We are pleased to announce not one year’s worth of Pacific Coast Philology Outstanding Article Award recipients, but two! Two separate Pacific Coast Philology Outstanding Article Award committees met throughout the summer, reading the eligible essays and then discussing them and their many merits. The decision of which essays to honor was particularly challenging given the outstanding quality of the eligible essays. But each committee is to be commended for their careful review and extensive, thoughtful discussion of each of the eligible essays. Thank you to both award selection committees! And congratulations to the award recipients. Please do read their outstanding articles, as well as the many other outstanding articles published in PAMLA’s excellent scholarly journal, Pacific Coast Philology. Current PAMLA members can read years of articles when logged into pamla.ballastacademic.com or a few “free to read” articles here.
Pacific Coast Philology publishes peer-reviewed essays of interest to scholars in the classical and modern languages, literatures, and cultures. Go here to find out more about how you can submit an essay to be considered for publication: https://www.pamla.org/pcpsubmissions/
2023 PCP Outstanding Article Award
The Award Selection Committee members for 2023’s Pacific Coast Philology Outstanding Article Award, Dr. Carole-Anne Tyler (UC Riverside), Dr. Matthew Warshawsky (University of Portland), and Dr. Russell McDermott (Dickinson College), have reviewed articles in Pacific Coast Philology issues 58.1/2 and 57.2 using the award criteria to choose which essays to honor out of the many excellent essays published: engagement, clarity and argumentation, intellectual sophistication, contribution to scholarship, and writing style. The committee was impressed with the quality of all the articles in these issues but ultimately chose “Out in the Street with Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Pinsky” (57.2), authored by John Schwetman, Associate Professor of English, University of Minnesota Duluth, to honor with the Pacific Coast Philology Outstanding Article Award. The committee also awarded two honorable mentions, one for “‘I Want to Be a Society Vampire’: Rudyard Kipling and the New Woman Vampire, 1897-1931” (58.1/2), authored by James Aubrey, Professor Emeritus of English, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and one for “Kafka, Jones, and Michelangelo: From Adam to Josef K.” (57.2), authored by Aili Zheng, Professor of German, Willamette University. Congratulations to these talented and hard-working PAMLA authors.
Award Winner
“Out in the Street with Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Pinsky” (PCP 57.2), John Schwetman (Associate Professor of English, University of Minnesota Duluth).
John Schwetman’s article, “Out in the Street with Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Pinsky,” situates poems about “the street” (“Under the Window: Ouro Prêto” by Elizabeth Bishop and “The Street” by Robert Pinsky) in the context of urban studies, including debates about whether modernist city planning and urban redevelopment of the sort advocated by Le Corbusier and Mumford were the best ways to foster urban democratic community. Schwetman contextualizes his discussion of the poems in the theories of Jane Jacobs and Michel Foucault, the modernism of the (then) new capital of Brasilia, and concerns over the impact of the automobile on public space and neighborliness. The committee found Schwetman’s article exceptionally engaging, clear, and well-written, appealing both to specialists in the fields to which it contributes and to non-specialists. It very successfully moved between analysis of urban theories and close reading of the poetry, paying particular attention to the gazes of the poetic speaker and neighbors in the city. The essay demonstrates how poetry can participate in conversations about public space and, in doing so, highlights the value of contributions by humanists and artists.
Honorable Mentions
“‘I Want to Be a Society Vampire’: Rudyard Kipling and the New Woman Vampire, 1897–1931” (PCP 58.1/2), James Aubrey (Professor Emeritus of English, Metropolitan State University of Denver).
James Aubrey’s article, “‘I Want to Be a Society Vampire’: Rudyard Kipling and the New Woman Vampire, 1897-1931,” focuses on the origin and afterlife of Kipling’s poem “The Vampire,” a response to the perceived threat posed in the late 19th-century by the emergence of the “New Woman” as antithesis of the Victorian “angel in the home.” More specifically, Aubrey focuses on a painting by Kipling’s cousin Philip Burne-Jones, the son of Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, which Kipling’s poem was written to accompany. The committee found Aubrey’s article exceptionally learned, engaging, and well-written, a masterful survey of the many novels, plays, and films the poem inspired over several decades and a good introduction to the theories of monstrosity and horror on which Aubrey draws to explain how and why the concept of the vampire changed over time and across genders.
“Kafka, Jones, and Michelangelo: From Adam to Josef K.” (PCP 57.2), Aili Zheng (Professor of German, Willamette University).
Aili Zheng’s article, “Kafka, Jones, and Michelangelo: From Adam to Josef K,” focuses on Kafka’s Der Proceß (The Trial), specifically Michelangelo’s fresco “The Creation of Man” and the parabola of the gate in the work, as well as film adaptations of the novel by Orson Welles and David Jones. Zheng analyzes the effects of transitional structures and gestures, including doors, windows, tunnels, handshakes, cleaning, and ultimately language itself, as formal devices in all three works. Zheng’s article explores how the concrete, perceptible, and “realistic” can conjure an enigmatic and abstract “beyond” that might be the unconscious. Zheng argues that as an audiovisual medium, film cannot rely on subtle shifts of perspective and tone for its effects as literature can, which would seem to make Kafka unadaptable; yet both Welles and Jones attempt it, though only Jones succeeds. Paradoxically, Jones’s mainstream realist techniques create a sense of the extraordinary beyond the ordinary, as in Kafka, whereas Welles’s modernist anti-realist techniques reduce the novel to an allegory of totalitarianism that eliminates the enigmatic. The committee found the argument original, clear, and persuasive.
