ECLT Department Hosts Annual Madalyn Lamont Award Ceremony 

Edited by: Hend Elsagheer 

The Department of English and Comparative Literature (ECLT) hosted the Madalyn Lamont Literary Award ceremony in late February at the Tim Sullivan Lounge, celebrating art, life, memory, and resistance. 

The ceremony was held to commemorate the award recipients for their outstanding achievements in poetry, drama, fiction, and essay writing in both English and Arabic in alternate years. 

Madalyn Lamont was an American poet and women’s rights activist who taught in the writing program at AUC in the 1980s. The award was established in her memory in 1986, shortly after her passing following a long battle with cancer, and aims to encourage graduate and undergraduate students at AUC to excel in their writing proficiency.

Alongside the certificate of recognition, the recipients received a calligraphed print of one of Lamont’s poems and a monetary prize. 

“Winning bolsters one’s confidence. It offers motivation to be dedicated to the craft and to be dogged. Writing is a solitary activity. It helps to have your story read and to read an excerpt from it before an audience at the award ceremony. It is deeply gratifying, and one feels that one has made strides as a writer. It also opens the door to publication,” Associate Professor and Chair of the ECLT Department Tahia Abdel Nasser told The Caravan. 

The three winners, ranked in order from first to last, were Jana Ahmed Bassem Kamal, a graduating Anthropology senior; Aminah Agha Alonso, a graduate student completing her master’s degree in Political Science, and Maha Muehlhaeusler, a junior double majoring in History and ECLT.

The recipients were presented the award for their submissions in fictional short stories and poetry. 

Steven Salaita, a professor in the ECLT department and a member of the award jury, opened the ceremony by introducing the rest of the jury, which included Mona Amer from the Psychology department and Richard Hoath, a senior instructor in the Rhetoric and Composition (RHET) department. 

Salaita expressed how difficult the selection process was to narrow the competition down to three winners, given the many submissions they received. 

He explained that the quality of the pieces that received the award was highly cultivated, and they showed notable technical and rhetorical composition. 

Each recipient received their certificate, followed by a recitation of their piece. 

Abdel Nasser told The Caravan that given the commemorative nature of the award, the keynote speaker is chosen on the basis that she’s a distinguished woman who emulates the essence of the award.

Randa Shaath, a photographer and former photojournalism professor at AUC, explored the everlasting themes of memory and resistance during her keynote speech at the ceremony. 

Shaath expressed how deeply inspired she is by the ordinary, mundane experiences of life, precisely the things that all humans have in common, as they are connected to her by nature. 

She said that she uses photography as a medium of resistance, given that it suspends a moment in time. As time passes, a photograph will remain the same and thus will hold its memory.

“There is the official story, but you don’t see the story from the people who live, and I want to document people in their ordinary daily lives, and that is a sort of resistance,” said Shaath to The Caravan.  

Shaath implied that there’s always an official story that news outlets publish, but there is also a story that is beyond what is portrayed in the media. To Shaath, photography serves as a tool to tell the hidden and unnoticed stories of people who have been sheltered in the dark.

Salaita expressed how essential it is for young writers to practice forms of self-expression and the ability to develop ideas into literary projects. 

Two of the winning submissions were fictional short stories; Kamal’s “A Family Portrait,” and Muehlhaeusler’s “A Passenger,” which is a dialogue between a taxi driver and a passenger. 

The third submission was a collection of short poems by Alonso titled “Meet Me.” 

“I was really impressed by Madalyn Lamont’s personal story, and so winning this award feels like a tribute to her, and I’m very honored,” Alonso,  second place winner, told The Caravan. 

Winning this prestigious award, the winners said, opens up the realm of possibility and provides the recipients with the ability to pursue their future endeavors. 

“I would love to get published as a writer. I write both academic [papers] and fictional work, and I’d love to do a project that combines both of them,” Kamal said.