Prizes

Call for Submissions: Biddy Martin Graduate Prize and LGBT Studies Undergraduate Prize

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Studies program will be accepting submissions for the 2022 Biddy Martin Graduate Prize and 2022 LGBT Studies Undergraduate Prize.

Deadline: Applications are due on MARCH 18, 2022

Submission Guidelines: entrants for either prize must be currently enrolled students at Cornell University. Works submitted for consideration must be your original work produced at any time during your tenure at Cornell. Entrants may submit an essay, artwork, article, thesis chapter, dissertation chapter, etc for consideration.

Email submissions to the LGBT Studies Program Assistant, Aidan Kelly (aidankelly@cornell.edu).

Prizes: $300 prize to the winner and $100 prize awarded to honorable mention in each category.

A faculty committee will conduct a blind review (with submitters’ names and identifying markers removed from entries by the LGBT Program Assistant). Prize winners will be notified in May 2022.

2021 Winners

The Biddy Martin Graduate Prize

Joshua Bastian Cole, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Performing and Media Arts
"Missing Things: The Eerie Allure of Hidden Trans Masculinity in John Carpenter and Rhys Ernst Films"

Honorable mention: Peter Shipman, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Literatures in English
"A Kernel Called Joy: Thoughts Towards an Asexual Future"

LGBT Studies Undergraduate Prize

Alice Kenny, Department of Government
"Queer Love and Aesthetics of the Quotidian: Comparing 'Having a Coke with You' and Killer of Sheep"

Levi Wilson, Department of Performing and Media Arts; Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies
"spit fire, drink gasoline (repeat)"

2020 Winners

The Biddy Martin Graduate Prize

David Eichert, J.D., Cornell Law School
“It ruined my life”: FOSTA, Male Escorts, and the Construction of Sexual Victimhood in American Politics”

Honorable mention: Alec Pollak, Ph.D. student, Department of English
“The Way We Wish We Were: Fantasy, Insurgency, and J. Peterman’s Vestimentary Lex”

The LGBT Studies Undergraduate Prize

Alana Sullivan, Psychology and English
"Premodern Blackface and the Intersections of Multiple Social Identities in Silence”

Honorable mention: Kyra Streck, Fashion Design and Management
"Biopower, Sex Workers, and Infrastructure: Tangerine (2015) as an Example of Sexual Spatialities"

2019 Winners

The Biddy Martin Graduate Prize

Zachary Price, doctoral candidate, Department of English
"Molecular Interiors: Paranoia and the Micropolitics of Identity"

The LGBT Studies Undergraduate Prize

Lydia Anderson, Biology and Society & Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
"Deviation, Dysfunction, & Disease: the Differential Pathologization of Intersex and Infertility"

2018 Winners

The Biddy Martin Graduate Prize

Kristen Angierski, doctoral candidate, Department of English
“Climate Change, AIDS, and Queering the Anthropocene: Tony Kushner's Angels in America"

The LGBT Studies Undergraduate Prize

Julia Lesnick, Human Ecology
“Re-indexing the Cartography of Sexual Orientation”

2017 Winners

The Biddy Martin Graduate Prize

Amaris Brown, doctoral candidate, Department of Africana Studies
“'The Only Truth That Told a Good Story': Pain and Pleasurable Membranes in Marci Blackman's Po Man's Child (1999)"

2016 Winners

The Biddy Martin Graduate Prize

Natasha Bissonauth, doctoral candidate, Department of History of Art and Visual Studies
“Sunil Gupta’s Sun City (2010): An Exercise in Camping Orientalism.”

The LGBT Studies Undergraduate Prize

Andy Kim, Industrial and Labor Relations
“Civil Rights, One and the Same: Extending Title VII Workplace Protections on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation.”

2015 Winners

The Biddy Martin Graduate Prize

Lynne Stahl, doctoral candidate, Department of English
“If You Don’t Believe Us, Read the Book”: Queer Feminist Spectatorship and Filmic Tomboy Narrative

The LGBT Studies Undergraduate Prize

Carlos Kong, Comparative Literature
“Flesh of Another Machine”