Current Award Winners
2024-2025
The WCC Sharon L. James Mentorship Award: T. H. M. Gellar-Goad (Wake Forest University)
The WCC Public Scholarship Award: Elizabeth Bobrick (Wesleyan University), “This Won’t End Well: On Loving Greek Tragedy"
The WCC Leadership Award: Tori Lee (Boston University)
The Barbara McManus Award for Outstanding Scholarship: Roberta Stewart (Dartmouth College), “Seeing Fotis: Slavery and Gender in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses,” Classical Antiquity (2023) 42.1: 195-228
Best Pre-PhD Paper Award: Allie Pohler (University of Cincinnati), “Disperii, perii misera! Listening to Antiphila in Terence’s Heautontimorumenos“ presented at CAMWS-SS 2023
Past Award Winners
2023-2024
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Lyndsay Coo (University of Bristol), 2021, “Shifting Sisterhood: Electra and Chrysothemis in Sophocles’ Electra” Ramus 50(1-2): 89-108.
Best Pre-PhD Paper Award: Alessandra Migliara (The Graduate Center, CUNY), “Dramatic Bodies and Collective Agency in Carlus Padrissa’s Bacchae” presented at SCS 2023.
2022-2023
Leadership Award: T. H. M. Gellar-Goad (Wake Forest University)
Public Scholarship Award: Katherine Blouin (University of Toronto), Rachel Mairs (University of Reading), and Usama Ali Gad (Ain Shams University) for Everyday Orientalism
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Francesca Bellei (Harvard University), “Omnibus umbra locis adero: Elena Ferrante and the Poetics of Absence,” in Unspoken Rome : absence in Latin literature and its reception, eds. T. Geue and E. Giusti, Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Best Pre-PhD Paper Award: Erin Lam (University of California, Berkeley / Bryn Mawr University), “Breaking Bodies: Materiality and Vulnerability in Heroides 12,” presented at SCS 2022.
Honorable Mention:
Henry Gruber (Harvard University), “Recovering Armentaria, Mother of Gregory of Tours, through her Favorite Miracles”, presented at “On Outgroups and Muted Groups, a Conference in Honor of Amy Richlin” (hosted by UCLA).
2021-2022
Professional Equity Award: CripAntiquity
Leadership Award: David J. Wright (Furman University)
Public Scholarship Award Nadhira Hill (University of Michigan) for Notes from the Apotheke
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Katharine P.D. Huemoeller (The University of British Columbia), "Freedom in Marriage? Manumission for Marriage in the Roman World," Journal of Roman Studies 110: 123-139.
Best Pre-PhD Paper Award: Sarah Brucia Breitenfeld (University of Washington), “While she was drunk, many others had sex with her. Reexamining Violence in Dem. 19.196-98 and [Dem.] 59.33-35,” presented at CAMWS 2021.
2021
Professional Equity Award: Asian and Asian American Classical Caucus
Leadership Award: Suzanne Lye (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), for the SCS-WCC Covid-19 Relief Fund
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Kelly Shannon-Henderson (Alabama), “Life After Transition: Spontaneous Sex Change and Its Aftermath in Ancient Literature”, in Exploring Gender Diversity in the Ancient World, eds. A. Surtees and J. Dyer, Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
Best Pre-PhD Paper Award: Kelly Nguyen (Brown University), “Ocean Vuong’s Reception of Telemachus and Odysseus,” presented at SCS (Washington DC), 2020.
Honorable Mentions:
Hannah Sorscher (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), “Wife-Erasure in Terence’s Hecyra”
Sophie Seidler (University of Washington, Seattle), “Proserpina’s Pomegranate and Ceres’ Anorexic Anger: Food, Sexuality, and Denial in Ovid’s Account of Ceres and Proserpina”
Public Scholarship Award: Peopling the Past
2020
Professional Equity Award: University of California, Santa Barbara Department of Classics
Leadership Award: Judith P. Hallett (University of Maryland, College Park)
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Erika Weiberg (Florida State University), “The Writing on the Mind: Deianeira’s Trauma in Sophocles’ Trachiniae” in Phoenix 72, 1/2 (2018): 19-42.
Best Pre-PhD Paper: Cai Thorman (University of California, Davis), “Matrilineal Lineage in Cult for Hellenistic Queens,” presented at AIA (San Diego), 2019.
Public Scholarship Award: Sarah Bond
2019
Professional Equity Award: The Sportula (https://thesportula.wordpress.com/)
Leadership Award: Ruby Blondell (University of Washington, Seattle)
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Sarah Olsen (Williams College), “Les danseuses en Grèce antique. Performance, capacité d’agir, et divertissement” in Clio: Femmes, Genre, et Histoire 46: 19-43.
