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Prof. Bruckner wins Gottschalk Prize for literature
4:51 p.m., March 1, 2007--Martin Brückner, associate professor of English and material culture studies, has been awarded the 2006-07 Louis Gottschalk Prize for his book The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy and National Identity by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS). “It's an enormous honor to be awarded the Louis Gottschalk Prize,” Brückner said. “The Louis Gottschalk Prize gives me a wonderful sense of encouragement to continue this line of historical, archival and intellectual inquiry. What is perhaps more important about this prize is that it indirectly recognizes UD's intellectual environment. After all, writing this book would have not been possible if I hadn't received constant encouragement from the English department and from dialogues that grew out of initiatives such as the Material Culture Studies Center or from materials that are in the library's Special Collections. I believe the prize sends a great signal that UD is not only a place where exciting and innovative work happens, but that this work is made possible because UD continually creates opportunities for interdisciplinary exchange and research.” ASECS is an interdisciplinary group dedicated to the advancement of scholarship in all aspects of the period from the later 17th through the early 19th century. The Gottschalk Prize is given to an outstanding historical or critical study on the 18th century and carries an award of $1,000. It is one of the most prestigious scholarly awards in 18th-century literary studies publishing, and all scholarly books, including commentaries, critical studies, biographies, collections of essays by a single author and critical editions, written in any modern language are eligible. Don Mell, professor of English, chaired the committee responsible for choosing the winner for the 1990 prize. “The competition is incredibly fierce, and the books submitted for consideration by both university and commercial presses are all distinguished and first-rate. Among the Gottschalk's recipients are the best-known scholars in their various fields, American and British,” he said.
Brückner's book examines a period in U.S. land grant history from 1690 to 1825 when the British Parliament began revoking land charters leading to extensive surveying or resurveying of the land and to “the verge of the Indian removal policy.” “Recovering the understudied archive of maps and geography books that circulated among 18th-century citizens and looking at portraits, needlework samplers and everyday household objects, the book offers clues to how people construed their own identities through the science of geography,” he said. Brückner received a doctorate from Brandeis University in 1997 and was an Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va. He joined the UD faculty in 1999 and received a Francis Alison Young Scholars Award in 2002. His research focuses on American literature and culture from the 17th-19th centuries, and he teaches undergraduate courses on topics in early American literature, as well as on the history of the book and the environmental imagination in modern America. Brückner's articles have been published in American Quarterly, English Literary History, American Literary History and many essay collections. He currently is working on a book about translation, material culture and performance in early America. He is coeditor of a recently completed book, American Literary Geographies: Spatial Practice and Cultural Production, 1500-1900. Article by Barbara Garrison
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