ASECS

Jay Fliegelman Excelllence in Mentorship Award

During the 2007-2008 academic year, the Graduate Student Caucus established the Excellence in Mentorship Award, recently renamed the Jay Fliegelman Excellence in Mentorship Award. This award, which is given out each year at the ASECS annual meeting, recognizes a faculty member who has generously supported his or her graduate students by helping them excel in their scholarship, teaching, and professionalization.

Jay Fliegelman, who passed away in the fall of 2007, is widely recognized as one of the most important scholars of eighteenth-century British North America. His two books, Prodigals and Pilgrims and Declaring Independence, helped reshape the study of the period not only in terms of their account of the inner workings of the eighteenth-century Anglo-American world, but also, and perhaps more importantly, through their commitment to an interdisciplinary methodology that combined not only literary and historical approaches, but also integrated material culture, history of the book, and performance theory before it was fashionable to do so. Through his books Fliegelman opened up to several generations of literary scholars a period that had been almost entirely the province of historians. That he did so is no accident. While Fliegelman was justly proud of his books, most anyone who knew him would acknowledge that for him his most important work was his mentorship of graduate students. Simply put, Fliegelman was devoted to his students. In Prodigals he studied the way the ideal of mentorship and mentoring relationships emerged as a critical concept in the eighteenth century. In his role as dissertation advisor Fliegelman embodied the best of that ideal: he guided his students gently but firmly. He sought to bring out the best of each of them, rather than impose his vision upon them. This explains why Jay’s students work not only in such a wide range of subjects and periods, but also employ a wide variety of methods. Although he impressed certain fundamental intellectual values upon his students, he never demanded that his students employ a specific method or adopt particular practices (with the possible exception of the importance of close reading). This combination of dedication and respect for his graduate students meant that Fliegelman was not only respected and admired by his students in turn, but he was also loved.

If you would like to recommend your mentor for next year’s award, we will begin soliciting nominations in September 2011. The deadline for submissions is December 15. Watch for an e-mail with instructions. Nominations require at least two letters of support, one of which must be from a current graduate student, and a brief curriculum vitae (four pages maximum).

The nominations are evaluated by an interdisciplinary group of graduate students, headed by the co-chair of the Graduate Student Caucus. Submissions for the 2011-2012 academic year can be sent via e-mail to Katharine Zimolzak at zimolzak@usc.edu.