Hallie Swanson has just received word that she has won Penn's Stallybrass Prize! The Stallybrass Prize in the History of Material Texts is awarded annually to the two best essays by students in any school at Penn—one by an undergraduate, one by a graduate student—on any aspect of how texts take material form and circulate in the world. The essay comes with a 250-dollar prize. Congratulations, Hallie!
The judges had this to say about Hallie's essay:
Swanson focuses on the Deccan illustrated manuscript romance “Garden of Love” (Gulshan-I ‘Ishq), dated 1743, now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Previously, this manuscript was seen as one of several copies of an older, now lost manuscript. In comparing the PMA’s manuscript with other versions, Swanson challenges this assumption and instead argues that the manuscripts in question were part of an intergenerational workshop. In doing so, Swanson contributes to our understanding of Deccan manuscript production and the dissemination of the Romance.