Awards
Graduate Student Paper Award
Graduate student presenters at any RWES-sponsored panel are invited to submit their revised essay for the Graduate Student Essay Award. The winning essay will be awarded a $750 honorarium and will be considered for publication in The Dial: A Journal of the Emerson Society.
Research Award
Provides $500 towards the completion of outstanding scholarly work on Emerson and the influence of his ideas. The award supports archival research, costs associated with publishing an article, book, or other project-related expenses. We welcome applications from junior scholars and independent scholars as well as established scholars.
Outreach Award
Provides $500 to support projects that further Emerson’s relevance to the broader public. We welcome projects that involve learners of all kinds and communities in all forms. Recipients also will be invited to submit for publication in The Emerson Society Papers a reflection on their completed projects.
Undergraduate Student Essay Award
Undergraduate students are welcome to submit 1,000-1,500-word academic essays on any topic relevant to the study of Emerson—his life, work, national and transnational reception, importance within and beyond U.S. literature and culture, and/or contemporary relevance. Winning essays will demonstrate originality, clarity, and rigorous engagement with Emerson.
Past Recipients of Discontinued Awards
The Society welcomes and encourages submissions on Emerson and his circle from diverse perspectives and critical methodologies, as well as by marginalized and/or traditionally underrepresented groups. All proposals will be evaluated based on the general strength of the submission and clearly articulated relevance to the individual award or grant.
Award recipients must become members of the Society; membership applications are available here.
Distinguished Achievement Award
The Emerson Society Distinguished Achievement Award is given annually for outstanding scholarship, leadership, and work in Emerson studies and beyond.
Past Recipients
Barbara L. Packer Fellowship
Barbara L. Packer Fellowship is named for Barbara Lee Packer (1947-2010), who taught with great distinction for thirty years in the UCLA English department. Her publications, most notably Emerson’s Fall (1982) and her lengthy essay on the Transcendentalist movement in the Cambridge History of American Literature (1995), reprinted as The Transcendentalists by the University of Georgia Press (2007), continue to be esteemed by students of Emerson and of the American Renaissance generally. She is remembered as an inspiring teacher, a lively and learned writer, and a helpful friend to all scholars in her field-in short, as a consummate professional whose undisguised delight in literature was the secret of a long-sustained success. In naming the Fellowship for her, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society offers her as a model worthy of the attention and emulation of scholars newly entering the field. The fellowship was established by an endowment of $50,000, which Albert von Frank raised by appeal to many individual members and supporters of RWES, topped off by a $10,000 grant by vote of the Society itself.
The Barbara L. Packer Fellowship is awarded to individuals engaged in scholarly research and writing related to the Transcendentalists in general, and most especially to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau. Ph.D. candidates, pre-tenure faculty, and independent scholars are eligible to apply.
The Ralph Waldo Emerson Fellowship at the Houghton
The Ralph Waldo Emerson Fellowship for the Study of Emerson and His Circle funds research at the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Information is available here. The Library houses the papers of the Emerson family and many other Concord residents and Transcendentalists, and encourages research in its collections.