W&L English Professor Receives Prestigious Article Prize Professor Genelle Gertz teamed with former student Pasquale Toscano ’16 to author “The Lost Network of Elizabeth Barton.”

By Brian Laubscher
January 5, 2023

Genelle Gertz, associate dean of strategic initiatives and Thomas H. Broadus Professor of English at Washington and Lee University, recently received the 2022 Harold Grimm Prize for an article she co-authored with former student and Rhodes Scholar Pasquale Toscano ‘16.

The article titled “The Lost Network of Elizabeth Barton,” uses social network analysis to study interrogation records about a mystic who lived during the time of Henry VIII. Gertz and Toscano began their research on the topic when Toscano was a student at W&L. Toscano is currently pursuing a doctorate at Princeton University.

The Harold Grimm Prize is a $500 award presented annually by the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference for the best article published during the previous year, which reflects and sustains Grimm’s lifelong search for a broad understanding of the Reformation as a fundamentally religious phenomenon that permeated Europe in the Reformation Era.

Gertz has been a member of the W&L faculty since 2003. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy from Wheaton College, two master’s degrees in English from both the University of Pittsburgh and Princeton University and a doctorate in English from Princeton University.

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