91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳

Congratulations to Jenny Boyar (PhD '16), who, along with Hardeep Sidhu (PhD '16), has received the 2016-17 William H.  Gilman Memorial Prize. The prize, created in honor of a former UR professor of American literature, is awarded annually by the department to an "outstanding PhD candidate" -- or very recent graduate -- "in English or American Literature."

Jenny's dissertation, "Lyric Form and the Charge of Forgetfulness in Medieval and Renaissance Poetry," in tracing a chronology of lyric form through the work of Chaucer and Wyatt, locates the origins of "lyric voice" at those moments in the poems in which traditionally-held beliefs about memory are being called into question. 

Jenny currently works as a medical writer for VirtualScopics, Inc., in addition to serving as a reviewer for Publishers Weekly.

Professor William H. Gilman was one of his generation's foremost scholars of American literature. He taught in the 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳'s English Department for nearly 30 years, up until his death in 1976. After publishing a definitive study of Herman Melville, Gilman became a founding editor, and then chief editor, of the journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson.