Professor Establishes Prize Fund

The College is pleased to announce that Peter Viereck, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History, has established the Clio-Melpomene Prize Fund, which will award a stipend to a graduating senior with talent in poetry or history. Named after Clio, the muse of history, and Melpomene, the muse of tragic poetry, the award will be based not just on the senior's academic performance but also on her potential. The criteria will be creativity, originality, imagination, and independent scholarly research, and will not be confined to grades, ideology, or good citizenship. According to Viereck, "The modern team spirit sometimes unintentionally sabotages creative young women when it discourages the loner, the young woman who follows her private star in poetic style or in historical interpretation, regardless of social pressures. My aim is not only to provide financial help but to encourage self-confidence in an out-of-step loner."

The winner may be a poet of any school or an historian of any field or school. She need not be a major in English or history. If the winner is affluent, she should accept the honor but have the option of leaving the money in the fund. The award may be applied to graduate school in the United States or for travel abroad.

Professor Viereck will select a small committee from the history and English departments to award the prize. Applicants will submit samples of their poetry or a historic essay by March 29, 1995. The award will be announced on April 28, 1995. For further information on the prize and how to apply, contact Kathy Monat at extension 2499.

Viereck, historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, teaches two semesters of Russian history in the history department. Since graduating summa cum laude in history and literature from Harvard University, his dozen books have been equally divided between both disciplines. His collected poems, Tide and Continuities, will be published in late summer 1995 by the University of Arkansas Press with a rhymed preface by Mount Holyoke's Nobel Prize Laureate, Joseph Brodsky. Viereck's new history book will be published in 1996.