José David Saldívar, professor of comparative literature at Stanford University, was awarded the 2016 Jay B. Hubbell Medal. The annual award, named for the founding editor of American Literature, is given by the American Literature Section of the Modern Language Association in recognition of a significant contribution to the field.
The annual Norman Foerster Prize for the best essay published in American Literature in 2016 was awarded to Meina Yates-Richard, for her essay “‘WHAT IS YOUR MOTHER’S NAME?’: Maternal Disavowal and the Reverberating Aesthetic of Black Women’s Pain in Black Nationalist Literature” (88:3, 477–507). Honorable mentions were awarded to Mary Grace Albanese for her essay “Uncle Tom across the Sea (and Back): Pierre Faubert and the Haitian Response to Harriet Beecher Stowe” (88:4, 755–82) and to James Dawes for “The Novel of Human Rights” (88:1, 127–57). Members of the judging committee were Michael Elliott (chair), Emory University; Nihad Farooq,...