News Release — December 16, 2021

Center to award Schuchard Prize for the first time

The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin has established The Ronald Schuchard Undergraduate Archival Research Prize and is launching a competition to award cash prizes next year to outstanding undergraduate researchers.

“This award will recognize the incredible work that undergraduates do in our reading room and will encourage even more students to take advantage of our collections, expanding our research community, and bringing exciting new perspectives to the Center,” Director Stephen Enniss said. “The award directly contributes to our mission of supporting creative and innovative work based on these extraordinary collections.”

The Schuchard Prize will be awarded to the best research papers or digital projects created using primary source material from the Center’s archival collections. All current undergraduates at The University of Texas at Austin who have completed an academic project involving archival research in the Center’s collections are encouraged to apply.

Applications will be accepted from Jan. 21 through April 1, 2022. Winners will be announced on Monday, May 2, 2022. The First Place Award is $1,000, the Second Place Award is $700, and an Honorable Mention Award for Freshmen and Sophomore students is $300.

To be eligible for the Schuchard Prize, a student must be a current UT Austin undergraduate at any class level and in any discipline (humanities, sciences, social sciences) and must have completed archival research in the form of an essay, digital project, or honors thesis related to a specific class or course of study at UT Austin using Ransom Center collections.

“Building from our internships and classroom instructional program, the Schuchard Prize will help propel new generations of researchers to engage with the Center and take advantage of our unique holdings,” Head of Fellowship and Instructional Services Andi Gustavson said.

The Ransom Center is an internationally renowned humanities research library and museum with extensive collections that deepen the understanding of literature, photography, film, art and the performing arts. The Center offers research opportunities and support to help students at all levels use primary source materials to make a personal connection with history, deepening understanding and sparking investigation and creativity.

About Ronald Schuchard

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.