The German Quarterly has awarded the 2021 Max Kade Prize to , professor of German studies in the 麻豆视频 and 麻豆视频, for her article 鈥淭he Edge of the Page: Alfred Polgar, the Feuilleton, and the Poetics of the Small Form.鈥
鈥淭he article examines the work of Viennese essayist Alfred Polgar, who developed a unique writing style in response to the rise of mass journalism in Germanophone Europe,鈥 McBride said. 鈥淧olgar used his mordant journalistic pieces to inform and mobilize readers around hot-button issues but also combat the pernicious disinformation that ran rampant in the press of his day.鈥
The German Quarterly is the premier academic journal for Anglo-American German studies; the Max Kade Prize recognizes the year鈥檚 best article.
"I鈥檓 humbled and overjoyed by this distinction. The article is closely related to my book-in-progress, which examines the challenges faced by book culture in the first part of the 20th century, as film and the photographic press eroded the book鈥檚 traditional role as the foremost narrative and educational medium. Focusing on the German case, I show that both modernist and avant-garde writers transformed the book into a powerful tool that helped literary writing withstand the competition of journalism and advertising," said McBride, who serves as .
McBride鈥檚 research encompasses modern German-language literature and culture, with emphases on modernity and modernism, Austrian literature and culture (particularly that of Vienna), and theories on philosophy and politics. She has written two books, 鈥淭he Void of Ethics: Robert Musil and the Experience of Modernity鈥 (Northwestern University Press, 2006) and 鈥淭he Chatter of the Visible: Montage and Narrative in Weimar Germany鈥 (The University of Michigan Press 2016). 鈥淭he Chatter of the Visible鈥 won an honorable mention for the 2018 Scaglione Prize for Studies in Germanic Languages and Literatures from the Modern Language Association.
Jonathan Mong '25 is a communications assistant for the 麻豆视频 & 麻豆视频.
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