M.A. student, Fran Thielman, has won the prestigious Victorian Institute's Patrick O. Scott award for the best graduate student paper presented at the 2013 national Victorians Institute conference, which is a conference for both faculty and graduate students in Victorian Studies. Her paper, "Jane Eyre and Public Health: A Closer Look at the Lowood School Epidemic," applies historical and disability studies approaches in order to make the highly original argument that Charlotte Bronte uses this portion of the novel to make the case for establishing public health boards. The paper is a portion of her M.A. thesis, "The Reformer and the Eugenicist: Representations of Disease in Jane Eyre and Bleak House," which she will defend in Spring 2014.
She is currently applying to doctoral programs in English for Fall 2014. The Patrick O. Scott award comes with a cash prize and the opportunity to publish an expanded version of her paper in the 2014 print issue of the award-winning, peer-reviewed, Victorians Institute Journal. Her conference paper will be published in the Victorians Institute Journal Digital Annex. Fran competed against both M.A. and doctoral candidates in the Patrick O. Scott competition. Way to go, Fran!