The first Women in German Memorial Fund Annual Prize for a Dissertation by a WiG Member was awarded to Helga Thorsen (University of Arkansas, Little Rock) on Friday night at the WiG 1997 Conference. The prize is endowed by the Women in German Memorial Fund and awarded in memory of treasured WiG members now deceased.
The title of Helga's dissertation is: Re-negotiating Borders: Responses of German and Austrian Middle-Class Women Writers to Medical Discourses on Sex, Gender, and Sexuality at the Turn of the Century and her Doktormutter is Ruth- Ellen Boetcher Joeres (University of Minnesota). The panel of judges for this year's prize were Barbara Becker-Canterino (Ohio State University), Jeanette Clausen (Indiana/Purdue University), and Margaret E. Ward (Wellesley College), and the administration of the prize was done by Marjorie Gelus (California State University, Sacramento). Congratulations to Helga and thanks to the judges and Marjorie for all of their hard work.