2025 Sponsler Award for Best First Book

Winner: Kuhn, John. Making Pagans: Theatrical Practice and Comparative Religion in Early Modern England. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024.

 

The committee is delighted to award this year’s Claire Sponsler Award is for the best first book in early drama studies to John Kuhn, Associate Professor of English and General Literature and Rhetoric at Binghamton University, for his first monograph, Making Pagans: Theatrical Practice and Comparative Religion in Early Modern England, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025. This excellent book explores representations of paganism on the early modern English stage, addressing the use of "set-pieces" including suicides and altar scenes and their repeated use both before and after the closing of the theaters, connecting the early modern period with the Restoration. Furthermore, Kuhn historicizes the concept of paganism and suggests its connections to the framing of Indigenous land seizures, positioning the book's arguments in relation to broad and important cultural questions. The committee found Kuhn’s work deeply researched, informative, and engagingly written.

 

Committee: Carla Della Gatta, Nicole Rice, and E. Maggie Solberg (chair). Awards announcement and presentation took place during the annual MRDS business meeting in May 2025, at the 60th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan.