Bibliographical Society of America (BSA) William L. Mitchell Prize for dissertation, Death Writing: Gender and Necropolitics in the Atlantic World (1660–1840)
Death Writing: Gender and Necropolitics in the Atlantic World (1660–1840) explores life writing through its underworld of “death writing” and analyzes the necropolitical function of death writing in colonial hagiography, travel writing, wampum belts, death notices, newsprint epitaphs, posthumous memoirs, book reviews, and collected works. Specifically, Plante argues that the newsprint obituary consolidated these forms’ functions into one genre to convey news of death with instant biography. Her work dives most deeply bibliographically into the Gentleman’s Magazine, where she examines the editors’ use of their own obituaries to create the dominant death-writing system of the Atlantic world; and the editors’ use of the first newsprint death notices of African individuals including Ignatius Sancho (1780) and Sara Baartman (1816) for their own agenda. Her final chapter culminates in a reading of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1748) as a 1,500-page,Gentleman’s Magazine-influenced obituary. A series of tables and appendices visually depict editors’ developments through a timeline of Gentleman’s Magazine obituaries and page design and layout of select “Bills of Mortality” during key editorial transitions. Ultimately, Plante’s work shows how the obituary form as we know it today was pioneered by editor–printer–authors who marketed the loss of supposedly self-made men like them as “useful” and therefore highly grievable to build their highly sustainable brand with circulation, as Samuel Johnson puts it in his obituary of the magazine’s founding editor Edward Cave, “wherever the English language is spoken.”
We are excited to be able to support the work of a young scholar producing such innovative and rigorous work on 18th-century periodicals. One member of the committee remarked, “I wish I had advised this dissertation,” which we all felt was the highest of praise!
—BSA News & Announcements, Jan. 27, 2024
American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies Women’s Caucus Émilie Du Châtelet Award for book project, Death Writing: Consolidating Power in the Atlantic World (1660–1840) (2024)
We are pleased to award Kelly Plante the Émilie du Châtelet prize for 2024. Kelly’s project, Death Writing: Consolidating Power in the Atlantic World (1730-1840) examines a category of writing about death that Kelly describes as initially comprised of a variety of death-related genres, including hagiography, epitaph, eulogy, and death notices, that gradually became consolidated into one genre, the obituary. Kelly uses examples of death writing from the Gentleman’s Magazine, which published the first death notices section to be labeled “Obituaries” in 1780, and examines the ways in which death notices intersected with the novel. The committee was particularly interested in Kelly’s focus on gender, race, and indigeneity in death notices across the Atlantic world, and we look forward to learning more about Kelly’s conception of death writing as a genre that is particularly insightful with respect to eighteenth-century ideas of bodily sovereignty as a result of the work done as part of this award. Congratulations, Kelly, and enjoy your time working at the Oakland University Library and at the Clements Library in Ann Arbor!
British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) Postgraduate Conference Award (2023) for “‘The present therefore seems improbable, the future most uncertain’: Transcending Academia through Charlotte Lennox’s Lady’s Museum (1760–61).”
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Graduate Student Research Essay Prize (2021) for “‘Equipped herself in the habit of a man’: Exposing Empire in the Female Spectator (1746–48)”
“The Graduate Prizes Committee applauds Plante’s excellent treatment of the difficult triad of gender, sexuality, and empire. The essay’s treatment of the warrior woman trope in Eliza Haywood’s texts and in a Trans-Atlantic context achieves the sort of interdisciplinarity that ASECS aspires to. Taking up Haywood’s construction of authenticity, Plante offers a sensitive and evocative reading of this material to argue that Haywood’s work effectively satirized her culture in the service of her female readership.”
— ASECS Graduate Research Essay Prize Committee, 2021
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Women’s Caucus Editing and Translation Prize (2023) for the Lady’s Museum Project (ladysmuseum.com)
“These scholars’ digital project of Charlotte Lennox’s Lady’s Museum, published between 1760 and 1761, was among the most important early periodicals in proto-feminist writing. The project will have a wide reach, its universal design will make these texts available to a full range of readers and scholars, and it is developed by early career scholars who have clear plans and a vision that goes beyond a single publication. The digital Lady’s Museum crosses boundaries between disciplines (art, literature, history, social sciences) and involves scholars of all capacities, from long established academics like Susan Carlisle to the unknown undergraduate who will be assigned something on women writers and will come across this accessible forum while doing their online research. Supporting this kind of scholarship and public outreach is crucial to maintaining a continual exploration of women’s contributions to literature and history.”
— ASECS Women’s Caucus Prize Committee, 2023
Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (CSECS) D. W. Smith Research Fellowship (2021) for the Lady’s Museum Project (ladysmuseum.com)
“This project benefits from a collaborative team with demonstrable experience in both the digital and pedagogical areas necessary. The site, available through open access, will be valuable resource for scholars, students, and teachers.”
— CSECS Awards Committee, 2021