Awards

The Ronald Schuchard Undergraduate Archival Research Prize

The Schuchard Undergraduate Archival Research Prize is awarded each academic year to the best papers, digital projects, or other innovative works that use primary source material from the Harry Ransom Center's archival collections, such as personal papers, organizational records, and materials that document the creative process. All current University of Texas at Austin undergraduates who have completed an academic project involving archival research in Ransom Center collections are encouraged to apply.

The First Place Award is $1000, the Second Place Award is $700, and the Third Place Award is $300. Award recipients will be announced in appropriate venues and be recognized at a ceremony in their honor at the Center.

This award can affect any financial aid you receive this academic year. Please contact the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid to see if the award exceeds your cost of attendance. If so, you may need to submit an appeal. If you do not receive any financial aid, you can disregard these instructions.

Application Closes: March 24, 2026

Winners will be announced in mid-April and a Recognition Ceremony will be held at the Center at the end of the month.

To Apply:

Applications are accepted via this online application form. Applications will include a 1-page cover letter and a sample or full version of the essay, digital project, or creative project.

• Application & Project Requirements

  To be eligible for the Schuchard Undergraduate Archival Research Prize, a student:

  • Must be a current University of Texas at Austin undergraduate. All class levels and majors are welcome to apply.
  • Must have completed their project using Ransom Center collection materials.
  • May submit work completed during a previous semester but must be a current undergraduate to qualify.

  
  

  Application Components:

  • Cover Letter (300-500 words)
    Describes the applicant's research process and the extent to which they engaged with selected materials to develop their project
  
  
  • Archival Research Project
    • Can be an essay (e.g., thesis project, writing sample), digital project (e.g., online exhibit, podcast), or creative work (e.g., performance piece, short story). If you have questions about the eligibility of your project please contact: mary.hollyman@austin.utexas.edu
    • Strong submissions will incorporate manuscript materials, such as personal papers (e.g., drafts, correspondence, journals, account books), organizational records (e.g., contracts, rejection letters, memos), annotated books, and documents that reflect the creative process
    • Does not have to be a finished project at time of submission, but should be a polished version of your project that demonstrates compelling use of items from Ransom Center collections materials
    • Allowed file types are Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and various image, video, and audio file formats
    • Written work can be up to 15 pages. If your project is more than 15 pages, please submit a sample that showcases your use of Ransom Center material(s).

• Recipients

  2026

  First Place: Connor Grim, "A Counterexample to Sexual Categorization: Virginia Woolf's Orlando and the British Sexological Society on the Morality of Gender Nonconformity"
  Second Place: Eden Goodman, "How James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room Explores the Consequences of Denial/The Anatomy of a Lie: A Visual Representation of David's Dualities"
  Third Place: Zoe Lynch, "An 'Unself-Consciousness of Race:' Zora Neale Hurston, Fannie Hurst, and Black Identity in Tell My Horse"

  2025

  First Place: Jessica Lu, "Canvas of the Mind: Anne Sexton's Artistic Expression of Mental Turmoil"
  Second Place: Aidan Springer, "Motivations Behind Virginia's Colonization: The Little Ice Age"
  Honorable Mention: Lauren Wheeler, "Phenomenally a Woman: Revisions of Female Literature Through Maya Angelou"

  2024

  First Place: Sarah Hussain, "They Call Me Uncle Smith: Decentralizing Notions of Nationhood via the Franklin-Pakistan Archive"
  Second Place: Sally Parampottil, "Analyzing Representations of Torture Through Augusto Boal's Torquemada"
  Honorable Mention: Alayna Parlevliet, "To Learn Is to Live"

  2023

  First Place: Nicolas Silva, "The Making of 'Edmund Kean': Celebrity Image and Theatrical Culture in Regency London"
  Second Place: Sofia Moore, "Form and Function: Materiality and Purpose of the HRC 195 Book of Heraldry"
  Honorable Mention: Harmony Burk, "Heresies and Ink Burn: An Investigation into the Material Production and Corrosion of HRC 186"

  2022

  First Place: Macaella Gray, "At the Lock Gates of Surrealism: Bief Magazine (1958-60)"
  Second Place: Megan Snopik, "On Reading Woolf, On Reading Illness: Situating Disability in Modernism"
  Honorable Mention: Breigh Plat, "The Slut You Are: West, Kincaid, and Sexton on Subaltern Sexuality"

• Donor
  Ronald Schuchard, a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin and the Goodrich C. White Professor of English and Irish Studies, Emeritus, at Emory University, is the author of numerous studies of modern authors, particularly T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats. His Eliot's Dark Angel won the Robert Penn Warren / Cleanth Brooks Prize for outstanding literary criticism, and his The Last Minstrels: Yeats and the Revival of the Bardic Arts won the Robert Rhodes Prize for an outstanding book on Irish Literature. He is co-editor with John Kelly of three volumes of The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats and general editor of the eight-volume online and print editions of The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he is presently a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of English Studies, University of London, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.