Call for Submissions
The Patrick B. Mullen Graduate Prize is a $200 cash award for the best OSU folklore graduate student paper written during the academic year by a graduate student who is actively engaged in the folklore community at OSU, participates in activities of the OSU Center for Folklore Studies and the Folklore Student Association, and takes courses taught by folklore faculty.
Eligible papers:
- Must be written by current OSU folklore graduate students.
- Must have been written within the last 12 months.
- Must not have been previously published.
- Only one paper submission per student.
- The student must not have been a previous recipient of the Mullen Prize.
- Eligible submissions include papers/essays that
- May have been written for a class
- May have been presented for conferences or publication
- May be part of a dissertation or thesis chapters
- May be written specifically for the Mullen Prize
Format:
All papers will be submitted electronically. Submissions should be saved as .doc, .docx, or .pdf. The submission should have a title page that includes:
- your name
- title of the paper
- a sentence describing what the paper was originally written for
- the date it is being submitted
Do Not include your name on any of the other pages. All pages (excluding the title page) should include a header that lists the title of the paper and the page number.
Papers should be submitted to cfs@osu.edu, by 11:59 pm on April 14, 2024, with the subject line: "Mullen Prize Submission."
Awardees
2023, Zahra Abedinezhad, "Staging the 'Right' Ta’ziyeh at the Lincoln Center Festival"
2022, Shawna Green, "Chocolate Cake."
2019. Emma Cobb. “Whispering Networks/What Gossip Tells Us."
2018. Tessa Jacobs. "Intertextual Storytelling within Family Narratives."
2017. Jordan Lovejoy. "Magic Wands, Moral Geographies, and Narrative Imaginings: Dwelling in the Desires of the Coalfields Expressway."
2016. Caroline Toy. "'As I Was Going to St. Bart’s’: The Performance and Implications of a Sherlock Fan Pilgrimage."
2015. Nathan Young. “Loss and Reclamation: Village Traditions in Western Turkey."
2014. Cassie Bower. "Many Thanks from Me, Greyhound, and My Ex-Wife: Assessing Authority and Navigating Divisions in Bus Drivers' Announcements"
2013. Joanna Spanos. "But Why a Hanging? Festival, Reenactment, and Social Memory"
2012. Elizabeth Bell. "'Pirates of Our Spirituality': The 2012 Phenomenon in Guatemala and the Value of Heritage"
2011. Rob Vanscoyoc. "America's First Professional Author (and Folklorist?): Ambivalence and the Politics of Folklore in Washington Irving's Sketch-Book"
2010. Katherine Parker. "The Ins and Outs of Mardi Gras Indians"
2009. Christopher T. Hemmig. "Peripheral Agents: Marginality in Arab Folk Narrative" and honorable mention to Elizabeth Bell for "The Retraditionalization of Local Knowledge: Kaqchikel-Maya Ceremony in Guatemala"
2008. Benjamin Gatling. "Negotiations in Performance: A Study of the Stortelling Performance of Two Afghan Storytellers" and honorable mention to Elo-Hanna Seljamaa for "He 'Put Pennies in Her Palm': Crossing Boundaries in an Estonian Infanticide Ballad"
2007. Jason Bush. "Danza de la Raza: The Folklorization of the Peruvian Scissors Dance"
2006. Ashley Overstreet. "More Than Just a Job: Acknowledging the Cognitive Practices and Values of Blue Top Waitresses."
2005. Sheila Bock. "Colonialism, Feminist Rebellion, Tourism and Global Commodification: The Development of the Public Image of the Belly Dancer in the United States."