Vera Geranpayeh (PhD Candidate in German Studies, Stanford) Awarded 2025 Marilyn Yalom Prize

Vera Geranpayeh has been selected as the 2025 Marilyn Yalom prize winner for her research on representations of female subjectivity and Otherness in German literature from the Middle Ages to the present. Focusing on poetics and narrative form, her work delves into the ways gender operates both thematically and structurally, influencing plot development, disrupting closure, and revealing the limitations of narrative control. Geranpayeh’s dissertation will contribute to feminist literary scholarship, as it establishes a transhistorical framework for understanding how female characters persist as sites of narrative and ideological rupture across genres and time periods. She is pursuing her PhD in the Department of German Studies.

The Marilyn Yalom award is presented annually to a currently enrolled PhD candidate at Stanford working in the humanities on topics related to women and gender. The prize is designed to support original research or cover conference expenses. Yalom was instrumental to the Clayman Institute beginning in 1978, serving as both associate director and acting director. Until her passing in 2019, she was a senior scholar and internationally acclaimed historian of women’s and gender issues, celebrated for her contributions to the field through numerous publications.

Congratulations, Vera!