SLU Professor and Author Jonathan Sawday Wins MLA’s Prestigious James Russell Lowell Prize

12/11/2024

Saint Louis University’s Jonathan Sawday, Ph.D., has received the James Russell Lowell Prize for the most outstanding book published in 2023, for his text Blanks, Print, Space, and Void in English Renaissance Literature: An Archaeology of Absence, published by Oxford University Press.

The prize is the Modern Language Association’s (MLA) top honor, and is awarded each year to an outstanding book that is a literary or linguistic study, a critical edition of an important work, or a critical biography written by a member of the association. Sawday, who holds SLU’s Walter J. Ong, S.J. Chair in Humanities in the English Department, is the 55th recipient of the award, and the first from SLU to receive the honor.

In announcing the prize, the MLA called Sawday’s book a “remarkable tour de force.” 

“Toggling smoothly between print history and literary analysis, between material culture and critical theory, Sawday’s study offers not only a novel perspective on Renaissance literature but also an innovative approach that could be extended to other periods and fields,” the MLA said. “Of particular interest is the way Sawday draws links between discourses of gaps and absence in relation to practices of printing and typesetting, on one hand, and corresponding discourses of race and gender, on the other.”

The James Russell Lowell Prize will be presented to Sawday at the MLA’s annual meeting next month in New Orleans. The MLA will also award honorable mentions to Notre Dame’s Sara Marcus, Ph.D., and Penn State’s Julie Park, Ph.D.

"The selection of Dr. Sawday's recent book by the MLA for this impressive award is further evidence that he truly is a scholar at the top of his field," said SLU President Fred P. Pestello, Ph.D. "We are proud of Jonathan and thankful for the many ways his insights contribute to a deeper understanding of literature, culture, history — and the world we inhabit today.  The humanities at SLU are comprised of distinguished scholars who are passionate about pushing the boundaries of knowledge and engaging students in this worthwhile pursuit.  The Lowell Prize demonstrates that the humanities shine brightly at SLU."

Brian Yothers, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of English at SLU, notes that Sawday’s honor continues the tradition of scholarly excellence established at the University by Walter J. Ong, S.J., a groundbreaking Jesuit scholar and teacher, who is widely considered a giant in the field of literary studies and rhetoric.

Yothers said Sawday's award is the most significant MLA news for the department since Ong was elected president of the association in the late 1970s. 

“Dr. Sawday's recognition underscores that this is a vibrant department with a rich culture of research and scholarship,” he said. “Blanks, Print, Space, and Void in English Renaissance Literature is an intellectually adventurous, wide-ranging, and erudite volume that represents literary scholarship at its best and captures beautifully the culture of intellectual adventurousness and rigor that characterizes the department of English at SLU." 

Reflecting on the prize, Sawday sees the honor as a continuation of the strong tradition of scholarship at SLU and a part of a shared legacy that is still growing.

“What we in the humanities investigate is complexity,” Sawday said. “Here at SLU, our Jesuit intellectual tradition helps us to explore and engage with questions about the range and variety of human experience. 

“Our English department is flourishing with the highest quality research in the field,” Sawday said. “This is a place where people really shine.” 

Blanks, Print, Space, and Void in English Renaissance Literature 

“Gaps, voids, or blank spaces may be occasionally fascinating, sometimes embarrassing, and often disturbing,” Sawday begins in his book’s introduction.  

As he conducted his study of emptiness, Sawday found that seemingly empty spaces offered countless avenues to explore. Blank spaces also offer an invitation to fill in what seems to be missing not just from a printed text, but from larger systems of understanding: for example, the gaps in the ancient fossil record which so puzzled Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century as he developed his theory of evolution.

“For years, when people would ask me what I’m working on, I’d say ‘nothing,’” Sawday quipped. “Why write about blanks and voids? Because we’re often frightened of the idea of absolute nothingness. As the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal, recorded in the late seventeenth century, it was the apparent ‘silence’ of infinite and empty space which terrified him.”

From the Beatles’ White Album to the Sopranos’ cut-to-black series finale, the book connects many aspects of contemporary culture with the advent of the transformative technology of print in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. So, blank spaces in early printed maps of North America were signs not just of European geographic ignorance, but they also created vast areas of the continent as voids or vacuums. These seemingly empty spaces helped to attract waves European settlement with often disastrous impacts on Indigenous peoples, who were themselves created as absent or missing. Even the banal modern printed “blank form,” devised with spaces that must be filled in by the user, and which first began to be issued in enormous numbers in the sixteenth century, are part of what the book calls the “rhetoric of the blank.”

This rhetoric helped to shape the imaginations of both poets and scientists as they found new ways of recording and presenting their experiences on the surfaces of printed pages – pages which themselves begin as empty sheets of blank, white, paper. But often the blankest of pages, as the book argues, has a story to tell: the effect of censorship, perhaps, or the presence of words that cannot be spoken, or ideas that must be concealed. Even some of our key modern ideas about “race” were shaped, in part, by the oscillation between black and white which was the product of the “inky” technology of print.

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About Jonathan Sawday, Ph.D.

Sawday received his bachelor’s degree in English literature and language at Queen Mary College at the University of London followed by his doctorate degree in Renaissance literature at University College London. He joined SLU in 2009, having previously taught in Irish, English, and Scottish universities.

His research explores Renaissance literature and culture, early modern British literature, intellectual and cultural history between 1500-1700, book and print history,  the history of reading, and computational approaches to literary study.

Sawday’s occasional essays and reviews have appeared in: The Times Literary Supplement, The Independent’s Sunday Review, The London Review of Books, The Lancet, The American Historical Review, The English Historical Review, The Times Higher Education Supplement, The Daily Telegraph, The Scottish Historical Review,  The London Quarterly, Poetry Ireland Review, and The St. Louis Beacon. As well as his many scholarly articles, his previous books include the widely acclaimed The Body Emblazoned (1995) – a study of the history of anatomy and human dissection – and Engines of the Imagination (2007), which explores the impact of machines and mechanisms in the pre-industrial world.

In the U.K., Sawday has been a regular BBC Radio broadcaster for many years, contributing to discussions on topics ranging from Renaissance magic and alchemy to superheroes and technophobia, among many others. His five-part radio series, “The King Returned,” aired on BBC Radio 3 in 2010, and he has frequently presented at the BBC’s annual Freethinking Festival.

On British television, Sawday has written and contributed to programs on Renaissance anatomy (Channel 4), Lennart Nilsson’s photography (Channel 4) and contemporary body art (London Weekend Television), among others.

About the Modern Language Association of America

The Modern Language Association of America and its over 20,000 members in 100 countries work to strengthen the study and teaching of languages and literature. Founded in 1883, the MLA provides opportunities for its members to share their scholarly findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends in the academy. The MLA sustains one of the finest publication programs in the humanities, producing a variety of publications for language and literature professionals and for the general public. The association publishes the MLA International Bibliography, the only comprehensive bibliography in language and literature, available online. The MLA Annual Convention features 750 scholarly and professional development sessions. More information on MLA programs is available at www.mla.org.

About the James Russell Lowell Prize

First presented in 1969, the James Russell Lowell Prize is awarded under the auspices of the MLA’s Committee on Honors and Awards. James Russell Lowell (1819–91) was a scholar and poet. His first important literary activity came as editor of and frequent contributor to the National Anti-slavery Standard. In 1848 Lowell published several volumes of poetry, criticism, humor, and political satire, including The Vision of Sir Launfal and the first Biglow Papers, which firmly established him in the galaxy of American writers of his day. In 1855 he succeeded Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as Smith Professor of French and Spanish at Harvard. Lowell was the first editor of the Atlantic Monthly (1857–61) and was later minister to Spain and Britain. James Russell Lowell served as second president of the MLA from 1887 until his death in 1891.