SSEMWG Meeting and Award Ceremony

The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender had our annual business meeting today, and one of the agenda items is to toast award winners. It was a lovely virtual event; I was deeply grateful to be among the awardees for my recent article “Rivers and Bogs: Slow Protests in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko” that came out in Coastal Studies & Society 2.1 (March 2023): 38-57. If you don’t have institutional access and would like a copy, email me!

The awards committee said the following about my work:

Taff’s essay offers a formally sensitive reading of Behn’s novel, focusing not only on the characters and the narrative voice, but also on the watery environments (historical and depicted in the story) in which the novel of enslavement takes place. Her compelling reading of the text as a possible protest novel importantly relies not on some vision of Behn as white woman savior, but instead on a sharp and well-researched reading practice, at once ecocritical and attentive to critical race studies, that allows Taff to find alternatives to the enslaving and colonial mindset that structures much of the novel itself.

It was such a lovely surprise to receive this award! I’m so pleased and humbled at the committee’s kind words about my work. The SSEMWG has been a wonderfully supportive and generative space (virtual and in person!) for me, and it’s a thrill to have my work recognized by a group of scholars who I admire so much.