The European Culture Research Network is happy to announce the winner of the 2026 Gisela Brinker-Gable Award.
Professor Jamie H. Trnka’s article “Collective, Collage, and Translative Authorship: Writing to and from Multilingual Europe” has been chosen as the winner of the 2026 Gisela Brinker-Gabler Award, sponsored by the European Culture Research Network in the Council for European Studies. Professor Trnka is Professor of German and Comparative Cultural Studies at Xavier University; her article appeared in Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature in a special issue on Translating Multilingualism (48.1. Dec. 2023).
There were many high-quality submissions for this year’s award, and the Committee’s decision was a difficult one. In reviewing the entries, the colleagues kept the following description front of mind: “The Gisela Brinker-Gabler Award supports pioneering work focused on European culture in its broadest sense. Essays on national culture in a comparative focus are welcome.” Professor Trnka’s discussion of “Letters to Europe” matched these requirements superbly. Her multifaceted analysis of that project, its place within institutionally sponsored theatrical interventions, and the formal aesthetic experiments at work in its construction and presentation expertly illuminates the difficult interconnections of language, culture, mobility, and belonging in contemporary Europe and the EU.