 2012: A. L. Gust, “Portraits of Exile: ‘civilisation’ and the conceptualization of belonging, c. 1765-1830”
- 2011: Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, “When Fashion Sets Sail: Maritime Modes in Pre-Revolutionary France”
- 2010: No prize given.
- 2009: Emily Bowles-Smith, "Mixed-gender Bodies and Mixed Genders: The Role of the 'Female Husband' in Eighteenth-Century Prose Narratives by Women"
- 2008: No prize given.
- 2007: Olga E. Glagoleva, "Women's Honor, or the Story with a Pig: Everyday Life of Noblewomen in the Eighteenth-Century Russian Provinces"
- 2006: No prize given.
- 2005: No prize given.
- 2004: Susan B. Iwanisziw, "Interracial Concubinage in the Long Eighteenth Century: Two Exemplary Women"
- 2003: Kathleen M. Oliver, "'The Intended Heroine of this Work': The Adolescent Female in Georgian Society, 1714-1830"