Presenting This Year’s Winners of the CDH Dissertation Prize

We are happy to announce that Lizabel Mónica *22 (Spanish and Portuguese) and Kristen Starkowski *21 (English), a former CDH Graduate Fellow, have been awarded the 2021 CDH Dissertation Prize. The prize recognizes exceptional doctoral work with a digital humanities component by recipients of Princeton PhDs.

This year’s winners took two very different approaches to the use of DH in their research. We are excited to introduce both briefly here. Check back later in the summer for in-depth engagement with their projects.

Lizabel Mónica

The committee called Mónica’s project, Literatura por otros medios: tecnología digital y campo literario en la Cuba contemporánea, “a groundbreaking study of the dissemination of data under oppressive regimes and under limited access to the Internet.” The committee noted how Mónica’s “Omeka exhibit of born-digital magazines and literature provides a vital snapshot of the artistic community that found methods . . . to subvert expected channels of circulation and distribution.”

Kristen Starkowski

Starkowski’s dissertation, Doorstep Moments: Close Encounters with Minor Characters in the Victorian Novel, won praise from the committee for its “use of Cytoscape to create a network analysis that privileges ‘relation’ over ‘frequency’ as a marker of a character’s importance.” The committee also highlighted Starkowski’s “comments on [Erving] Goffman’s micro-sociology serving as a bridge between close and distant reading.”

Congratulations to both winners on their outstanding research!