UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Julie Park, Penn State University Libraries’ Paterno Family Librarian and professor of English, has received an honorable mention for the Modern Language Association’s (MLA) 55th annual James Russell Lowell Prize for her latest book, “My Dark Room: Spaces of the Inner Self in 18th-Century England,” published by University of Chicago Press.
Named in honor of 19th-century American poet and scholar James Russell Lowell, the prize is awarded yearly for “an outstanding book — a literary or linguistic study, a critical edition of an important work, or a critical biography — written by a member of the association.”
“This honor is well-deserved national recognition for Julie’s work as both a scholar of English literature and librarian,” said Faye A. Chadwell, dean of University Libraries and Scholarly Communications. “Her alchemical use of interdisciplinary research, weaving historical and textural context within the spaces of 18th-century life, is at the very core of what we strive to foster and support at University Libraries.”
The Lowell prize was one of 18 awards presented during the association’s annual convention in New Orleans, Louisianna, on Jan. 10. Park was in attendance and accepted her award from current MLA President Paula Krebs.
"The James Russell Lowell Prize is the most prestigious award given by the Modern Language Association, the largest scholarly organization in the humanities,” said Michael Bérubé, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature and interim head for Penn State’s Department of English. “Hundreds of books are submitted for the award every year; honorable mention is truly an extraordinary honor, and Julie's accolades are well deserved,"
The 2024 Lowell Prize was awarded to Jonathan Sawday, Walter J. Ong, SJ, Chair in the Humanities in the Department of English at Saint Louis University, for his book “Blanks, Print, Space, and Void in English Renaissance Literature: An Archaeology of Absence,” published by Oxford University Press. Sharing honorable mention honors with Park is Sara Marcus, assistant professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, for “Political Disappointment: A Cultural History from Reconstruction to the AIDS Crisis,” published by Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
The MLA award committee’s citation notes, “Julie Park’s ‘My Dark Room: Spaces of the Inner Self in Eighteenth-Century England’ is a fascinating examination of the position of inner spaces in English literature from the long eighteenth century. Drawing on an eclectic array of literary texts and contextual resources, including diaries, paintings, and architectural blueprints, Park examines not only representations of inner space within literary works themselves but also the ways actual interior spaces provided the inspiration and enabling conditions of those same works. Using a conceptual framework Park calls spatial formalism, this innovative work offers a new perspective on the concept of setting and on the relationship between literature and spatiality."
In ‘My Dark Room,’ “Park uses the metaphor of the camera obscura, the viewing box that was the predecessor of the modern camera, to explore real and imagined architectural spaces in key texts from the period by Andrew Marvell, Margaret Cavendish, Alexander Pope, Samuel Richardson and others,” said Nancy Locke, professor of art history and director of graduate studies in Penn State’s College of Arts and Architecture. “As Park opens up a space of interiority — the writing closet, the grotto of the landscape folly, the clothing pocket, and of course the text itself — she reconstructs early modern psyches and subjectivities in novel ways.”
Park is a scholar of 17th- and 18th-century England who works at the intersections of literary studies, material and visual culture and textual materiality, as noted on her website. Her scholarship strives to reveal the unexpected ways in which human subjects are inseparable from the material things, environments and devices of daily life in historical contexts. She is the author and editor of several books, collections, essays and articles. Her prior books include ‘The Self and It: Novel Objects in Eighteenth-Century England,’ published by Stanford University Press, 2010; and the co-edited Organic ‘Supplements: Bodies and Things of the Natural World, 1580-1790,’ published by University of Virginia Press, 2020.
Several highly competitive research awards supported Park in writing ‘My Dark Room,’ including long-term fellowships at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Huntington Library, major grants from the Howard Foundation and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and short-term fellowships from the Houghton Library, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Bodleian Library, the Lewis Walpole Library and Dumbarton Oaks.
“The honorable mention for the James Russell Lowell Prize means so much to me, not least because it validates the risks I felt I had taken in bringing together different disciplinary models and materials outside of literary studies — such as art and architectural history, landscape design history, media studies, and material culture — to understand the nature of inner experience in 18th-century England,” Park said. “I feel grateful to the MLA for seeing the value of this approach, and I hope my receiving the award encourages other scholars wanting to venture beyond traditional methodological paths in literary studies.”
Park holds a doctorate and master of arts in English literature from Princeton University and a bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr College. She served on the English faculty of McMaster University and Vassar College before completing her master of library information and science degree from UCLA in 2019, concentrating on archival studies and rare books/print and visual culture.
The Modern Language Association of America and its more than 20,000 members in 100 countries work to strengthen the study and teaching of languages and literature. Founded in 1883, the MLA provides opportunities for its members to share their scholarly findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends. The full 2024 MLA awards announcement can be found here.