ECARE announces the new AILC-ICLA Prizes for Graduate Students and Early-Career Researchers!

The ECARE Committee of the ICLA is pleased to announce the following prizes open to graduate students and early career researchers*:

1. Best Graduate Paper Prize: Awarded to a graduate student who delivers an excellent paper at an International Congress of the AILC-ICLA. The prize will be awarded for the first time at the 2022 ICLA Congress in Tbilisi. The paper can be nominated by any active ICLA member who heard the paper given on the ICLA programme by using a designated nomination form. The nominee must be an active ICLA member and enrolled in a doctoral programme in comparative literature or in a related field at the time of the Congress when the paper is given. The nominations will be sent to the Chair of the ECARE Committee before the General Assembly Meeting of the Congress in Tbilisi. The nominations will be announced at the General Assembly, and ECARE will contact the authors of the papers and ask for a clean copy of the paper and a CV by 15 September 2022. The length of the paper should remain at the 20-minute length as given on the programme. There will be a special event online before 31 December 2022 to announce the winners, whose names, affiliations, and paper titles will also be announced in the AILC-ICLA Newsletter and on the website. Winners will receive a cash prize of US $250 and publication of their paper in the Association’s journal Recherche Littéraire/Literary Research. Although the award will be conferred by December 2022, the recipient of the award will also be mentioned at the General Assembly of the next Congress in 2025.
2. First Book Subvention: This annual award provides funding for a subvention for an early-career scholar’s first book to be published as a monograph in the field of comparative literature, broadly conceived. The author must be an active ICLA member. The amount of the prize will depend largely on the subvention amount required by the publisher, but the prize will not exceed the equivalent of US $1500 in any given year. As more publishers are requiring authors to assume partial or full costing for the publication of their books, the high fees can be prohibitive for early-career scholars. The next deadline for nominations or applications is 15 May 2022 (extended deadline), and the winner will be announced at the General Assembly of the 2022 ICLA Congress in Tbilisi. In the years in which there is no ICLA Congress, this award will be conferred at a special online event before 31 December of the same year in which applications/nominations were made. A book proposal, a CV, a copy of the book contract detailing the subvention amount, and a sample chapter from the proposed book must be submitted for consideration by the deadline. The winner’s name, institutional affiliation, and proposed book title will be published in the AILC-ICLA Newsletter and on the website, and the book will be reviewed in Recherche Littéraire/Literary Research after its publication. The winners of this award in years in which there is no ICLA Congress will be mentioned at the next ICLA General Assembly.
3. Best Translation Prize: This award is for an outstanding translation in the form or an article, chapter, or other short work, published by an early-career scholar in the period between ICLA Congresses. For this round, we are accepting nominations/applications for a translation published between 01 August 2019 and 01 January 2022. The nominee or candidate must be an active ICLA member. The deadline for submission is 15 May 2022 (extended deadline), and nominations/applications will also be considered by the ICLA Research Committee on Translation. The translation can be between any two languages and applicants/nominees are required to submit the published translation, the source text, and a CV. The award will be announced at the General Assembly at the 2022 ICLA Congress in Tbilisi and carries a cash prize of US $1000. The winner’s name, institutional affiliation, and title of the translation piece will be announced in the AILC-ICLA Newsletter and on the website, and an abstract of the translation published in the Association’s journal Recherche Littéraire/Literary Research.

Completed applications from nominees or applicants with the required documentation for the First Book Subvention and Best Translation Prizes are due by the deadlines stated above, and those nominating must make sure their nominees meet the stated deadlines for these prizes.

Please send all documents as PDF files to ecare@brunel.ac.uk.

Late nominations or applications will not be accepted. Nominees for the Best Graduate Paper Prize will be contacted by ECARE and invited to send in clean copies of their papers given at the ICLA Congress and a CV by 15 September following the 2022 ICLA Congress.

* Given the volatile academic job market and the growing scarcity of entry-level, full-time, tenure-track or permanent-track academic positions in many parts of the world today, the ECARE Committee will use the widest possible discretion in determining early-career status as many PhD graduates are often in post-doctoral positions or fellowships and/or in temporary or part-time academic posts years before obtaining a full-time, tenure- or permanent-track academic position. This is why a CV is required as part of the application.

Donations

The AILC-ICLA gratefully welcomes donations to its ECARE Prize fund. These can be made by contacting one of our Treasurers (details here) or by making a credit card payment and selecting the Donations option. Thank you.