Congratulations to Claire Eager (UVA PhD 2017) who received the first UVA Richard Guy Wilson Prize for Excellence in the Study of Buildings, Landscapes and Places. This annual $5000 prize, endowed by Mallory Walker, an alum of the College of Arts and Sciences, honors one of his UVA professors–Richard Guy Wilson, Commonwealth Professor of Architectural History. The prize is open to undergraduate and graduate students across the University. This year’s faculty review panel was comprised of Professor Jane Allison (Creative Writing), Assistant Professor Lisa Goff (American Studies), Professor Beth Meyer (Landscape Architecture) and Professor Louis Nelson (Architectural History). They commended Eager’s ” Complicit Paradise: Invasive Species and Collaborative Design in Donne and Bedford’s Twick(e)n(h)am” a chapter of her dissertation, for the elegance of its prose and the rigor of its analysis that, in working between literary theory and garden history, found new interpretations of this significant place as well as new insights into the relationship between the poet and patron of the garden. Eager received her RGW prize on Friday, 2 December at a dinner hosted by Dean of the Library John Unsworth and his wife, Maggie in their new home in Pavilion II. Elizabeth Fowler, Eager’s dissertation adviser, Beth Meyer (chair of the 2017 RGW prize jury) Mallory and Diana Walker, Richard and Ellie Wilson, and Joey Pierce were also in attendance.

Announcements about the 2018 RGW Prize program will be distribution around UVA Grounds, and available on the A-School and Center for Cultural Landscapes websites, by late January 2018. Submissions will be due in May. Please encourage your classmates and students to apply!