The Snyder Prize

In memory of founder Lee Daniel Snyder (1933–2012), the New College Conference established the Snyder Prize in 2014. The prize carries an honorarium of $400 and is given to the best paper presented at the conference by a junior scholar (untenured/part-time faculty or graduate student).

The Prize is made possible by the Lee Snyder Memorial Fund; contributions to the Fund, which supports the Prize as well as New College students concentrating in Medieval & Renaissance Studies, are always welcome. Please direct any questions on the Fund or the Prize to info@newcollegeconference.org.

See the History page for more on Professor Snyder's legacy (and another great photo)

Submission Guidelines & Award Process

In order to be considered for the Snyder Prize, a paper must have already been accepted for presentation by the program committee. Submissions must consist of a CV and a completed conference paper in PDF or DOC form, sent to snyderprize@newcollegeconference.org by 1 January of the year of the conference; thus, the submission deadline for the March 2022 conference is 1 January 2022. Submitted papers should be limited to reading length (approximately 3000 words, or 10 double-spaced pages), plus any necessary footnotes and supplementary material such as images or tables. (We will accept a single additional Powerpoint file or PDF with this supplementary material.) Each competition is judged by a distinguished senior scholar, and the prizewinner is announced at the conference in March.

Past Prize Winners

2020: Dana Hogan, a graduate student at Duke University, for "The Early Female Audience of Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes” (adjudicated by Mary Floyd-Wilson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill).

2018: Lorenzo Caravaggi, a graduate student at Balliol College, Oxford, for "When Violence is Not an Option: Managing Conflict in Late Thirteenth-Century Bologna" (adjudicated by Eleonora Stoppino, University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign).

2016: Genevieve Carlton, assistant professor of history at the University of Louisville, for a paper on early modern cartography, “Fictional Knowledge: Venetian Claims to the Atlantic Ocean” (adjudicated by Claire Sponsler, University of Iowa).

2014: Katarzyna Lecky, assistant professor of English at Arkansas State University, for a paper on Edmund Spenser, “Romancing the Map of Faerie in the House of Busyrane” (adjudicated by Thomas F. X. Noble, Notre Dame).