The Vincent Cheng Prizes in English

The College of Humanities and the Department of English are pleased to announce the establishment of The Vincent Cheng Prizes in English recognizing outstanding written works by English students.

Initially, the prizes will be $250 each for the best papers submitted by University of Utah English majors or minors. A committee of English department faculty will choose the winners, who will be announced each April.

The competition has been generously initiated by Professor Vincent Cheng. After a childhood spent in Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil, Canda, the US, and Swaziland, Cheng earned his BA from Harvard University and his PhD in English from Stanford University. He taught for 20 years at the University of Southern California before joining the faculty at the University of Utah in 1999. Honoring his extraordinary teaching over 25 years in the Department of English, Cheng was selected as the 2024 winner of the Calvin S. and JeNeal N. Hatch Prize for Teaching and opted to create a scholarship with the prize money. He will further contribute $500 prize money for the first several years, with a goal to create a permanent endowed fund.

When asked what motivated him to create a student prize, Cheng reflected, “I thought to myself, ‘Okay, I’ve won my share of teaching prizes. I don’t need the money; what I’d like to do is see if it can be transferred internally so the whole $5,000 could be set up as a student prize for best papers by English majors or minors for a few years.’ I broached the idea with Morgan [Stinson, the college’s Director of Advancement] and she suggested using it as seed money to create an endowment to make these prizes permanent.”

To ensure these prizes can be awarded in perpetuity, donations received will be used to collectively establish a $25,000 endowment. This minimum threshold must be met on or before November 31, 2026. In the case that this minimum is not met, the funds received will not be endowed and will instead be used annually as an expendable fund. 

For students, receiving an award like this for their hard work can be incredibly impactful. It not only recognizes their dedication and talent, but also encourages them to keep pushing forward and striving for excellence. We are inviting donors to contribute to, and sustain, this fund, with the goal to create a permanent $25,000 endowment — ensuring that these prizes will continue to be awarded in future years, along with other possible English student awards and activities.

Vincent J. Cheng

In addition to an award-winning teaching career, Cheng has had a productive and highly regarded scholarly record. He has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright, the University of Utah’s Distinguished Teaching Award (2014), and numerous other distinctions. He is the author of many scholarly articles and books, including Joyce, Race, and Empire (1995), Shakespeare and Joyce: A Study of “Finnegans Wake” (1984), “Le Cid”: A Translation in Rhymed Couplets (1987), Inauthentic: The Anxiety Over Culture and Identity (2004), and—most recently—Amnesia and the Nation: History, Forgetting, and James Joyce (2018).

Despite the accolades, Cheng considers his role as a teacher to be the most meaningful. “Over a long career as a professor, I’ve enjoyed being both a scholar and a teacher,” says Cheng. “But teaching (at both the undergraduate and graduate levels) has given me particular joy.  Now, toward the end of my career, I’d like to give some of that joy back—by helping fund prizes for excellent student work and other student-related activities.”