Germanic Languages and Literatures names 2006-07 prize winners

The Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures recently announced its 2006–07 award winners. Prizes to undergraduate and graduate students total $9,000.

The Bernhard Blume Award for the senior who wrote the best honors thesis and whose performance in courses offered toward concentration was of equal merit was awarded to Moira Weigel and Josh Billings. The winner of the Elizabeth Wilder Award — given to the freshman on financial aid who has never studied German before and who scores the highest grade on the midyear German A exam — went to Kristen Pagán. Both of these awards include a $1,000 prize.

On the graduate student level, Sonja Graeber-Magocsi was awarded the Bernhard Blume Prize for attaining the most outstanding record in course work during the first three terms of graduate study. Mattias Frey won the prize for the most outstanding record in course work during the second three terms of graduate study. The Bernhard Blume Prize is $1,500.

Every year a departmental committee selects a teaching fellow “who conducts undergraduate sections with the highest measure of pedagogical skills, linguistic proficiency, enthusiasm, and commitment to students’ learning and welfare” to receive the Jack M. Stein Teaching Fellow Award. This year’s prize ($1,000) went to David Kim.

Lastly, two students were awarded the Esther Sellholm Walz Award ($1,000), which is given to the graduate student for the best paper or essay as determined by a committee of the members of the department. Daniel Bowles won for his paper “Silent Screams: Semiotics, Subjectivity, and the Archive in Marcel Beyer’s ‘Flughunde,’” and Matthieu Boyd (of the Celtic Department) won for his paper “The Initiation of the Skaldic Poets.”