Leah Casey '21 Wins the Rintels Prize

The Department of English and Creative Writing is thrilled to announce that Leah Casey's '21 honors thesis A Creaturely Intervention has won the Jonathan B. Rintels Prize. The Rintels Prize recognizes an outstanding thesis in the Arts & Humanities. About her thesis, Casey writes:

"A Creaturely Intervention" explores the ways in which "creatureliness," a category of life often perceived as abject and degraded, can productively be reframed as an affirmative force. In so doing, this thesis suggests that creaturely perspectives can be powerful and ethical forces that not only contemplate the flaws in the existing order, but actively work to effect political change. Using examples of creaturely interventions found in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, this project searches for the moments of hope illustrating that even though one might be enmeshed in, or even created by, a particular political or societal framework, one need not be a mere product of that framework. Affirmative creatureliness, accordingly, is attuned to the injustices elided from overarching perspectives of historical inevitability, and believes in the hope of a future not indebted to the injustices of the past.

Casey's thesis was directed by Professor Edmondson. Casey is now pursuing a masters degree at Oxford.