Biddy Martin Graduate Prize and LGBT Studies Undergraduate Prize
Call for Submissions: Biddy Martin Graduate Prize & LGBT Studies Undergraduate Prize
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Studies program will be accepting submissions for the 2025 Biddy Martin Graduate Prize and 2025 LGBT Studies Undergraduate Prize.
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.
A faculty committee will conduct a blind review (with submitters’ names and identifying markers removed from entries by the LGBT Program Manager). Prize winners will be notified in May 2025.
Deadline: Applications are due by MARCH 24, 2025. Send submissions to lgbtstudies@cornell.edu.
Prize Winners
2024 Winners
The Biddy Martin Graduate Prize
Du Fei, Ph. D. candidate, Department of History
“Thinking with Kulthūm Nana: Gendering Knowledge in Islam”.
Honorable mention: Jessie Taieun Yoon, Ph. D. candidate, Department of Performing and Media Arts
“Disaffected Fatigue of Asian Camp and its Affective Dissonance."
LGBT Studies Undergraduate Prize
Jennifer Xin He Zhang, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Comparative Literature
“Queerness and Boundaries, Disruption and Transversality in Funeral Parade of Roses.”
Honorable mention: Gwendolyn Harth Klein
“The Pen is my Sword: Rhetorical Techniques of Gay and Transgender People Responding to Bigotry.”
2023 Winners
The Biddy Martin Graduate Prize
Jeff Iovannone, M.A. student, Historic Preservation Planning
"Leslie Feinberg's Buffalo: Historic Sites in Stone Butch Blues"
Honorable mention: Akhil Kang, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology
"Savarna Citations of Desire: Queer Impossibilities of Inter-Caste Love"
LGBT Studies Undergraduate Prize
First Place Winner: Laura Chang '23, double major in Anthropology and Biological Sciences
"Is it okay to become gay?: The consequences of biological citizenship and determinism in the LGBTQ+ community"
Second Place Winner: Mateo Valdillez '25, Environment and Sustainability major, Latina/o Studies minor
"A Comparison of Machismo in Cuba in the 16th, 20th, and 21st century"
Honorable Mention: Sabiha Obaid '23, Industrial and Labor Relations, LGBT Studies minor
"Queerness in South Asia: Love Poems and Ghazals"
2022 Winners
The Biddy Martin Graduate Prize
Alec Pollak, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Literatures in English
"Outing Lorraine: Queer Silence in the Hansberry Archive"
Honorable mention: Dennis Wegner, Graduate Student, Department of German Studies
"Queer Constellations, Cosmic Contacts: Trans-Forming Greek Mythology and the Narrative of Europe in Sasha Marianna Salzmann's Meteorites"
LGBT Studies Undergraduate Prize
Fabio Cabrera, Sage School of Philosophy; Department of German Studies
"Queering Adorno - Commitment, Autonomy, Complexity and the Relevance of Queer Pop Music"
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”
