SU professor wins MLA award for feminist scholarship

An essay by Syracuse University Professor Kathryn A. Everly has earned the Florence Howe Award for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship from the Women’s Caucus for the Modern Languages, an allied organization of the Modern Language Association (MLA). Everly’s essay, “Women, War, and Words in ‘La voz dormida,'” draws from Dulce Chacón’s acclaimed novel about women prisoners during and after the Spanish Civil War. An associate professor of Spanish in The College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, Everly was recently feted at two events at the MLA annual convention in Philadelphia.

Everly’s essay originally appeared in “Women in the Spanish Novel Today: Essays on the Reflection of Self in the Works of Three Generations,” edited by Kyra A. Kietrys and Montserrat Linares (MacFarland & Co., 2009).

Published in 2002, “La voz dormida,” or “The Dormant Voice,” is about a group of female prisoners facing imminent torture and death. Everly says the novel is a masterstroke of historical fiction and should be required reading for anyone wanting to know more about the treatment of women during the historic 1930s war.

An affiliate in SU’s Center for European Studies, Everly is author of “Catalan Women Writers and Artists: Revisionist Views From a Feminist Space” (Bucknell University Press, 2003) and of the forthcoming “History, Violence, and the Hyperreal: Representing Culture in Contemporary Spanish Novel” (Purdue University Press, 2010). Much of her research revolves around 20th-century writer Mercè Rodoreda, whose psychological drama, “The Time of Doves,” also deals with the Spanish Civil War.

Founded in 1883, the MLA provides opportunities for members to share scholarly findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends in the academy. The Florence Howe Award, since its inception in 1947, has played a major role in elevating the importance of feminist inquiry.