GSNA Essay Prize
The Goethe Society of North America is proud to award two annual prizes of $500 for the best essay published on Goethe, his times, and/ or contemporary figures. Essays written by a North American scholar or a current member of the GSNA are all eligible, as are articles published in the Goethe Yearbook.
For submission guidelines and further details see the latest announcements.
GSNA Essay Prize Winners
2023
Meryem Deniz, “The Entanglements of Matter, Mind and Meaning: Novalis’s ‘Elastic Mode of Thinking’,” The Germanic Review 98, no. 3, pp. 249-263.
Honorable Mention: Mary Helen Dupree, “Mannheim and Company: Gender, Economics, and Moderate Sturm und Drang in J.M.R. Lenz’s Der Landprediger (1777).”
2022
Michael Saman, “Reason has its epochs: Schiller, Goethe, Golgotha, and the intertextual construction of the Absolute in Hegel,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 96 (2022): 63-90.
Honorable Mention: Stephen Klemm, “Between Rationalism and Romanticism: Blanckenburg’s Versuch über den Roman and the Transformation of Rationalist Metaphysics,” The German Quarterly 95.3 (Summer 2022): 230-43.
2021
Stefan Höppner and Ulrike Trenkmann, “World on a Shelf: Submissions of Weltliteratur in Goethe's Private Library - A Quantitative Approach,” PEGS 19.1 (2021): 13-30.
2020
Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge, “Karl Phillip Moritz as Cognitive Narratologist: Travel Writing, Visualization, and Literary Experience,” Lessing Yearbook XLVII (2020): 159-77.
Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge, “Aural Enlightenment: Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's Contributions to New Enlightenment Aesthetics,” The Germanic Review 95.3 (2020): 219-33.
Honorable Mention: Karin Wurst, “Weimar: An Experiment in Creativity,” Yearbook 27 (2020): 165-83.
2019
Daniel Nolan, "'I too am Naked': Kleist, Habermas, and the Epigrammatic Exposure of Literary Honesty" in the German Studies Review 42.1 (2019): 19-36.
Anna-Lisa Baumeister, "'Sie scheint auch mehr zu donnern und blitzen, als zu reden.' Zur Meteorologisierung der Sprache im Drama der 1770er Jahre" in The Germanic Review 94.3 (2019): 209-227.
Honorable Mention: W. Daniel Wilson, "'Global Mission': The Goethe Society of Weimar in the Third Reich" in the Goethe Yearbook 26 (2019): 21-37.
2018
Bettina Brandt, “Taming Foreign Speech: Language Politics in Shadow Plays around 1800,” German Studies Review 41.2 (2018): 355-372.
Heidi Schlipphacke, “Kinship and Aesthetic Depth: The Tableau Vivant in Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften,” Publications of the English Goethe Society 87.3 (2018): 147-165.
Honorable Mention: Jessica C. Resvick, “Repetition and Textual Transmission: The Gothic Motif in Goethe’s Faust and “Von deutscher Baukunst,” Goethe Yearbook XXV (2018): 133-160.
2017
Gabriel Trop, “Goethe’s Faust and the Absolute of Naturphilosophie, The Germanic Review92.4 (2017): 388-406.
Honorable Mention: Leif Weatherby, “A Reconsideration of the Romantic Fragment,”The Germanic Review 92.4 (2017): 407-425.
2016
Gabrielle Bersier, “‘Hamiltonian-Hendelian’ Mimoplastics and Tableau of the Underworld: The Visual Aesthetics of Goethe’s 1815 Proserpina Production,” Goethe Yearbook 23 (2016): 171-94.
Bryan Klausmeyer, “Fragmenting Fragments: Jean Paul’s Poetics of the Small in “Meine Miszellen,” Monatshefte 108.4 (Winter 2016): 485-509.
2015
Stephanie M. Hilger, “Orientation and Supplementation: Locating the ‘Hermaphrodite’ in the Encyclopédie,” Goethe Yearbook 22 (2015): 169-187.
Heather Sullivan, “Nature and the ‘Dark Pastoral’ in Goethe’s Werther,” Goethe Yearbook 22 (2015): 115-132.
Honorable Mention: Jacob Denz, “Rigorous Mediacy: Addressing Mother in Hölderlin’s, ‘Am Quell der Donau,’ ‘Die Wanderung,’ and ‘An die Madonna’,” MLN 130.3 (2015): 554-579.
2014
David Wellbery, “On the Logic of Change in Goethe’s Works,” Goethe Yearbook 21 (2014): 1-21.
2013
Patricia Anne Simpson, “Sacred Maternity and Secular Sons: Hölderlin’s Madonna as Muse,” in Religion, Reason, and Culture in the Age of Goethe, eds. Elisabeth Krimmer and Patricia Anne Simpson (Boydell & Brewer: Woodbridge, 2013), 187-206.
2012
Eleanor ter Horst, “Masks and Metamorphoses: The Transformation of Classical Tradition in Goethe’s Römische Elegien,” German Quarterly 85.4 (2012): 401-19.
2011
John H. Smith, “Living Religion as Vanishing Mediator: Schleiermacher, Early Romanticism and Idealism,” German Quarterly 84.2 (2011): 137-158.
2010
Dalia Nassar, “From a Philosophy of Self to a Philosophy of Nature: Goethe and the Development of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 92.3 (2010): 304-321.
2009
Sara Eigen Figal, “When Brothers are Enemies: Frederick the Great’s Catechism for War,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 43:1 (2009): 21-36
2008
Tobias Boes, “Apprenticeship of the Novel: The Bildungsroman and the Invention of History, ca. 1770-1820,” Comparative Literature Studies 45.3 (2008).
2007
Christian Weber, “Goethes ‘Ganymed’ und der Sündenfall der Ästhetik,” Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift 81: 317-45.
2006
Andrew Piper, “Rethinking the Print Object: Goethe and the Book of Everything,” PMLA121.1 (2006): 124-138.
2005
Elisabeth Krimmer, “‘Eviva il Coltello’? The Castrato Singer in Eighteenth-Century German Literature and Culture,” PMLA 120.5 (2005): 1543-1559.
2004
Edgar Landgraf, “Romantic Love and the Enlightenment: From Gallantry and Seduction to Authenticity and Self-Validation,” German Quarterly 77.1 (2004): 29-46.
Karin Schutjer, “Beyond the Wandering Jew: Anti-Semitism and Narrative Supersession in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre,” German Quarterly 77.4 (2004): 389-407.
2003
Karin Barton, “Apum Rex/Regina: Goethes Bienenlehre als Schlüssel zu Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren,” in Body Dialectics in the Age of Goethe, ed. Marianne Henn and Holger A. Pausch (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003), 117-67.
2002
Horst Lange, “Wolves, Sheep, and the Shepherd: Legality, Legitimacy, and Hobbesian Political Theory in Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen,” Goethe Yearbook 10 (2001): 1-30. And “Weislingen: Goethe’s Politics of the Ego,” Goethe Yearbook 11 (2002): 177-196.
2001 and 2000
Not awarded
1999
Elizabeth Powers, “The Artist’s Escape from the Idyll: The Relationship of Werther to Sesenheim,” Goethe Yearbook 9 (1999): 47-76.
1998 and earlier
Not awarded