Ph.D. Candidate Yun Ha Kim is the 2024 Recipient of the Graduate Student Essay Prize for her essay: "Adalbert Stifter’s World 'Saved Unawares'"
https://www.thegsa.org/prizes/graduate-student-essay-prize
In her essay, “Adalbert Stifter’s World ‘Saved Unawares’,” Yun Ha Kim articulates the evolution of the critical responses to and examinations of Stifter’s work. Kim acts as a guide through decades and layers of interpretations to show how earlier authors have identified a conflict between seeing and understanding in Stifter’s works but have not offered a thorough resolution. By positioning her analysis within the broader context of Stifter reception, she thoroughly discusses nineteenth-century realism and is able to provide particularly insightful readings of Stifter’s Brigitta (1847) and Der Nachsommer (1857).
Her essay identifies a tension between transparent representation and deeper, invisible forces and shows how Stifter leads readers to new emotional responses and deeper insights. This move is not unlike the way elements of perspective operate on the viewer of a landscape painting, and Kim explains that Stifter’s detailed descriptions can and should be approached like the “blazing surfaces” of an Ukiyo-e painting (Han) or the composition of a Caspar David Friedrich landscape that creates a sense of suspense and foreboding by placing subjects on the chalk cliffs of Rügen. “Adalbert Stifter’s World ‘Saved Unawares’” is clearly a significant contribution to literary studies, and the committee congratulates Yun Ha Kim on her very insightful, compelling, and sophisticated essay.