Kerilyn Harkaway-Krieger

Winner of the 2011 Graduate Essay Award

Paper Title: "The Apophatic Image and the Pearl of Greatest Price"

Each year, the Department of Religious Studies selects the top graduate research essay submitted by our students. The author of this year's winning essay produced a meticulous, erudite analysis of a Middle-English poem entitled the Pearl. This student situates Pearl as part of the larger corpus of Christian mystical writings that attempt, as she writes, "to move the reader/contemplative from an understanding of God grounded in similarity or referentiality ("God is like a rock," or even, "God is father") to an understanding of God that moves beyond any human categories." In the words of one reviewer: "This close reading of the Middle English poem Pearl examines its intense decorative and material themes and connects them to its 'economy' of excess. The original thesis rediscovers the poem's engagement with late fourteen-century anxieties surrounding labor, value and payment, which challenges, and even derails, the traditional readings." In light of her exemplary demonstration of careful scholarship, theoretical acuity, and creative proferring of an original thesis, the department is pleased to recognize Kerilyn Harkaway-Krieger as the winner of the 2011 Graduate Essay Contest!