The Modern Language Association announced Anna Brickhouse, a University Prof. of English and American Studies, as the recipient of the 2015 James Russell Lowell Prize Monday.
Brickhouse received the award for her book “The Unsettlement of America: Translation, Interpretation, and the Story of Don Luis de Velasco, 1560-1945” which was published last year.
Members of the MLA are able to apply for the prize for works related to “linguistic study, a critical edition of an important work or a critical biography,” according to the website. The award — intended to encourage scholarship — dates back to 1969 with its first recipient being Helen Vendler of Boston University.
The University’s English department has been recognized more than once for this award with Prof. Jerome McGann receiving it in 2001, Prof. V.A. Kolve in 1984, and Prof. Benjamin Bennett in 1980.
Brickhouse’s book follows the story of interpreter Don Luis de Velasco as he accompanies Spanish Jesuits eager to colonize the new world. However, in the end, de Velasco decides against colonization because of the harm it causes to those who currently occupy the land.
“I was so fascinated by his story, and by its difference from stories about figures such as Pocahontas and Squanto,” Brickhouse said. “One of the authors who told Don Luis’s story as a novel was a Virginia writer, James Branch Cabell — and today I sometimes teach in the building that was named for the Cabell family. I always think about Don Luis when I hear the name Cabell Hall.”
MLA commended Brickhouse’s book in a press release announcing the names of the award recipients.
“[Brickhouse] challenges us to reconsider the power of language as used by the colonized to resist the very forces that have shaped the archive and the ways we understand it. Brickhouse tells a vivid story that speaks not only to advanced students of the hemispheric Americas, but also to the common reader with an interest in history and how it gets made,” the release said.
Brickhouse said she was thrilled to win the award, although when she first received the email she thought it was a reminder to pay membership dues.
“I almost accidentally deleted the email,” Brickhouse said. “But when I saw my name and realized what it was, I actually screamed out loud. My kids and husband came running to see what was wrong! I was so honored and so surprised and so happy all at once.”
English Department Chair Stephen Arata said Brickhouse’s book is already changing the way people think about early American literature.
“I was delighted, but not at all surprised because the book is fantastic, everybody knew that,” Arata said. “The odds of any one book getting this award are always long, but they weren’t quite as long for this book as for others because it was so good.”
The James Russell Lowell Prize is the third award “The Unsettlement of America: Translation, Interpretation, and the Story of Don Luis de Velasco, 1560-1945” has received this year. It was awarded honorable mention in the John Hope Franklin Prize from the American Studies Association and was also a co-winner of the Early American Literature Book Prize.
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