William Riley Parker Prize

The William Riley Parker Prize is the oldest award given by the Modern Language Association, the principal professional organization in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The Parker Prize is awarded each year for an “outstanding article” published in PMLA—the association’s primary journal, and widely considered the most prestigious in the study of modern languages and literatures. It was first awarded in 1964 to David J. DeLaura, then a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, for his article, “Arnold and Carlyle,” which had been published in the March 1964 issue of PMLA.

In 1968, the prize was named for former PMLA editor and MLA Secretary William Riley Parker. Parker, a professor at Indiana University, was a Milton biographer whose scholarship also considered the formation of literary studies in the United States.

Previous winners of the prize have included Fredric Jameson, Walter Ong, and Pauline Yu. Only one scholar, Elisabeth Schneider of the University of California at Santa Barbara, has won the prize multiple times, having received the award in 1973 and 1966.

Moreover, the prize has only twice been awarded for an article published by a scholar still in graduate school. David Wayne Thomas, now an associate professor at the University of Notre Dame, was awarded the prize for an article he published while a graduate student at the University of California, Davis. Thomas's article, "Gödel's Theorem and Postmodern Theory," appeared in the March 1995 issue PMLA. More recently, Gordon Fraser was awarded the prize for "Troubling the Cold War Logic of Annihilation," an article published in the May 2015 issue of PMLA. Fraser, now an assistant professor at North Dakota State University, was at the time a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Connecticut.

Scholars from the University of Virginia have won the award the greatest number of times, having received the prize in 2000, 1997, and 1979, and having received an honorable mention in 1969.

2016

Yasser Elhariry, Dartmouth College, for “Abdelwahab Meddeb, Sufi Poets, and the New Francophone Lyric” (PMLA, March 2016)

2015

Gordon Fraser, University of Connecticut, Storrs, for “Troubling the Cold War Logic of Annihilation: Apocalyptic Temporalities in Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” (PMLA, May 2015)

2014

Christopher Cannon, New York University, for “From Literacy to Literature: Elementary Learning and the Middle English Poet” (PMLA, May 2014)

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