The James Phelan Prize for Best Essay in Narrative
The award designates the outstanding essay in each volume of the Society's journal, Narrative. The Award is named in honor of James Phelan, Distinguished University Professor of English at the Ohio State University, who served as editor of the journal from its founding in 1992 to 2024.
Current Prize Winner: 2024
Jennifer Noji, “The Implicated Reader: Second-Person Address in Novels of US Imperialism.” Narrative 32.1 (2024): 21-40.
From the Prize Committee: This article offers an innovative conceptualization of reader address, thus providing profound insights into the ethical dimensions of reading and illustrating the sociopolitical potential of narrative form. Introducing the concept of the “implicated reader,” Noji creates a compelling lens through which to examine the complex relationship between readers and the structures of violence depicted in literature. The theoretical framework is not only intellectually rigorous but also highly applicable across diverse texts and contexts, as demonstrated in the nuanced analyses of three significant novels addressing legacies of US imperialism. The focus on second-person address as a narrative device to implicate readers offers a fresh perspective on how narratives can challenge passive consumption and provoke political responsibility. By reframing reader identification away from empathy with victims toward recognition of complicity, Noji opens new pathways for understanding how narratives can engage with social and historical injustices.
Honorable Mention: Cody Mejeur and Chiara Pellegrini, for their work on the special issue “Trans Narratologies” and their article “Introduction: Contextualizing Trans Narratologies” (May 2024). This vital intervention offers theoretical tools that underscore the power of narrative as both a site of struggle and a means of resistance, in a time when trans individuals face growing political and social threats.
Past Prize Winners
2023
Chloë Kitzinger, “Disrupted Lines: The Illegitimately Born Narrator in Dostoevsky and Hurston.” Narrative 31.2 (2023): 138-158.
Honorable Mention: Matthew Martello, "Dramatic Poetry as Rhetorical Form: The Case of Sarah Piatt’s "Mock Diamonds.'" Narrative 31.1 (2023): 26-48.
2022
Ellen McCallum, “Thinking Through Queer Narrative Forms with Ben Marcus and Renee Gladman.” Narrative 30.3 (2022): 364-387
2021
Aviva Briefel, “Live Burial: The Deep Intertextuality of Jordan Peele’s Get Out.” Narrative 29.3 (2021): 297-320
2020
Lin Li,‘ “To Narrate’—A Verb in the Middle Voice?: Narrativity and Performance in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape and Ohio Impromptu,” Narrative 28.3 (2020): 289-303.
2019
Tara Menon, “Keeping Count: Direct Speech in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel.” Narrative 27.2 (2019): 160-181.
Honorable Mention: Susan S. Lanser and Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, “Narratology at the Checkpoint: The Politics and Poetics of Entanglement.” Narrative 27.3 (2019): 245-269.
2018
Roger Edholm, “The Narrator Who Wasn’t There: Philip Roth’s The Human Stain and the Discontinuity of Narrating Characters” (January 2018
2017
Natalya Bekhta, “We-Narratives: The Distinctiveness of Collective Narration” (May 2017)
Honorable Mention: Katherine Binhammer: "The Story Within the Story of Sentimental Fiction" (January 2017)
Honorable Mention: Werner Wolf: “Transmedial Narratology: Theoretical Foundations and Some Applications (Fiction, Single Pictures, Instrumental Music)” (October 2017)
2016
Daniel Barlow, “Blues Narrative Form, African American Fiction, and the African Diaspora” (May 2016)
Honorable Mention: Erin McGlothlin, "Empathetic Identification and the Mind of the Holocaust Perpetrator in Fiction: A Proposed Taxonomy of Response" (October 2016)
2015
Eva von Contzen, “Why the Middle Ages Do Not Need the Concept of Social Minds: Exemplarity and Collective Response” (Spring 2015)
2014
Joshua Pederson, “Speak, Trauma: Toward a Revised Understanding of Literary Trauma and Theory.” (Fall 2014)
2013
Birte Christ, Dorothee Birke, Ellen McCracken, and Paul Benzon, “Paratexts and Digital Narrative” (Winter 2013)
2012
Michael Rothberg, “Progress, Progression, Procession: William Kentridge and the Narratology of Transitional Justice” (Winter 2012)
2011
Silke Horstkotte and Nancy Pedri, “Focalization in Graphic Narrative” (Fall 2011)
2010
Yael Shapira, "Hairball Speaks: Margaret Atwood and the Narrative Legacy of the Female Grotesque." (Winter 2010)
Honorable Mention
Molly Hite, "Tonal Cues and Uncertain Values: Affect and Ethics in Mrs. Dalloway." (Fall 2010)
2009
Paul Dawson, "Return of Omniscience in Contemporary Fiction" (Spring 2009).
Honorable Mention
Helena Michie, "Victorian(ist) ‘Whiles’ and the Tenses of Historicism" (Fall 2009).
2008
Lucy Ferriss, "Uncle Charles Repairs to the A&P: Changes in Voice in the Recent American Short Story" (Spring 2008).
2007
Greg Forter, "Freud, Faulkner, Caruth: Trauma and the Politics of Literary Form" (Fall 2007).
Honorable Mention
Dorothy J. Hale, "Fiction as Restriction: Self-Binding in New Ethical Theories of the Novel" (Spring 2007).
2006
Margaret Homans, "Adoption Narratives, Trauma, and Origins" (Winter 2006).
2005
Michael MacDonald, "Losing Spirit: Hegel, Levinas, and the Limits of Narrative" (Spring 2005).