Reminder Announcement of Undergraduate Essay Award
Studies in Romanticism, BU’s flagship journal on the Romantic period in European,
American, and world history, wishes to remind all humanities faculty of the SiR
Undergraduate Essay Prize competition. Please read on for eligibility, procedural, and
evaluative information.
The purpose of the prize is to encourage interest among BU undergraduates in the period
conventionally known as “Romantic,” roughly extending from 1789, the year of the
outbreak of the French Revolution, to about 1830. SiR recognizes that the precursors of
European Romanticism may reach back as far as the mid-eighteenth century and that its
impact on various nations, both within and outside Europe, continued throughout the
nineteenth. Romantic ideas, attitudes, and influences have also been influential
subsequent to 1900, up to and including the present day: in popular culture and the mass
media, in the creative arts, and in public discourse about human rights, democratic
representation, the class struggle, and the impact of modernity generally. Among other
things, the era we now call “Romantic” spans what amounted to the first—and to this
date, the longest—world war in history, the Napoleonic conflict, in which, for the first
time, the idea of “total war” involving all segments of society became a horrifying reality.
The Romantic period embraces the birth of modern feminism, the beginnings of the anti-
slavery movement, and the industrial revolution, as well as the final establishment of
England—and by extension, all things English—as a hegemonic commercial and military
power internationally, with consequences reaching far beyond this island nation’s more
recent eclipse on the world stage by superpowers like America, Russia, and China. In
short, the social, political, military, artistic, and cultural forces unleashed during this
turbulent period continue to reverberate around the world some two centuries later.
A cash prize of $200 will accompany the award.
Eligibility:
1) Only students officially enrolled in an undergraduate program of study at BU when
they write their entries may compete. Undergraduates at any level from freshman to
senior year are eligible.
2) All entries must be work submitted for a grade in an upper-division undergraduate or
graduate level course counting toward the undergraduate degree. The course may be
offered by any department, school, or program in CAS. Please note: essays submitted as
part of Work for Distinction, or excerpted portions thereof, do not qualify for this
award.
3) A student may submit only one paper per semester for consideration—thus, two at
most in the course of a single academic year.
Procedural requirements and deadline for submissions:
1) Essays must be no longer than 4,500 words, including notes and bibliography, and
written in .doc or .docx format. They may be revised before submission. While entries are
not limited to English subjects or to English-language works, they must be written in
English. The text should be free of all instructor’s comments, corrections, and grades.
2) Each entry must be submitted for consideration by the instructor who graded it,
accompanied by a letter of recommendation of up to 200 words in length explaining why
he or she considers the essay worthy of consideration. Instructors should email both
essay and recommendation, as attachments, to Deborah Swedberg, managing editor
of SiR, at debswed@bu.edu.. Entries without such a recommendation will not be
accepted.
3) All materials must be submitted by 5 pm of the second day following the end of the
exam period for the semester in which the essay was written. No entries will be accepted
after the deadline.
Criteria and Process of Evaluation:
1) While entries may include material not directly related to Romanticism, they must
engage substantially with a subject, theme, issue, or specific figure or figures relevant to
the Romantic period or its cultural legacy.
2) Entries will be judged on originality, command of relevant criticism, cogency of thesis
and argumentation, handling of evidence, and stylistic clarity and coherence.
3) The winner will be selected by the editorial staff of Studies in Romanticism at the close
of competition following the Spring semester and announced during the week before
BU’s annual Commencement.