UWinnipeg English Professor Dr. Candida Rifkind was awarded the 2013 Priestly Prize
University of Winnipeg English Professor Dr. Candida Rifkind , was awarded the 2013 Priestly Prize for the best essay published in English Studies in Canada (volume 37): When Mounties were Modern Kitsch: The Serial Seductions of Renfrew of the Mounted at the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE) Meeting in Victoria, BC, last week.
“The Priestley Prize represents Dr. Rifkind’s well-deserved recognition for her progressive research and critical writing on the complex, contentious history of Canada’s literature and culture,” said Dr. Alden Turner, UWinnipeg’s Chair, English Department, Faculty of Arts.
ACCUTE states: This is a well-researched and engaging combination of cultural critique, historical scholarship and genre criticism. The essay offers a new perspective on Canadian writing and the production of national identity during the inter-war period, attending to the complicating influences of the previous century’s imperial adventure narratives and newer anxieties over modernity. The critical fate of late Mountie fiction, it further argues, registers the rise of realism and the devaluation of popular writing in the production of the emerging canon of Canadian writing. Rifkind’s essay thus cuts a broad swath through a range of theoretical and literary-historical problems, shedding new light not only on a popular set of novels but also on Canadian literary history itself. The essay is impressive in the scope of its research; rigorous and compelling in the presentation of its argument; and precise and stylish in its delivery.
“Having the article accepted was gratifying,” said Rifkind. “The fact that I then won this prize from a jury of my colleagues in Canadian departments of English is not just a validation of my own work, but a sign that the profession acknowledges the value of interdisciplinary approaches to studying Canadian popular culture, which not too long ago was hardly considered ‘proper literature’ worthy of study in English departments. This award is a sign that our understanding of what counts as literature, and who matters as readers, is changing to reflect a richer array of cultural experiences in Canada.”
English Studies in Canada is the journal published by ACCUTE, which is the professional organization for university professors of English in Canada. It is a highly regarded and a competitive journal.
