THE MARIA TAI WOLFF AWARD

Each spring, the Department of Comparative Literature offers the Maria Tai Wolff Award for an outstanding essay by an undergraduate major in Comparative Literature. The winner is announced and the award presented at the annual end-of-the-year departmental party.

The award was established in memory of Assistant Professor Maria Tai Wolff (1958-1996, BA, 1980; Ph.D. 1985 - Yale, Comparative Literature) by her former students in the Department. Maria Tai Wolff was a wonderful and dedicated teacher and scholar of Spanish, Portuguese, and Lusophone literatures and cultures who had been a Fulbright scholar in Brazil and a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. She left U. W. Madison to pursue a law degree (J.D. Stanford, 1991), practicing law for some five years in the San Francisco Bay Area. Prior to her death of breast cancer, she was considering a return to teaching and writing in Comparative Literature and the literatures and cultures which she loved, with an additional interest in law and literature.

All students majoring in Comparative Literature are eligible.

The deadline for submissions is the third Monday in April.

By that date, please submit two copies of your essay to Diane Bollant, 932 Van Hise Hall. One copy of your essay should include a cover sheet indicating your name, email address, and a phone number at which you can be reached. The other copy of your essay should be submitted without the cover sheet to ensure anonymity in the review process. Please do not put your name on any of the pages of the essay itself.

Two faculty members from the Department of Comparative Literature will read all submissions.

Past award winners include:

2008   Mark Eatough for "Mimetic Models of Identity and Protest: Intraracial Conflict in the Negritude of Langston Hughes and Jacques Roumain"
2007   Megan Brown
2006   Colleen Kartheiser for "The Power of Woman in the Search for Truth"
2005   Ian Brunswick for "A Homecoming Without Home"
2004   Brian Conant
2003   Madeline Gallo & Dan Doogan (co-awardees)
2002   Rachel Naylor
2001   Katrina Brink