{{unreferenced, date=December 2009 The Graduate Student Paper Award is presented by the

Science Fiction Research Association The Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA), founded in 1970, is the oldest, non-profit professional organization committed to encouraging, facilitating, and rewarding the study of science fiction and fantasy literature, film, and other media. ...

to the outstanding scholarly

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal ...

read at the annual conference of the SFRA by a

graduate student Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate (bachelor's) degree. The organization and st ...

Previous winners

Previous winners include: * 1999 - Shelley Rodrigo Blanchard, " 'Resistance is Futile,' We Are Already Assimilated: Cyborging, Cyborg Societies,

Cyborg A cyborg ()—a portmanteau of ''cybernetic'' and ''organism''—is a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts. The term was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline.

s, and The Matrix." * 2000 - Sonja Fritzsche, "Out of the Western Box: Rethinking Popular Cultural Categories from the Perspective of

East German East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

Science Fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imagination, imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, Paral ...

." * 2001 - Eric Drown and Sha LaBare (tie). Drown for "Riding the Cosmic Express in the Age of Mass Production: Independent

Inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an id ...

s as Pulp Heroes in American SF 1926-1939" and LaBare for "Outline for a Mode Manifesto: Science Fiction,

Transhumanism Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement which advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies that can greatly enhance longevity and cognition. Transhuma ...

, and

Technoscience In common usage, technoscience refers to the entire long-standing global human activity of technology combined with the relatively recent scientific method that occurred primarily in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. Technoscience is the ...

." * 2002 - Wendy Pearson, " Homotopia? Or What's Behind a Prefix?" * 2003 - Sarah Canfield Fuller, "Speculating about

Gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures us ...

ed Evolution:

Bram Stoker Abraham Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish author who is celebrated for his 1897 Gothic horror novel ''Dracula''. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and busin ...

's White Worm and the Horror of

Sexual Selection Sexual selection is a mode of natural selection in which members of one biological sex choose mates of the other sex to mate with (intersexual selection), and compete with members of the same sex for access to members of the opposite sex (in ...

." * 2004 - Melissa Colleen Stevenson, "Single Cyborg Seeking Same: The Post-Human and the Problem of Loneliness." * 2005 - Rebecca Janicker, "

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian province ...

Narratives: Space and Place in the Narratives of H.P. Lovecraft." * 2006 - Linda Wight, "Magic, Art, Religion,

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

: Blurring the Boundaries of

and Science Fiction in Marge Piercy's ''Cyborgian Narrative''." * 2007 - Joseph Brown, "Heinlein and the Cold War:

Epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...

and Politics in ''The Puppet Masters'' and ''Double Star''." * 2008 - Dave Higgins, “The Imperial Unconscious: Samuel R. Delany’s ''The Fall of the Towers''" * 2009 - Andrew Ferguson, “Such Delight in Bloody Slaughter: R. A. Lafferty and the Dismemberment of the Body Grotesque” * 2010 - Bradley Fest, "Tales of Archival Crisis: Stephenson’s Reimagining of the Post- Apocalyptic Frontier," and Honorable Mention: Erin McQuiston, "Thank God It’s Friday: Threatened Frontier Masculinity in

Robinson Crusoe ''Robinson Crusoe'' () is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a tr ...

on Mars" * 2011 - Florian Bast, "Fantastic Voices: Octavia Butler’s First-Person Narrators and ‘

The Evening and the Morning and the Night "The Evening and the Morning and the Night" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Octavia Butler. It was first published in '' Omni'' in May 1987, and subsequently republished in ''The Year's Best Science Fiction'' (fifth edition); in ...

.’" * 2012 - W. Andrew Shephard, "'Beyond the Wide World's End': Themes of

Cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all human beings are members of a single community. Its adherents are known as cosmopolitan or cosmopolite. Cosmopolitanism is both prescriptive and aspirational, believing humans can and should be " world citizen ...

in Alfred Bester's

The Stars My Destination ''The Stars My Destination'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Alfred Bester. Set in the 24th or 25th century, which varies between editions of the book, when humans have colonized the Solar System, it tells the story of Gully ull ...

" * 2013 - Michael Jarvis, "'Wherever you go, there you are': Postmodern Pastiche and Oppositional

Rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate par ...

in '' The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension''" * 2014 - W. Andrew Shephard, “'What is and What Should Never Be': Paracosmic

Utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book '' Utopia'', describing a fictional island socie ...

nism in Margaret Cavendish’s ''

The Blazing World ''The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World'', better known as ''The Blazing World'', is a 1666 work of prose fiction by the English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. Feminist critic Dale Spender calls it a fo ...

"'' Students Academic science fiction awards