Prestigious prize for Master’s student
Designed to promote the early career research of postgraduate students, the prize is open to postgraduate students at both Master’s and Doctorate level.
Emma submitted her paper—a condensed version of the first chapter of her thesis on female melancholy in early modern literature—in advance of the conference and was told she had won the award before she arrived.
The paper, Female melancholy from within and without, looks at the mechanics of Ophelia’s speech in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and in An Collins’ poetry.
“I’m interested in the method of composition in both texts and how it varies in terms of citation. Ophelia’s speech is made up of a whole hodgepodge of different cultural references and there’s no real subjective expression. Whereas An Collins’ verse is very pious—straight from the Christian soul—so for me, it was a nice comparison.”
During the conference, Emma and the other finalists presented their papers during a student plenary session.
“I’d been to one other small conference where I’d presented to a classroom of people, but this was in a theatre, so it was quite overwhelming.”
Emma is part of Associate Professor Sarah Ross’ Marsden-funded project, Woe is me: Women and complaint in the English Renaissance, which is looking at the articulation of grief and lamentation among women writers of the English Renaissance.
Associate Professor Ross says Emma’s research is a great fit with themes of the Marsden project.
“Emma is taking a new approach to work that is very canonical as well as working with texts that aren’t looked at a lot. She’s doing terrific work and the prize is a real honour.”