2023 Hennig Cohen Prize Award
The Melville Society's Hennig Cohen Prize Committee has selected its recipient for the best article, book chapter, or essay in a book about Herman Melville published in 2023. The winner is Sari Altschuler for her essay “Babo’s ‘Mute’-ny: Deaf Culture and Black Testimony in Antebellum America,” published in PMLA, vol. 138, no. 5, 2023, pp. 1149-1164.
The award was founded in 1998 in honor of Hennig Cohen (1919–1996), an early member of the Society and a dedicated teacher, scholar, and modern editor of Herman Melville's works. The award is typically made in the year after the article or chapter was published.
The Hennig Cohen Prize Committee comments on this year’s winner:
The committee easily decided to name Sari Altschuler the winner of the Hennig Cohen Prize for the best essay published in 2023. Issues surrounding muteness may not be new to readings of Benito Cereno, but the argument Altschuler presents in “Babo’s ‘Mute’-ny: Deaf Culture and Black Testimony in Antebellum America” is impressively new, bringing together crisp historical analysis and an outstanding conceptual apparatus. As Altschuler notes, “the category mute organizes the story’s description, characterization, dialogue,” and narrative mode; at the same time, it creates the “conditions of possibility for Black testimony.” As one member of the committee stressed, this is an article that is both excellent on its own and likely to be generative for the field.
The committee would also like to give an Honorable Mention to Cody Marrs for the third chapter of Melville, Beauty, and American Literary Studies: An Aesthetics in All Things. Dynamically unfolding across sections, Marrs’s chapter deftly navigates Moby-Dick, unfolding both beauty’s enchantment and the power of chance. No matter the novel’s regular immersion in depressive thoughts, determined hate, or suicidal hunts, Marrs shows that it is also a joyful celebration of life.
Nominations, including self-nominations, for the 2024 Hennig Cohen Prize should be sent to hennigcohenprize@gmail.com by Sept. 15, 2025. The nominated essay, article, or book chapter should have been published in 2024.