Best Pre-PhD Paper: Chelsea Gardner (University of Hawai’i, Mānoa) and Katie Fine (Florida State University), “Mycenaean Kourotrophoi Figurines and Lateralization Bias: How Recent Neurological Research Explains the Left-Cradling Phenomenon,” presented at AIA (Boston), 2018.
Public Scholarship Award: Curtis Dozier (Vassar College), for his website Pharos, “a site that documents and responds to appropriations of Ancient Greece and Rome by hate groups.” (www.doingjusticetotheclassics.org)
2018
Leadership Award: Sharon L. James (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Brenda Longfellow (University of Iowa), “Female Patrons and Honorific Statues in Pompeii” in Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Volume LIX/LX (2014/2015): 81-101.
Best Pre-PhD Paper: Jennifer Weintritt (Yale University), “Textual and Sexual Hybridity: Gender in Catullus 63” presented at SCS (Toronto), 2017.
Public Scholarship Award [first time awarded]: The Editorial Board of Eidolon
2017
Professional Equity Award: The University of Mississippi Department of Classics
Leadership Award (tie): Alison Keith (University of Toronto)/Amy Richlin (University of California, Los Angeles)
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Deb Kamen and Sarah Levin-Richardson (University of Washington, Seattle), “Lusty Ladies in the Roman Imaginary” in Ancient Sex: New Essays. Eds. R. Blondell and K. Ormand. Columbus: Ohio State University, 2015. 231-252.
Honorable Mention:
Michele Ronnick (Wayne State University), “Classical Education and the Advancement of African American Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly. Eds. Rosie Wyles and Edith Hall. Oxford University Press, 2016, 176-193.
Best Pre-PhD Paper: Amy Pistone (University of Michigan), “Double Vision: Gendered Modes of Prophecy in Greek Tragedy,” presented at Feminism and Classics VII: Visions, Seattle, May 2016.
2016
Professional Equity Award: The Hamilton College Departments of Classics and Comparative Literature
Leadership Award [first time awarded]: Barbara McManus (College of New Rochelle) [awarded posthumously]
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Serena Witzke (Wake Forest University), “Harlots, Tarts, and Hussies? A Problem of Terminology for Sex Labor in Roman Comedy,” in Helios 42.1 (Spring 2015) 7-27.
Best Faculty Paper: Sheila (Bridget) Murnaghan (University of Pennsylvania), “Tragic Realities: What Kind of History Do Fictional Women Let Us Write?” presented at SCS New Orleans, 2015.
Best Student Paper: Anna Bonnell-Freidin (Princeton University), “Birth and the Many-Legged Womb,” presented at SCS (New Orleans), 2015.
2015
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: John Starks (SUNY Binghamton), “Was Black Beautiful in Vandal Africa?” D. Orrells, G.K. Bhambra, T. Roynon, eds. African Athena: New Agendas (Oxford University Press, 2011) 239-257.
Best Faculty Paper: Brooke Holmes (Princeton University), Response to the CSWMG panel “Authors Meet Critics: Gender and Race in Antiquity and its Reception,” presented at SCS (Chicago), 2014.
Best Student Paper: Hillary Conley (University of Evansville), “Matrona Romana: Non-Roman Libertinae Funerary Monuments in Roman Britain,” presented at SCS (Chicago), 2014.
2014
Professional Equity Award [first time awarded]: The University of Washington Department of Classics
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article (tie):
Fanny Dolansky (Brock University), “Playing with Gender: Girls, Dolls, and Adult Ideals in the Roman World,” Classical Antiquity 31 (2012) 256-292.
Brooke Holmes (Princeton University), “The Poetic Logic of Negative Exceptionalism in Lucretius, Book Five” in Lehoux, Morrison, and Sharrock, eds., Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, Science (Oxford University Press, 2013) 153-191.
Best Faculty Paper: Alison Jeppesen-Wigelsworth (Red Deer College), “Aurelia Philematium and Maria Auxesis: Kept Woman or Wife?” presented at APA (Seattle), 2013.
Best Student Paper: Mira Green (University of Washington, Seattle), “Witnesses and Participants in the Shadows: The Sexual Lives of Enslaved Women and Boys in Ancient Rome,” presented at APA (Seattle), 2013.
2013
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Helen King (The Open University), “Galen and the widow. Towards a history of therapeutic masturbation in ancient gynaecology,” EuGeStA 1 (2011): 205-235.
Best Faculty Paper: Jesse Weiner (University of California, Irvine), “Antigone in Juárez: Tragedy, Politics, and Public Women on Mexico’s Northern Border,” presented at APA (Philadelphia), 2012.
Best Student Paper: Caitlin Gillespie, “Messalina’s Bedchamber: Threshold of Power,” presented at Feminism and Classics VI (Brock University, 2012).
