Congratulations, Class of 2020!

Spring 2020 will undoubtedly be remembered as the strangest semester of our lifetimes—the rapid swerve from what should have been a blissful spring break with the promise of warmth and daffodils, to a tightly imposed shutdown that cut us off from each other and forced us to congregate in little boxes on Zoom. But through the fear, the crises, the strange stilling of time, and the disconnections of online teaching, we have been moved and inspired by our students who continued to show up for classes even while dispersed in time zones across the world, still read and engaged and thought and wrote – and whose passion for literary study energized faculty who chafed behind computer screens. It is therefore with special delight, that I want to salute and celebrate our graduating seniors and prize winners this year. It is not an easy achievement to complete a senior essay even in the best of times: to have done so while hunkered down without access to libraries and friends deserves particular commendation. Our prize winners this year undertook a wide range of projects, both critical studies and translations, and we celebrate their success.