2009 Recipient

The Beth Holmgren Graduate Student Essay Prize, established in 1990 and named in honor of Professor Holmgren in 2021, is awarded for an outstanding essay by a graduate student in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

Winner: Ula Łukszo, Mid-Atlantic Slavic Conference
Title: “Bringing a Suppressed World to Light: Alterations to the Postcolonial Travel Narrative in Mariusz Wilk’s Wołoka”

The prize-winning paper for this year offers a subtle reading of Mariusz Wilk’s 2005 travelogue Wołoka, a book that explores the complexities of the historical relationship between Poland and Russia. Łukszo’s compellingly written paper uses Wilk to show that the experience of Poles in the Russian empire both clarifies and qualifies the propositions of postcolonial theory.