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Gender Studies: Dorothy Berkson Award

About the Berkson Award

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Dorothy Berkson, professor emerita of English, taught at Lewis & Clark College from 1981 until her retirement in 2004. She died in April 2007. Professor Berkson was a presenter in Lewis & Clark’s first Gender Studies Symposium. For the gender studies minor, she designed a course titled Gender and Aesthetic Expression, which she continued to teach for many years.

The Dorothy Berkson Writing Award recognizes written achievement (e.g., scholarly essays, research projects,creative non-fiction, fiction, poetry, or playwriting) focused on gender and authored by a senior. The award winner is honored at a reception that celebrates Professor Berkson’s contributions to Lewis & Clark College and the excellence of current students who study gender through scholarly analysis and written expression.

Submissions may come from any field of study as long as gender is central to the work. The author must be a graduating senior. Most often the work will be produced in the senior year, but outstanding work from one’s junior year will also be considered. Submissions (maximum 5,000 words) must be accompanied by a faculty recommendation that provides context for the work and speaks to its merits.

Winners

2022-23

2021-22

2020-21

2019-20

2018-19

2017-18

  • Eva Gellman The Slipperiness of the Sublime in Eavan Boland’s “The Woman Who Turns Herself Into A Fish” 
  • Mikay Parsons Cultural Intelligibility and the Policing of Gender: The Tension Between Butler’s Theory of Performativity and Personal Experience 

2016-17

  • Erin Keoppen Wild Words, Space, Place and Gender in Tamil Feminist Poetry and Prose. 
  • Sully Pujol  Beauty is Truth, Truth Art(ifice) Female Creative Agency in John Keats’s Isabella, Lamia, and The Eve of St. Agnes. 

2015-16

2014-15

  • Annabel Saliba Carroll The Roles of Illness in the Works of Virginia Woolf.
  • Emma Post We Begin Our Tour of the Female Muse.

2013-14

2012-13

2011-12

  • Kemiyondo Coutinho Kawuna…You’re It.
  • Kathryn Kucera A Case for the Radical Potential of a Cyborg Poet.

2010-11

2009-10

  • William Haines Fluidity: Gender, Bodily Fluids and the Grotesque Language of Alexander Pope.
  • Maile Speakman No Hay Manera Apagar el Ocio (They Can’t Stop the Leisure): Queer and Countercultural Space in Contemporary Havana.

2008-09

  • Kimberly Fanshier Bad Hour.
  • Kacie Dalziel Long Live the King! Gender Performance and the Politics of Drag Kings.

Librarian

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Elaine Hirsch
she/her
Contact:
Watzek Library 236
503-768-7288