Armen Davoudian is a PhD candidate at Stanford University. His dissertation, “No Single Poem: The Poetry Volume in the 20th Century,” focuses on how the poetry book is both a form and a genre, and how in the 20th century it has come to absorb some of the ambitions traditionally exercised in the form of long, epic poems. He seeks to demonstrate that the integrity of the poetry book as a form or genre is a concern shared by poets of quite different aesthetic commitments, from Robert Frost and Gertrude Stein to Elizabeth Bishop and Lyn Hejinian.
This year’s judges–professors Herbert Marks of Indiana University and Meg Tyler of Boston University—praised his dissertation’s originality, and stated that Armen is a “very fine writer with a subtle and original mind.”
Armen is poetry editor at Mantis and assistant editor at The Hopkins Review. He is on temporary leave from the English PhD program at Stanford as he completes an MFA at Johns Hopkins University.
Armen’s application was sponsored by Professor Mary Jo Salter of Johns Hopkins University and Professor Nicholas Jenkins of Stanford University.