Two honored by MLA

Books written by two Brown University faculty members have won honors from the Modern Language Association (MLA) of America.

Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, assistant professor of comparative literature and Italian studies, won the annual Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies for The Pinocchio Effect: On Making Italians (1860-1920).

Ralph E. Rodriguez, associate professor of American civilization, won the annual MLA Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies for Brown Gumshoes: Detective Fiction and the Search for Chicana/o Identity.

The award citation for The Pinocchio Effect calls Stewart-Steinberg's book "a major contribution to scholarship" that "tackles, with adroitness and rigor and in graceful prose, a neglected area of Italian studies – the cultural, scientific, and sociopolitical landscape in the period between Unification and the collapse of liberalism. ... Stewart-Steinberg has written a book that is engaging and thought provoking, even and perhaps especially when its conclusions are subject to debate."

Rodriguez' "elegantly written book examines Chicano/a detective fiction from the 1980s through the present day," the award citation notes, adding that his "readings are original and lucid and make this book not only a pleasure to read but a central source of knowledge on detective fiction and on the Chicano/a world of the last three decades."

The awards are two of seventeen that will be presented on December 28 during the association's annual convention.

With 30,000 members worldwide, the MLA is the largest and one of the oldest American learned societies in the humanities.