GLASS Prize in Queer Studies

The GLASS (Gay, Lesbian, and Sexuality Studies) Prize is awarded for the best research and writing on a subject in queer, trans*, LGBT, or sexuality studies. The prize is open to Wesleyan undergraduate students in all classes; senior essays and theses are preferred. The award includes no cash benefit, but the winner’s name will be published in the Commencement booklet.

Entries must be submitted by 4pm the day after senior theses are due (generally the second week of April) via this upload form: https://forms.gle/f1wL6NdxykH2vd47A

Previous winners include:

  • Hazel Allison-Way, “Inside Secret Garden: Affective Atmospheres of Suspicion and the (Un)Straightened Lives of SOGI Asylum Seekers in Amsterdam” (2024, FGSS and CSS)
  • Celine Bassman, “Real Girls” (2024, FGSS)
  • Teddy Shusterman, “Beyond the clinic: a trans erotics of medicine” (2024, FGSS)
  • Sophie Penn, “'Late Have I Loved You': Reconversion and Queer Christian Storytelling" (2023, Religion and FGSS)
  • Natalie Lobach, "TRANSMYTHOLOGIES" (2022, Philosophy and FGSS)
  • Gabriel Ridout, "Andy Warhol’s Ladies And Gentlemen As Trans*/Ephemera" (2021, English)
  • Jackie Sophia Manginelli, "Trapped in Transit: Rendering Bodies Subject or Suspect at the Airport" (2019, FGSS)
  • honorable mention: Samuel Jia, "Queering China in Cyberspace: Desire, Resistance and Discipline in Imagining Chinese Modern Gayness" (2019, FGSS)
  • honorable mention: Keith Tinotenda Mundangepfupfu, "The Double Pariah: Xenophobia, Homophobia and the Queer Zimbabwean Immigrant" (2019, CSS)
  • Emma Fuller-Monk, "Dissonant Destabilizing: Queering the Construction and Performance of Relational Norms" (2018, FGSS)
  • Paige Hutton, "Queering Wake Work: Mediating Anti-Black and Anti-Queer Sentiment Through Tumblr Archives" (2018, American Studies)
  • Sofi Goode, "In the Name of Protection: A Queer Abolitionist Critique of Reform" (2017, FGSS)
  • Nora Canby, "Like a Name" (2017, English)
  • Aileen Lambert, "'Like No One I Ever Saw Before': Fun Home as Broadway’s Lesbian Interruption” (2016, Theater)
  • Josh Byron, "Articulating Desire and Questioning Authority: Subversive Power of Gay Cruising Culture" (2016, American Studies)
  • Kelsey Henry, "'A Wrinkle in Time': Growing Old, or, A Queer Unbecoming" (2015, American Studies & FGSS)
  • Aileen McGrory, "Queer Killjoys: Individuality, Niceness, and the Failure of Current Ally Culture" (2014, Anthropology & FGSS)
  • Haley Weaver, "Enacting a Queer Ethic of Writing: Sometimes Y" (2014, English & FGSS)
  • S. Lamming, “Queer Horizons: An/Other World without Walls” (2013, American Studies)
  • Ague Ortega, “(Un)comfortable Intersections: A Postcolonial Critique Towards a Queerness from the South” (2013, Latin American Studies & Sociology)
  • Abby Spector, “Coming Clean: A Critique of State-Mandated Barrier Protection in the Adult Entertainment Industry” (2012, FGSS)
  • Nora Hansel, “Rethinking Relations: Queer Intimacies and Practices of Care” (2011, American Studies & FGSS)
  • Yannick LeJacques, “Love Becomes Possible: The Transformation of Gay Male Sexuality and Identity in the AIDS Crisis” (2011, History)

Most theses are available at Wesleyan Library Digital Collections

Contact the GLASS Prize committee chair Prof. Margot Weiss for more information.