Diversity Caucus

The Diversity Caucus has been created to facilitate discussion among NeMLA members about issues of diversity, especially as related to academic life. This group offers a space to bring about conversations among members with shared interest in Africana Studies and Diaspora Studies, and develop NeMLA sessions and initiatives.

Membership

Sign up for free membership to the Diversity Caucus to stay up to date on opportunities provided by NeMLA as well as on events and activities hosted at our annual convention.

Postcolonial Studies Essay Award

The Northeast Modern Language Association is proud to sponsor a special essay prize, awarded by the Diversity Caucus, for a revised paper in Postcolonial Studies presented at one of the previous two NeMLA Conventions.

Please email submissions as two separate Microsoft Word document files to postcolonial.essay.award@nemla.org by December 15 with:

a cover sheet with the title, author's name, address and academic affiliation
the essay with "NeMLA Postcolonial Essay Award" in the subject line

2023: Sayanti Mondal, Illinois State University, "The Gaze of the Margin: Agency, Identity, and the Postcolonial Storyteller"
2023 Honorable Mention: Omotoyosi Esther Odukomaiya, Southern Illinois University, "Africanfuturism: Disrupting the Science Fiction Genre"
2023 Honorable Mention: Shelby Ward, Tusculum University, "Geographies of Pleasure: A Feminist Critique on Hospitality, Cosmopolitanism, and Postcolonialism in Sri Lankan Tourist Materials"
2022: Shanaaz Mohammed, Davidson College, "Coralization: Coral Materiality in Khal Torabully's Poetry"
2021: Rituparna Mitra, Emerson College, "Precarious Duniyas in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: Life, Death and Repair in ‘Ruin-Worlds.'"
2021 Honorable Mention: Mary Cook, Lake Tahoe Community College, "On Reading Transformative Transnational Memoirs: A Study of Personal and Political Histories in Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I’m Dying"
2020: Ngwaba Ijeoma Ann, Federal University of Oye Ekiti, "Re-writing the Nation: History and Re-Historicisation in Chinua Achebe’s There Was a Country and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun"
2019: Kate Perillo, University of Massachusetts Amherst, "A Room Not One's Own: CLR James, Jean Rhys, and Anticolonial Imagination in the London Lodging House"
2018: Ayendy Bonifacio, Ohio State University, "¿A’ca’o Qué, Comadre?”: Border Languages, Xicanisma, and Ciudadanía in Ana Castillo’s So Far from God"
2017: Kate Perillo, University of Massachusetts Amherst, "The Speculative Caribbean: Technological Futurity in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber and Beyond"
2016: Stanka Radovic, University of Toronto, Mississauga, "'A Rose by Any Other Name’: Naming and Location in Caribbean Literature"
2015: Suzi Cater, New York University, "Don’t Trust the Author: Suspect Texts in Édouard Glissant’s Tout-monde"
2014: Laurie Lambert, University of California, Davis, "Romancing the Revolution: Black Radicalism and the Immigrant Writer in the Work of Dionne Brand"

Guidelines for Caucus Essay Awards

Essays should be between 6,000 and 9,000 words (there is a 10,000-word limit, notes and works cited included).
Submissions should be unpublished manuscripts revised and expanded from original papers presented at previous NeMLA convention(s).
Submissions should be written in or translated into English.
Current NeMLA membership is required to be considered eligible.
Each Caucus Essay Award winner will be awarded a $100 prize that will be handed out at the membership brunch, and their essays will automatically be considered for publication by Modern Language Studies. All essays are subject to MLS's double-blind review.

Learn more about awards and fellowships available to NeMLA members

Contact Information