[English-undergrad] Announcement: Department of English 2025-2026 Faculty, Graduate, and Undergraduate Award Recipients

[James Tobias]

Dear Colleagues,

I hope this finds you well.

As the academic year winds up, I’m thrilled to recognize our English Department faculty, graduate, and undergraduate award recipients for 2025-2026.

This year’s award roster ranges from campus awards recognizing faculty disability allies to essay awards at graduate and undergraduate levels, Graduate Service Awards, Lindon Barrett Memorial and Emory Elliott Memorial awards, Outstanding TA of the Year,  and a host of dissertation fellowship awards funded by Graduate Division. I want to take a moment to recognize how well our graduate program is represented here, in the innovative research and service highlighted in the awards roster. Overall, this is an impressive collection of honors and awards, representing the excellent work in research, teaching, and service going on in the Department.  

Congratulations to all of the awards winners: we’re so proud of your work.

I am especially grateful to the donors who make the Lindon Barrett Memorial, the Emory Elliott Memorial, and the Graduate Service Awards possible, and of course, to our English Department support staff who keep us going quarter to quarter, year to year.

Winners have been notified separately; for this general announcement, I’ve attached the formal award notice including prize descriptions and information about awards and recipients. (I’ve also attached the list of award recipients provided below in a separate attachment for ease of use in social media posting, etc.)

The list of award recipients follows, but please do open and read the attachment for all the details - and feel free to congratulate the winners!

Congratulations, award winners, and warm thanks again to all of the faculty, staff, and donors who make this possible. We’re deeply grateful.

Take care, all,

With gratitude,

Jim


Department of English Awards and Recognitions 
2025-2026
 
 
Faculty Award Recipients
 
Award for Faculty Excellence in Service to Undergraduate Education (Department of English):
 
Dr. Traise Yamamoto and Dr. Emma Stapely
 

2025-2026 Outstanding Disability Ally Award (UCR SDRC)

Dr. Jennifer Doyle
 
 
English Undergraduate Program Awards 
 
Undergraduate Essay Award (Department of English)
 
Winning Essay:
 
Isabella Day, “‘Tender is the Flesh: Necropolitics and Cannibalism"
 

Honorable Mention: 
 
Troy Davidson, "The War on Masculinity: Analyzing the Demasculinization of Men in Asian American Literature"
 
 
 
 
Emory Elliott Memorial Undergraduate Award 2025-2026 (Department of English)
 
Miranda Regalado
“Fugitive Evanescence: The Implications of Intangible Freedom in The Narrative of Henry ‘Box’ Brown”
 
 
Graduate Program Awards and Honors Recipients
 
 
Lindon Barrett Black Studies Prize 2025-2026 (Department of English)
 
Emily Elvoid, Department of English, for “A Matter of Time: Disruption of Modernity, Genre, and Archive in Passing Novels"
 
 
Emory Elliott Graduate Essay Award 2025-2026 (Department of English)
 
K Persinger, for ““Them People Ain’t Human”: Border Cannibals, Blackness, & Tehomophobia in Firefly and Serenity”
 
 
 
Graduate Essay Awards 2025-2026 (Department of English)
 

Michelle Jones, first place, for “Hailed as Disability"
 

Sarah Thompson, second place, for “Genre as Governance”
 

Josie Holland, third place, for “Interrupting Aesthetics” 
 
 
 
Graduate Community Service Awards 2025-2026 (Department of English)
 
Michael Pfirmann-Pugh

Emily Mulvihill

Jenna Wilson
 
 
Dissertation Fellowships (UCR Graduate Division, 2025-2026)
 
 
Dissertation Completion Fellowship Awards 2025-2026:
 
Amanda Mocsi
 
Loren Barbour
 
Allie Wood
 
 
Dissertation Year Fellowship Award 2026-2027:
 
Liza Wemakor
 
 
Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award 2025-2026 (Department of English)
 
Emily Elvoid
 
—
James Tobias, Ph.D.
Professor, Chair
Department of English
University of California
Riverside CA 92521
jtobias at ucr.edu

https://ucr.zoom.us/j/95465985946?pwd=Z1A4Yk1UZDhBTjY5UkJ5R1VQTWUvQT09

"We at UCR would like to respectfully acknowledge and recognize our responsibility to the original and current caretakers of this land, water, and air: the Cahuilla, Tongva, Luiseño, and Serrano peoples and all of their ancestors and descendants, past, present, and future. Today this meeting place is home to many Indigenous peoples from all over the world, including UCR faculty, students, and staff, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to live and work on these homelands."


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ucr.edu/pipermail/english-undergrad/attachments/20260612/f50b4f25/attachment-0003.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: EnglishDepartmentAwards2025-2026.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 311611 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ucr.edu/pipermail/english-undergrad/attachments/20260612/f50b4f25/attachment-0002.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ucr.edu/pipermail/english-undergrad/attachments/20260612/f50b4f25/attachment-0004.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: EnglishAwards_2025-2026_List.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 240056 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ucr.edu/pipermail/english-undergrad/attachments/20260612/f50b4f25/attachment-0003.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ucr.edu/pipermail/english-undergrad/attachments/20260612/f50b4f25/attachment-0005.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 1472 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ucr.edu/pipermail/english-undergrad/attachments/20260612/f50b4f25/attachment-0001.p7s>