Graduate Student Pierce Lockett has been awarded the 2024 Richard Guy Wilson Prize for Excellence in The Study of Buildings, Landscapes and Places by the School of Architecture! This $5000 cash prize recognizes the UVA student who produces the best scholarly or creative work engaging a building, place, or landscape.

Pierce’s prize-winning paper is titled, "Building Babel at the Bibliothèque Nationale: Finding Aurélien Bellanger’s Le vingtième siècle, 2023." Pierce notes:

“As they mentioned in the article, I had originally written a version of the paper for Prof. Blatt's Spring 2023 seminar French Literature Now!. I then revised the paper for the 20th and 21st Century French & Francophone Studies conference in the spring of 2024, which I further expanded/revised for this award. The essential argument looks at Aurélien Bellanger’s novel Le vingtième siècle in dialogue with the BnF - site Mitterrand, both as it pertains to the novel's critique of the BnF and, by extension, of the formal connections between this fragmentary novel and the BnF's transparent hostility.”

Here is a link to the prize announcement which includes further details, and the jury’s commendations, of Pierce’s work: http://arch.virginia.edu/news/2024-richard-guy-wilson-prize-excellence-study-buildings-landscapes-and-places. 

Kudos Pierce!