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 95 will open in Spring 2023.

 2022 Award Winner

Bucky Luo
University of California, Riverside
"A Deep Dive in The Play's IE: The Play Have a House"

Honorable Mentions

Tiffany Gray
Georgia State University
“Nineteenth-Century Women's Expansion of Language
through Fashion STATEMENTS”

Liping Yang
Georgia State University
“From 'Yellow Peril' to 'Kung Flu':
The Evolving Asian American Activism Rhetoric in the U.S.”