First Elizabeth Dietz Memorial Prize awarded

First Elizabeth Dietz Memorial Prize awarded

BY HEATHER MCLEAN WIEDERHOEFT
Special to the Rice News

The first Elizabeth Dietz Prize for the best book published in early modern studies has been awarded to Zachary Lesser, assistant professor in the English department at the University of Pennsylvania, for his work ”Renaissance Drama and the Politics of Publishing: Readings in the English Book Trade.”

This award was created to honor Dietz, who died of cancer last year. She was as an assistant professor at Rice who taught courses in 16th- and 17th-century nondramatic literature, visual culture, literary theory and Shakespeare.

”Elizabeth was a superb role model, teacher and scholar who touched us all,” said Robert Patten, the Lynette S. Autrey Professor in Humanities. ”With this annual award, we’ve created a memorial that is both permanent and renewing.”

Each of the distinguished faculty commissioned by the editors of the journal SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 to write omnibus reviews of early modern scholarship (around 200 books annually) for the winter and spring issues selected one book for consideration for this prize. The editors of SEL then referred the two nominations to another outstanding scholar for a final decision. The reviewers were Mary Thomas Crane of Boston College, Mary Ellen Lamb of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and Harry

Berger Jr. of the University of California