MLA Prize for Bibliographical or Archival Scholarship
Competition in 2024 for Works Published in 2022 or 2023
Open to Members and Nonmembers of the Association
The Committee on Honors and Awards of the Modern Language Association invites submissions for the fourteenth MLA Prize for Bibliographical or Archival Scholarship. Established in 1998 for bibliographies, the prize was redefined in 2012 to include archives and digital projects. From 2019 to 2021, it also recognized collaborative research. It is presented each even-numbered year. For the current award, the committee solicits submissions of enumerative and descriptive bibliographies, archives, or digital projects published in 2022 or 2023. A multivolume work is eligible if at least one volume was published during that period, and an ongoing digital project is eligible if substantive material was added during that period. The prize will be given without regard to the language of the compiler or of the text presented in the work, as long as it falls within the subject scope of the MLA (e.g., modern languages and literatures, composition theory, folklore, linguistics). Editors or compilers need not be members of the MLA.
Criteria for determining excellence include evidence of analytical rigor, meticulous scholarship, intellectual creativity, and subject range and depth. To qualify for the award a work should employ editorial principles appropriate to its materials, and those principles should be clearly articulated in the compilation; the work should provide appropriate contextual information; it should exhibit the highest standards of accuracy in its presentation; and the text should be presented as accessibly and elegantly as possible. The prize, which consists of a cash award and a certificate, will be presented to the winning editor or compiler at the association’s annual convention in January 2025.
Editors or publishers who wish to submit a work are asked to fill out a submission form.
- If you are an editor submitting a work, please use this form.
- If you are a publisher submitting a work, please use this form.
Editors of archives or digital projects are required to submit a description of the material added to their project within the two-year eligibility period. Publishers may enter more than one title. A multivolume print bibliography that has already competed for this award may compete again if a new volume was published during the later award period; substantially revised or updated electronic editions may compete once every four years. An ongoing electronic work that has won the award may not compete again. Submissions will be accepted until 1 May 2024. The winning editor will be contacted in September, and a public announcement will be made in early December. Because of the volume of submissions, we regret that we are unable to contact each entrant individually.
For further information, write the coordinator of book prizes (awards@mla.org).
Past winners of this prize