Helene W. Koon Memorial Award

The 2024 WSECS Committee was pleased to confer multiple awards:​

First Prize: Rachel Wang (University of California, Davis), “Designing Women: Performativity of Identity in Samuel Richardson’sPamela (1740) and Song Jia’s Counterfeit Luxury Fashion”
Second Prize: Bethany Qualls (Université de Caen Normandie ), “Teaching the Jilt; or, Possible Futures of 18th-Century Sex Worker Literature in 21st-Century Classrooms”
Third Prize: Chloe Edmondson (Stanford University), “From Letter Writing to Social Media: Mediated Self-Presentation in Eighteenth-Century France”

​​WSECS established this award as a tribute to the innovative scholarship, creative teaching, and generous spirit of Helene W. Koon, a scholar of eighteenth-century dramatic literature and professor of English at California State University, San Bernardino.

The WSECS Committee offers an award of $400 for the best paper presented at the annual conference by a graduate student, post doc, independent scholar, contingent or junior faculty member.  All nontenured delegates are encouraged to submit their papers via e-mail to the conference organizers no later than the Friday following the meeting.  Papers may not be longer than 2500 words plus notes.  The WSECS Committee will notify the winner, acknowledge the award on the society website, and present it at the following year’s conference.