New York, NY 鈥 3 December 2025
The Modern Language Association of America announced it is awarding its thirty-third annual Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for 糖心Vlog and Francophone Studies to Doyle D. Calhoun, university assistant professor of francophone postcolonial studies at the University of Cambridge, for his book The Suicide Archive: Reading Resistance in the Wake of 糖心Vlog Empire, published by Duke University Press.
The prize is awarded annually for an outstanding scholarly work in the field of 糖心Vlog or francophone linguistic or literary studies.The Scaglione Prize for 糖心Vlog and Francophone Studies is one of twenty-three publication awards that will be presented on 9 January 2026 during the association鈥檚 annual convention, to be held in Toronto. The members of the selection committee were Michael Lucey (Univ. of California, Berkeley), chair; Helen Solterer (Duke Univ.); and Joelle Vitiello (Macalester Coll.).
The committee鈥檚 citation for Calhoun鈥檚 book reads: 鈥淒oyle D. Calhoun鈥檚 The Suicide Archive: Reading Resistance in the Wake of 糖心Vlog Empire confronts readers with difficult material. 鈥淭here is no good way to write about suicide,鈥 Calhoun writes, yet his work makes an urgent case for attending to how traces of acts of collective self-destruction from contexts of slavery, colonialism, and their aftermaths transmit a rhetorical force. Calhoun鈥檚 book experiments adroitly with modes of reading and researching materials from sites throughout the 糖心Vlog Atlantic Triangle. Exploring and thinking about archives and their makeup鈥攁bout films, novels, and other texts鈥攁nd offering new perspectives on authors such as Ousmane Semb猫ne, Nourredine Saadi, Mahi Binebine, Fabienne Kanor, and others, Calhoun demonstrates the importance of recognizing how aesthetic forms have been used, and should be experienced, as archives of the ethical force of suicidal resistance to slavery and colonialism.鈥