Richard Sussman Essay Prize
Given by longtime GSNA member Elizabeth Powers in memory of her late husband, who taught physics for thirty-six years, the Richard Sussman Essay Prize is awarded annually for the best essay published on Goethe’s contributions to the sciences and on Goethe in the history of science. The prize carries a $500 award. Essays written by a North American scholar or a current member of the GSNA are all eligible, as are articles published in the Goethe Yearbook
For submission guidelines and further details see the latest announcements.
Richard Sussman Essay Prize Winners
2022
Oriane Petteni, “The Contemporary Legacy of Goethean Morphology: From Anschauende Urteilskraft to Algorithmic Pattern Recognition, Generation, and Exploration,” Goethe Yearbook 29 (2022): 43-71.
2021
Nicolaas Rupke, “Humboldt and Metabiography,” German Life and Letters 74.3 (2021): 416-38.
2020
Michael Saman, “Towards Goethean Anthropology: On Morphology, Structuralism, and Social Observation,” Goethe Yearbook 27 (2020): 137-163.
2019
Andrea Meyertholen, "Zum ersten Mal sah ich ein Bild" Goethe's Cognitive Viewing Subject as Scientist and Artist" in Seminar 55.3 (2019), 203-228.
2018
Claudia Kreklau, “Travel, Technology, and Theory: The Aesthetics of Ichthyology during the Second Scientific Revolution,” German Studies Review 41.3 (2018): 589-610.
2017
Tove Holmes, “Reizende Aussichten: Aesthetic and Scientific Observation in Albrecht von Haller’s Die Alpen,” Modern Language Notes 132.3 (2017): 753-74.
2016
Jocelyn Holland, “Observing Neutrality C. 1800,” Goethe Yearbook 23 (2016): 41-57.
2015
Howard Pollack-Milgate, “‘Gott ist bald 1 ∙ ∞ – bald 1/∞ – bald 0’: The Mathematical Infinite and the Absolute in Novalis,” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 50.1 (2015): 50-70.
Honorable Mention: Frederick Amrine, “The Music of the Organism: Uexküll, Merleau-Ponty, Zuckerkandl, and Deleuze as Goethean Ecologists in Search of a New Paradigm,” Goethe Yearbook 22 (2015): 45-72.