05/11/2026
ARTH students Rita de Cássia do Monte Lima and Iris Péron-Ames receive the 2026 Stallybrass Prize in the History of Material Texts.
Graduate student Marina George also received an Honorable Mention.
This prize is awarded to the best essays in the study of material texts written by students at Penn, in both an undergraduate and a graduate category.
Rita de Cássia do Monte Lima, "On the Edge of the Herbal: Knowledge, Images and Unmaking in the Schoenberg Herbal (LJS 419)"
Judges’ citation: Rita’s precise and erudite investigation of an herbal held in the Schoenberg Collection is both deep and broad. She has prepared a detailed, thorough examination of one typical source, but her study expands far beyond that source into a provocative investigation of what she calls “alchemical herbals” and natural knowledge in the early modern period. Her essay weaves together a wide array of comparisons and scholarly approaches. In the end, she argues, herbals like this one “makes visible the faultlines between inherited traditions and emerging epistemic ideals.”
Iris Péron-Ames, “Enshrining the Word: The Shrine of the Cathach” (written for ARTH 5400, Professor Sarah Guérin)
Judges’ citation: The judges found this a mature piece of scholarship that shows real knowledge of a whole specialist field, early medieval reliquaries and their iconography. Péron-Ames gives a deep dive into the materiality, history, and significance of a single object, the Irish Shrine of the Cathach, a psalter associated with early Irish saints that was later enclosed within a decorated casing. In this essay, Péron-Ames displays not only her art-historical expertise but also her argumentational skills as she explores the meaning of the “word made flesh” in this eleventh-century object.
Marina George, "Following Threads: The Layered Histories of a Crazy Quilt attributed to Queen Lili'uokalani, the Last Sovereign of the Kingdom of Hawai'i."