2022 PCP Outstanding Article Awards
The Award Selection Committee members for 2022’s Outstanding Article in Pacific Coast Philology have reviewed issues 56.2 and 57.1 (2021-22). Using the award criteria of engagement, clarity, argumentation, intellectual sophistication, contribution to scholarship, and writing style, Dr. Satoko Kakihara (California State University, Fullerton) and Dr. James Aubrey (MSU Denver) have selected two articles to share the award and one to receive an honorable mention. One outstanding article is “Punch Lines, Punching Bags, and Mr. Punch: The Villainous Comic Jesters of Harold Pinter’s Short Political Plays,” by Judith Saunders, Associate Professor at Contra Costa College, in Pacific Coast Philology 56.2 (2021), pages 242-56. The other outstanding article is “From Pride and Prejudice to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Recognition or Radicalization,” by Magdalen Ki, Associate Professor of English at Hong Kong Baptist University, in Pacific Coast Philology 57.1 (2022), pages 4-25. The honorable mention award goes to “Glasgow Smiles Better: A Response to Frank Quitely’s Portraiture and The Kelvin Hall Clown (2019),” by Drs. Julie Briand-Boyd and David John Boyd, in Pacific Coast Philology 56.2 (2021), pages 278-86. Congratulations to these talented and hard-working PAMLA authors.
Co-Winners
“Punch Lines, Punching Bags, and Mr. Punch: The Villainous Comic Jesters of Harold Pinter’s Short Political Plays” (PCP 56.2, 2021, pp. 242–56), Judith Saunders (Associate Professor, Contra Costa College).
In “Punch Lines, Punching Bags, and Mr. Punch: The Villainous Comic Jesters of Harold Pinter’s Short Political Plays,” Judith Saunders describes the red-capped, hook-nosed, serial killer Mr. Punch, a descendent of the Italian Pulcinella of the commedia dell’arte, as belonging to the tradition of “bad” clowns—those tricksters who have populated the myths and folktales of cultures the world over for millennia. She compares Punch’s disturbing antics to those of the Pinter clowns who populate his short, political plays, One for the Road, The New World Order, Mountain Language, and his lately discovered sketch The Pres and an Officer. Although much has been written about Pinter’s “comedy of menace,” this article offers a new perspective, exploring the comic contrivances that are endemic to both a Punch and Judy Show and Pinter’s depiction of state-sanctioned brutality, and how Pinter exploits the comic to underscore his political message. Saunders’ essay uses Punch and Judy lore and the history of “bad” clowns to arrive at an insightful critique of works by Harold Pinter.
“From Pride and Prejudice to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Recognition or Radicalization” (PCP 57.1, 2022, pp. 4–25), Magdalen Ki (Associate Professor of English, Hong Kong Baptist University).
Dr. Magdalen Ki’s essay shows comparative poverty to be a central issue in the world of Jane Austen. In Pride and Prejudice, the greater gentry displays a wide range of passive aggressive behaviors to keep the lesser gentry at bay. Austen intends that the micropolitics of reserve can be replaced by the politics of redistribution and recognition, leading to better relationships between the self and the other. Austen adaptations largely adhere to this integrationist vision, the only exception being Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, for Grahame-Smith’s novel and Burr Steers’s film openly foreground the irreconcilable differences between the sadomasochistic gentry class and the anarchistic underclass. As the heritage film genre is updated to reflect the contemporary world order, the cinema of reverence and nostalgic catharsis gives way to the cinema of irreverence and visionary paranoia, foregrounding the anti-heritage agenda and the conspiratorial outlook in Hollywood film culture. Ki’s essay brings ethical insights to a thought-provoking discussion of this film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice as well as to Jane Austen’s works overall.
Honorable Mention
“Glasgow Smiles Better: A Response to Frank Quitely’s Portraiture and The Kelvin Hall Clown (2019)” (PCP 56.2, 2021, pp. 278–86), Drs. Julie Briand-Boyd and David John Boyd.
Dr. Briand-Boyd’s and Dr. Boyd’s critical response to the illustrated portrait The Kelvin Hall Clown (2019), by Glasgow-based comics artist Frank Quitely. The essay contextualizes the portrait of a clown not only in the tensely bound aesthetics of humor and tragedy but also specifically in the context of contemporary Scottish urban literature and culture. Beginning from a brief history of Scotland in the 1980s, the essay examines Quitely’s portrait as a carefully attuned response to questions of Scottish identity, masculinity, and the role that labor and violence play in the shaping of postindustrial cities like Glasgow. Furthermore, the essay muses on Quitely’s work in portraiture, and introduces readers to his portraiture not only as popular covers of superhero comics but also as examples of Quitely’s aesthetic and philosophical experiments with concepts of corporeality and faciality, which, in the authors’ estimation, offers vitalistic and existential insights that challenge national, classical, transcendent, or Cartesian models of subjectivity. Briand-Boyd and Boyd’s essay places Frank Quitely’s remarkable clown image into a deeply developed, local context.