The Popular Culture Association in the South/American Culture Association in the South
proudly introduces The Milford Jeremiah Award. This award reflects our commitment to
ensuring that all members of the PCAS/ACAS are welcomed, heard, and supported, as well as
our belief that popular and American culture can and should be analyzed and celebrated through a myriad of perspectives. We invite submissions of original papers that embody these principles in any or all of the following ways:

• Counteracts the scarcity of traditionally neglected texts and artifacts in the study of popular / American culture
• Reassesses texts in ways that highlight differences, engage new modalities of disseminating knowledge, and/or revolutionize ideas to push our collective thinking about difference (broadly conceived) into new directions
• Integrates figures (real or fictional) historically from the margins
•  Rehabilitates and/or problematizes images, stereotypes, and tropes that structure our
• popular imagination
•  Resists conventional ways of engaging with popular / American culture

The submitted paper must be presented at the conference in order to be eligible for the award.

One winner will receive paid registration and give a featured presentation at next year’s
conference. This is a valuable opportunity to showcase how your scholarship contributes to
making the study of popular / American more representative. We look forward to honoring work that exemplifies these commitments.

Winner for 2025

John W. Byers
University of Mississippi
Monster/Fiend/Demon: Southern Gothic Narrative Strategies in News Coverage of Radicalized Violence

Previous Winners

2024

The award for work done in 2024 goes to Dolores V. Sisco of Youngstown State University. Her presentation at the conference this year, the inaugural Jeremiah lecture, will be titled “Troubling Times: The Descendants of Huckleberry Finn: My Jim by Nancy Rawles, Finn by Jon Clinch, and James by Percival Everett.”