2022 Pforzheimer Grant: Winners & Their Projects
The winners of the 2022 Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr. Research Grant, which supports research that expands traditional definitions of the field and its futures and engages race, empire, gender, class, and global Romanticisms approaches through diverse methodological and theoretical frameworks, were announced at the MLA Awards Ceremony on January 7, 2023. The projects of this year’s winners—Francesca Mackenney (University of Leeds), British Research Council Fellow at the Library of Congress, and Ifemu Omari, a PhD Candidate at the University of Wolverhampton—explore topics in transatlantic ecocriticism and nineteenth-century slave narrative.
Francesca Mackenney’s project, “Lovers of Swamps: John Clare and Henry David Thoreau”, explores how fens, bogs and swamps were imagined and interpreted in early nineteenth-century British and American Literature. By investigating the value of peatlands in the writings of John Clare and Henry David Thoreau as well as in the identically named Bedford areas they inhabited, this project will contribute insights into the environmental concerns arising on both sides of the Atlantic during the nineteenth century. Mackenney’s work in the environmental humanities, with its focus on the affinities between the two poets’ respective love of fens, bogs, and swamps, helps us understand how these writers came to valorize ecosystems that others regarded as waste spaces—and how literature can foster new attitudes about wetlands and their uses.
This project opens up into broader questions of how colonial expansion—the diaspora of peoples to the United States and the exploitation of natural resources and wetland drainage schemes—intertwined with land reclamations schemes, revealing how an environmental consciousness was not only developing in the Romantic period, but also engaging in global issues—such as the preservation of ecosystems—that are of significant concern today as urgent action is being undertaken to protect, sustainably manage and restore peatlands worldwide (Paris Climate Agreement, 2016).
Funding from the prize will enable archival trips to New York: at the Pforzheimer Collection at the New York Public Library, Mackenney will examine variants of Clare’s poem “To the Snipe”, one of several that dealt with fenlands surrounding his home in Northborough; and at the Morgan Library and Museum, she will explore nearly two dozen unpublished notebooks written by Thoreau wherein he writes about Native American culture and exploration of North America and displays interests in indigenous languages and place names. Mackenney’s first book, Birdsong, Speech and Poetry: The Art of Composition in the Long Nineteenth Century, has recently been released with Cambridge University Press.
Our second winner, Ifemu Omari, will be working on “The Dynamics of Colourism between Black and Mixed-Race Women in Nineteenth-Century Antigua”. By moving beyond black-white oppositions to investigate how people of mixed race regarded and were regarded by others in nineteenth-century Antigua, her project on “colourism” will add nuance, complexity and depth to our understanding of racial conflict in The History of Mary Prince and the world in which she lived. The project finds evidence of the colourism and anti-Black racism that enabled and facilitated slavery in nineteenth-century British West Indies in Mary Prince’s comments about her relationship with Martha Wilcox, a free mixed-race woman. Prince’s negative relationship with Wilcox is used by the pro-slavery journalism in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, demonstrating how colourism permeated pro-slavery discourse.
Omari plans to visit the Antigua National Archives and the Antiguan House of Assembly to examine the private papers, letters and Antiguan House of Assembly meeting minutes spanning 1820-1834, in order to investigate white resident West Indians and learn more about the attitude of colonists towards mixed-race Antiguans. These archival materials will underscore her arguments about colourist antagonism and the relationship between women.
With an interest in both public and scholarly engagement, Omari also has plans to collaborate with the University of Wolverhampton to organise an online seminar with the Antigua National Archives, the National Library of Antigua, and local Antiguan communities, linking audiences in the UK and Jamaica in a public humanities project.
Both prize winners will receive $3,000 to further their research projects.
The Pforzheimer grants honor Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr. (1907-1996), past president, vigorous advocate, and generous benefactor of the Keats-Shelley Association of America. The prize provides funding for research expenses related to scholarship in Romantic-era literature and culture. Since 2000, past winners have used the award to fund research travel to work with archives in Ghana, Jamaica, Spain, and the UK. Future calls for applications will be posted on the K-SAA Blog and social media.
