The Jacinto do Prado Coelho Essay Aeard distinguished 'ex-aequo' the works of the researchers Maria Irene Ramalho and Silvina Rodrigues Lopes, announced the Portuguese Association of Literary Critics (ACL), which organises it.

The jury, composed by literary critic and poet Maria João Cantinho, Isabel Cristina Rodrigues, professor at the University of Aveiro, and Sérgio Guimarães de Sousa, professor at the Institute of Humanities and Human Sciences of the University of Minho, distinguished the essay “Fernando Pessoa e outros fingidores” [Fernando Pessoa and other pretenders] by Maria Irene Ramalho, professor emerita at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra (UC) and researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the UC.

“Although the essays of Maria Irene Ramalho and Silvina Rodrigues Lopes configure a distinct essayistic paradigm [...], 'Fernando Pessoa e outros pretendidores' and 'O nascer do mundo nas suas passagens' are fully equivalent in the critical and hermeneutic balance that they present in relation to the respective object of study”, justified the jury, quoted by ACL in a statement sent to Lusa news agency.

The jury added: "They are both essays of a rare intelligence and sensibility which is not alien to the work of language which is, after all, always part of what is said".

The award has a pecuniary value of 4.000 euros. The date of the award ceremony has not been disclosed. 

[Source: LUSA]

About Maria Irene Ramalho

Maria Irene Ramalho is professor emerita of English, American Studies and Feminist Studies at the Faculty of Letters, University of Coimbra, where she was scientific coordinator of the doctoral programs in American Studies and Feminist Studies until September 2011. Since 1999, she is an International Affiliate of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she teaches regularly as a visiting professor. She has published extensively, both in Portuguese and in English, on different topics of English language literature and culture (with a special focus on American poetry), as well as on American studies, comparative literature, poetic theory, cultural studies and feminist studies. Her current research interests include problems of modernity and modernism, comparative poetics, poetry and philosophy, theories of American studies and theories of feminism. She is on the editorial board of several literature and culture journals.