George Mills Harper Graduate Student Travel Fund Award 

In honor of past president George Mills Harper, SAMLA maintains the Harper Fund to provide graduate students with travel funds to attend the annual conference. If you would like to donate to the Harper Fund, please use this form. You can also donate to the Harper Fund via membership and registration forms.

Professor Harper’s academic career spanned over 50 years, and he provided exceptional leadership and service to the association. From his early years on the family farm in the Ozarks to his matriculation from Culver-Stockton College to UNC-Chapel Hill to his later chairmanship of the English Department at Florida State University, Harper concentrated his writing and research efforts in Irish studies, particularly focusing on W. B. Yeats. In 1981, Dr. Harper received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin in recognition for his critical work in studying Yeats and the occult.

Eligibility Requirements

• To be eligible to receive this award, graduate students must: 1) be presenting at the current year's conference, 2) establish or renew their SAMLA membership, 3) register for the conference.
• Winners of the Harper Fund Award must attend the conference in order to receive award funds. Winners who decide not to attend should notify SAMLA so we can award the funds to another student. 

The Harper Fund for SAMLA 94 is closed.

 2021 Award Winner

Julie Boutwell-Peterson
University of South Dakota
“How the Refugee (Re)defines Home:
The Wide, Subversive Arc of Magical Realism in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West”

Honorable Mentions

Angela Acosta
The Ohio State University
“Retracing the Sapphic Circle: Queer Communities in Early Twentieth Century Madrid”

Kristen L. Figgins
University of Arkansas
“‘Our Ways Are Not Your Ways’: Contracting Time and Space in Adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897)”