Iwanter Prize announced

Jyoti Raghu is the winner of the second annual Center for the Humanities Iwanter Prize for excellence in interdisciplinary humanities scholarship for her senior thesis, “Piers Plowman and Fourteenth Century England.” The award is $2,000.

In her thesis, Raghu, an English and religious studies major who will also receive a certificate in medieval studies, focuses on the poem “Piers Plowman,” written by William Langland in the late 1300s. More than 600 pages long in one edition, the work is considered a compendium of late-medieval thought on almost every topic. Raghu’s paper discusses issues of society, contemporary justice, theology, poetry and the apocalypse in one of the most difficult poems in English literature, according to Alger Doane, English professor and Raghu’s adviser.

Suzanne Desan, chair of the selection committee, says Raghu’s thesis is an impressive and truly interdisciplinary work: “She weaves together the study of literature, history and religion in her analysis of the poem “Piers Plowman.'”

Raghu will attend the University of Chicago Divinity School next year as a graduate student in religious studies.

The award was created thanks to the generosity of Sidney E. Iwanter, a 1971 history alumnus of the College of Letters and Science. His gift allows the center to award a prize each year to a graduating senior who, through work on a senior thesis, coursework and general academic distinction, has demonstrated outstanding humanities scholarship of a broad and interdisciplinary nature.