March 1, 2023
The Graduate Student Paper Award winners from the 2023 Annual Meeting have been chosen. This year, there is a First Prize winner— Emily C. Mohr—and an Honorable Mention— Brigitte Keslinke. They will be honored at the Awards Ceremony in conjunction with the 2024 Annual Meeting.
The Graduate Student Paper Award Committee is pleased to award the 2023 Best Graduate Student Paper Award to Emily C. Mohr (Duke University) for the paper entitled, “Nikandre Who Contends with Men: A Reconsideration of Nikandre’s Dedication on Delos.” This paper was well organized, strongly argued, and beautifully illustrated. Taking the well-known Nikandre statue as the subject of the paper, this author offers a new translation of its dedicatory inscription, suggesting that Nikandre was honored as a woman with an unusual degree of prestige for a female, even offering that her name itself is a feminized form of a name more often associated with men based on its use in literary and epigraphical sources. The paper further contextualizes the statue in its original position in close proximity to a temple that was possibly dedicated to both Artemis and Apollo. The Graduate Student Paper Award Committee was particularly impressed with the originality of research in offering a new translation and interpretation of this sculpture and its inscription. The suggestion of a broadened, less rigidly defined view of gender roles in early Archaic Greece is an important contribution to the field. The author’s use of interdisciplinary evidence, including architectural contexts, sculptural styles, and epigraphic forms is commendable. We look forward to further contributions from this scholar in the future
About Emily C. Mohr
Emily is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the lives and representations of women that have survived in the material culture of the ancient Greek world. Emily’s dissertation, “Assembling Women: Performance and Community in the ‘Tanagra’ Figurines,” posits that these figurines—which may have been produced, acquired, and curated primarily by women in the late classical and Hellenistic periods—function as an archive for the lived experiences and communities of women in the ancient Mediterranean. Emily is currently the Bert Hodge Hill Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Fun Fact about Emily
She loves Athens, but her favorite city is Rome. By all means, Rome.
The Graduate Student Paper Award Committee is pleased to award the 2023 Honorable Mention Graduate Student Paper Award to Brigitte Keslinke (University of Pennsylvania) for her paper Consuming the State: The Topography of Food Security in 2nd century CE Rome. The paper presented a fresh look at the spaces in the city of Rome that were integral to the food security of the population of the capital. The author’s compilation of many peripheral and rarely discussed spaces was commendable. The award committee was particularly impressed with the authoritative and mature presentation of the research, as well as the dexterous handling of questions at the end of the talk. The author directed a lively discussion and answered several questions with confidence, showing extensive knowledge of the subject and ability to move into subjects tangentially related to her topic. This presentation was a model for others to follow.
About Brigitte Keslinke
Before joining UPenn’s Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World program in 2019, Brigitte received a BA in Archaeology and History of Art and Architecture from Boston University and an MA in Classical Archaeology from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research centers on ceramics, feasting, and religion, and her dissertation seeks to explore the role that food played in the transmission and adoption of foreign cults in the Roman world. But when she’s not in the field or working on her dissertation, you’ll likely find her leading tours and assisting with class visits in the Penn Museum
Fun Fact about Brigitte
Although she ended up in the world of the ancient Mediterranean, her first experience with archaeology was in southwestern Colorado with the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center!
The Graduate Student Paper Award (GSPA) was established to recognize graduate students for their substantial contributions to the success of the Annual Meeting. If you are a graduate student planning to submit a paper for next year’s Annual Meeting, we encourage you to apply. The award is by self-nomination and submissions remain anonymous throughout the award selection process. In order to be eligible, you must check the box labeled “Graduate student paper award” on the Open Session Submission Form that reads, “I am a graduate student and sole author of this paper and wish to be considered for the Graduate Student Paper Award.” If you are presenting as part of a session, you need to remind your session chair to check this box for you when they submit all of the session materials. Only graduate students who have a paper accepted by the Program for the Annual Meeting Committee and have checked the box on the Open Submission Form will be eligible for the award. Click here for more information on how to apply for the Graduate Student Paper Award.