2012
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Kirk Ormand (Oberlin College), “Testing Virginity in Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus,” Ramus 39 (2010) 160-197.
Best Faculty Paper: Ellen Bauerle (University of Michigan), “Sisters in Arms: Demographics on Women Ancient Historians,” presented at a joint panel of the Committee on Ancient History and the Women’s Classical Caucus at APA (San Antonio, TX), 2011.
Best Student Paper: Alison Jeppesen-Wigelsworth (University of Calgary), “Beyond Aurelia Philematium: A New Portrait of Roman Marriage,” presented at CACW (Edmonton), 2008.
2011
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Holly M. Sypniewski (Millsaps College), “The Pursuit of Eros in Plato’s Symposium and Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 15:4 (2008) 558-586.
Best Faculty Paper: Deborah Kamen and Sarah Levin-Richardson (University of Washington, Seattle), “Lusty Ladies: Fututrices in the Roman Imaginary,” presented at APA (Anaheim), 2010.
Best Student Paper: Christine Marquis (University of Minnesota), “Juno and Amata: Powerful Wives and Political Disorder in the Aeneid,” presented at CAMWS (Minneapolis), 2009.
2010
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: John H. Starks, Jr. (Binghamton University, State University of New York), “Pantomime Actresses in Latin Inscriptions,” in E. Hall and R. Wyles, eds. New Directions in Ancient Pantomime (Oxford University Press, 2008) 110-145.
Best Faculty Paper: Geoff Bakewell (Creighton University), “The Kyprios Kharakter of Aeschylus’ Danaids,” presented at APA (Philadelphia), 2009.
Best Student Paper: Allison Fields (University of Cincinnati), “Lucian’s Megilla/us: Rethinking Gender, Agency, and Same-Sex Relationships,” presented at CAMWS (Minneapolis), 2009.
2009
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Deborah Lyons (Miami University of Ohio), “The Scandal of Women’s Ritual,” in A. Tzanetou and M. Parca, eds. Finding Persephone: Women’s Rituals in the Ancient Mediterranean (Indiana University Press 2007) 29-51.
Best Faculty Paper: Herica Valladares (Johns Hopkins University), “Women’s pleasure in Roman art: the state of the question,” presented at Feminism and Classics V (University of Michigan), May 2008.
Best Student Paper: Alexander Dressler (University of Washington, Seattle), “Subjectivity, Contradiction and the Traditions of Feminist-Platonism,” presented at Plato and Platonisms (University of South Carolina), March 2008.
Certificate for Special Feminist Contribution to Pedagogy:
Sharon James (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) “Feminist Pedagogy and Latin Literature, ” presented at Feminism and the Classics V (University of Michigan), May 2008.
2008
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Teresa R. Ramsby (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) and Beth Severy-Hoven (Macalester College), “Gender, Sex and the Domestication of Empire in Art of the Augustan Age,” Arethusa 40 (2007) 43-71.
Best Faculty Paper: Anise K. Strong (Northwestern University), “Daughter and Employee: Mother-Daughter Bonds among Prostitutes,” presented at APA (San Diego), 2007.
Best Student Paper: H. Christian Blood (University of California, Santa Cruz), “Queer Icons, Iconoclasts, and Anti-Icons: Plato and his Symposium in Athens, Hollywood, and Washington, D.C.,” presented at APA (San Diego), 2007.
2007
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Holt Parker (University of Cincinnati), “Why Were the Vestals Virgins? Or The Chastity of Women and the Safety of the Roman State,” AJP 125 (2004) 563-601.
Best Student Paper: Emily Rush (University of California, Los Angeles), “Magic and Inversion in Sophocles’ Trachiniae,” presented at APA (Montréal), 2006.
2006
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Sarah Culpepper Stroup (University of Washington, Seattle), “Designing Women: Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and the ‘Hetairization’ of the Greek Wife,” Arethusa 37 (2004) 37-73.
Best Faculty Paper: Alastair Blanshard (University of Sydney), “The Queer Pornography of the Classical Imagination: An Invitation to View Some Etchings,” presented at APA (Boston), 2005.
Best Student Paper: Rachel Meyers (Duke University), “Representing Antonine Imperial Women at Olympia,” presented at APA (Boston), 2005.
2005
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Matthew Roller (Johns Hopkins University), “Horizontal Women: Posture and Sex in the Roman Convivium,” AJP 124 (2003): 377-422.
Best Paper: Patricia Rosenmeyer (University of Wisconsin), “Pamphilian Damophyle and Claudia Damo: Partners in Poetry,” presented at APA (San Francisco), 2004.
2004
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Marie Cleary, “Vague Irregular Notions: American Women and Classical Mythology, 1780-1855,” New England Classical Journal 29 (2002) 222-235.
