Congratulations to the Siegel McDaniel Award Winners

This year we had an exceptional group of contenders for the Siegel McDaniel Award. Considering the quality of the submissions, the Board named co-winners: Madeline McCluskey, for her essay "Eating Across Borders: Dietary Politics in 'Goodbye, Columbus' and Absurdistan," and Jacqueline Krass, whose submission was entitled "'Why do you pretend to be so detached from your Jewish feelings?' Toward an Affective Reading of Jewish Diaspora."

Naomi S. Taub's essay "An Embarrassment of Rishes: Affect, Respectability Politics, and the Ghetto Jew in The Plot Against America" was awarded an honorable mention. This was an incredibly strong group of papers, and we thank everyone who submitted to this year's competition. We look forward to reading more of these promising scholars' work in the future!

Madeline McCluskey is a Ph. D. student in English at Penn State who studies 20th- and 21st-century American literature and visual culture. In her research she explores Americans’ anxieties over what they eat and what they feed their children.

Jacqueline Krass is a third-year PhD student in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she works on contemporary American poetry and Jewish American literature. A staff writer at The Millions, she has also published work in Textual Practice, Adroit Journal, and Full Stop.