The Renaissance Studies article prize 2024 has been awarded to Duncan Frost for ‘Songbirds and Social Distinction in Seventeenth-Century England’, Vol. 37 No. 4, pages 547-64, September 2023. DOI 10.1111/rest.12845
The panel was deeply impressed by the creativity, narrative range, and polished presentation of this article. While keeping songbirds at the centre of the story, Frost shows an exemplary capacity to spin out numerous analytical perspectives through the course of the article, effortlessly applying a range of methods to discover for the reader the fascinating place of songbirds in early modern English society. In doing so, he explores questions of material culture, social distinction, readership, and non-human agency in a subject that has been almost wholly neglected by early modern scholarship. A standout piece of genuine novelty which left the panel completely beguiled by the subject.