Best Paper: Amanda Wilcox, “Exemplary Grief: A Technology of Gender in Senecan Consolation,” presented at APA (New Orleans), 2003.
2003
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Marilyn Skinner, “Ladies’ Day at the Art Institute: Theocritus, Herodas, and the Gendered Gaze,” in A. Lardinois and L. McClure, eds., Making Silence Speak: Women’s Voices in Greek Literature and Society (Princeton University Press, 2001) 201-222.
Best Faculty Paper: Anne E. Haeckl, “Brothers or Lovers? A New Reading of the Tondo of the Two Brothers from Antinoopolis, Egypt,” presented at CAMWS (Provo, UT), 2001.
Best Student Paper: Melissa Mueller, “Word and Object in Euripides’ Ion: The Silent Truth of Family Heirlooms,” presented at APA (Philadelphia), 2002.
2002
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Michele Ronnick, “William Sanders Scarborough: The First African-American Member of the Modern Language Association,” Publication of the Modern Language Association 115 (2000) 1787-1793.
Best Faculty Paper: Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, “The Greek Wedding: Escape from Patriarchy?” presented at APA (San Diego), 2001.
Best Student Paper: Tricia Gilson, “Amazons in Plato’s Republic: Classical Tradition in Herland,” presented at APA (San Diego), 2001.
2001
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Yopie Prins, “Greek Maenads, Victorian Spinsters,” in Richard Dellamora, ed., Victorian Sexual Dissidence (University of Chicago Press, 1999) 43-74.
Best Paper: Mary Jane Engh and Kathryn Meyer, “Tiger Tamers, Tax Collectors, Poets, and Politicians: Researching Active Women in the Roman World,” presented at CAPN (Spokane, WA), 1999.
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Lynn Roller, “The Ideology of the Eunuch Priest,” in Maria Wyke, ed., Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean (Blackwell, 1998) 118-135.
Best Faculty Paper: Mary Knight, “Nymphae Sectio: Female Genital Mutilation and the ‘Treatment’ of Venery in Greco-Roman Egypt,” presented at APA (Washington D.C.), 1998.
Best Student Paper [first time awarded]: Sarah Stroup, “Designing Women: Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and the ‘Hetairization’ of the Greek Wife,” presented at APA (Washington, D.C.) 1998.
1999
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Phyllis Culham, “Did Roman Women Have an Empire?” in M. Golden and P. Toohey, eds., Inventing Ancient Culture: Historicism, Periodization and the Ancient World (Routledge, 1997) 192-204.
Best Paper: Lisa Rengo George, “Meretrix Gloriosa: The Triumphant Imagery of the Plautine Prostitute,” presented at APA (Chicago), 1997.
1998
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Natalie Kampen, “Omphale and the Instability of Gender,” in N. B. Kampen, ed., Sexuality in Ancient Art (Cambridge, 1996) 233-46.
Best Paper: Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, “Excavating Ancient Greek Female Homoeroticism: New Theoretical Approaches,” presented at APA (New York City), 1996.
1997
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Molly Levine, “The Gendered Grammar of Ancient Mediterranean Hair,” in H. Eilberg-Schwartz and W. Doniger, eds., Off With Her Head! The Denial of Women’s Identity in Myth, Religion, and Culture (Berkeley University Press, 1995) 76-130.
Best Paper: Dolores O’Higgins, “Brides of Death: Reading the Crones of Aristophanes’ Comedies,” presented at APA (San Diego), 1995.
1996
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Helene Foley, “Interpretive Essay,” in H. Foley, ed., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Princeton University Press, 1994) 79-178.
Best Paper: Joan Reilly, “Naked and Limbless: Learning about the Feminine Body in Ancient Athens,” presented at APA (Atlanta), 1994.
1995
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Shelby Brown, “Feminist Research in Archaeology: What Does It Mean? Why Is It Taking So Long?” in N. S. Rabinowitz and A. Richlin, eds., Feminist Theory and the Classics (New York, 1993) 238-271.
Best Papers (a Tie):
Susan Blundell, “Marriage and the Maiden: Narratives on the Athenian Acropolis,” presented at APA 1993.
Dierdre von Dornum, “What Voice Does Homer Use for Penelope?” presented at APA 1993.
1994
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Leslie Dean-Jones, “The Politics of Pleasure: Female Sexual Appetite in the Hippocratic Corpus,” Helios 19 (1992) 72-91.
Best Paper: Ellen Oliensis, “Socius Amor: Friends and Lovers in Propertius’ Monobiblos,” presented at APA 1992.
1993
The Barbara McManus Award for Best Article: Amy Richlin, “Zeus and Metis: Foucault, Feminism, Classics,” Helios 18 (1991) 160-180.
Best Paper: Holt Parker, “Sappho Schoolmistress,” presented at APA 1991.