Dixon Award

The Dixon Award was established in 2002 by the Dixon Family Foundation, thanks to the generous efforts of alumni Hillary (”99) and Adam (”01) Dixon. Each year junior English majors are awarded a $2,500 research and travel grant to enrich their current studies in preparation for senior year.

“This award stimulates intellectual curiosity and seems to me to propel students forward in their passion not only for literature, but also for research. It expands their horizons in a unique way; their understandings are distinct from what they glean either in the classroom or on a study-abroad program. We see them blossom through this award.”

- Rishona Zimring, Professor of English

For application deadlines and information, please visit this page.

Past winners:

2024: Arianna Fiore plans to travel to Pasadena to participate in the 2024 New Chaucer Society Congress, as well as visit the Huntington Library where she hopes to view various medieval manuscripts, including the Ellesmere manuscript of The Canterbury Tales.

2023: Kit Graf examined family papers housed at the National Library in Dublin in order to form a fuller picture of Yeats as a father and observe if and how his work was shaped by his domestic space and the raising of children.

2022: Ashleen Smith used the Dixon Award to visit the New York Public Library’s Berg Collection and explore how the childhood of Virginia Woolf and her siblings related to Woolf’s masterpiece Modernist novel The Waves.

2021: Ashley O’Leary used the Dixon Award to support her archival research into Charles Dickens’ role as an editor of women writers and to support her participation in the 26th Annual Dickens Society Symposium.

2020: Riley Hanna and Justin Howerton were both awarded the Dixon. Due to Covid-19 restrictions and event cancellations, they presented their work alongside the 2021 Dixon recipient Ashley O’Leary in November of 2021. Riley Hanna examined the works of current scholars as well as the library of Virginia and Leonard Woolf to better understand their life together. Justin Howerton presented an in-depth examination of William Faulkner through a southern lens.

2019: Karli Uwaine  traveled to London to visit the British Library and the Wellcome Library where she viewed meeting minutes of Cobbe’s organizations, campaign papers, and newspaper articles during the anti-vivisection movement. She wanted to explore the moral complexities within the controversial debate on vivisection and look at Cobbe’s work as a source of inspiration for the future of animals.

2018: Katie Mitcheltree traveled to two archives over the summer of 2018 to examine the papers of Mary Borden: the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, and the Churchill Archive Center at the University of Cambridge in England.

2017: Emily Price planned to conduct her research summer 2017.  She planned to travel to the British Library, Oxford’s Bodleian Library , the University Library at Cambridge, and the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence.  She explored the Construction of Monstrous Morality in Medieval Bestiaries.

2016: Emma Cranston researched the concept of “Nation Language” in the archives of the University of Birmingham, and the importance of “Caribbean Voices” at the BBC Written Archives in Reading, UK.

2015: Emile Dultra and Emma Post were both recipients. Emile’s project was a comparative study of Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein in the context of Fascism. Her research was conducted at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas.  Emma traveled to Glasgow, Scotland where she conducted research on the visual and poetic work of Edwin Morgan in the Special Collections at the University of Glasgow.

2014: Caitlin Degnon and Lillian Tuttle were both recipients. Caitlin conducted research on Zora Neale Hurston’s anthropological field work at the Library of Congress. Lillian traveled to France to investigate Katherine Mansfield’s connection to France within the context of the modernist movement in literature. 

2013: Taylor Wallau traveled to the Houghton Library at Harvard University in Boston, University to study Ralph Waldo Emerson’s manuscripts and heritage.

2012: Jordan Buysse traveled to Trieste, Italy to attend the 15th annual James Joyce School. 

2011: Warren Kluber and Casey Newbegin were both recipients. Casey will study the personal files of Virginia Woolf’s husband, Leonard Woolf, at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. Warren will travel to Gambia, Mauritania and rural parts of Senegal to explore how local oral traditions relate to the African novel.

2010: Sarah Osborne and Riley Johnson were both recipients and both traveled to England to study materials at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the British Library. 

2009: Marley Badolati traveled to Massachusetts to study the influence of Robert Lowell on the poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.

2008: Jessica Cartwright traveled to the Alex Turnbull Library in New Zealand to study Katherine Mansfield.

2007: Katrin Gibb studied John Fowles’ The Magus at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin.

2007: Stephanie Beechem attended the 2007 MLA Annual Convention to gain a greater understanding of French influences on Wallace Stevens’ poetry.

2006: Jason Robertson traveled to England to visit British libraries and historical sites for his project, “Spenser’s Reformation: Researching Iconoclasm and Literature in London.”

2005: Jason Simms traveled to Massachusetts to research the original manuscripts of Emily Dickinson in the Houghton Library at Harvard and the Frost Library at Amherst College.

2004: Stasia Honnold traveled to and conducted research while attending the 14th Annual Virginia Woolf Conference held at the University of London.

2003: Ariel Holman traveled to and conducted research at the Special Collections at the University of Sussex, UK.

 

Please contact Amy Baskin amy@lclark.edu if you have questions.