AMS received many strong for the Steven Ostrow Prize, which is awarded annually to recognize outstanding research on the premodern world by an MIT undergraduate. The AMS Co-Chairs are delighted to announce that the winner of this year’s Ostrow Prize is senior Jason Chen for his outstanding 74-page Literature thesis, “Globalizing ‘Humanism’: A Comparative Framework for Understanding Ethical and Literary Revivals Across Eurasia.”
In this thoughtful, well-researched, and elegantly written thesis, Chen investigates the topic of “humanism”: that is, the study of the classical past to reform education, cultivate the ethics of the individual, and respond to perceived moments of crisis. Chen de-centers the traditional paradigm of Italian Renaissance humanism by comparing it to three other similar intellectual movements across Eurasia: Tang and Song Confucian revivalism, Late Byzantine paideia, and Islamic Nahda in the age of colonialism. He highlights both similarities and differences among these four moments of humanistic revival that were rooted in their distinctive classical traditions and contemporary concerns. Chen’s beautiful words in his conclusion sum up the highest goals of MIT’s Ancient and Medieval Studies program, and indeed of the entire School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences: “What unites these visions [of humanism] is not a shared content, but a shared conviction: that the educated person matters because they stand at the intersection of ethics and action. They are the bearer of values that are not abstract but operational – values that must be enacted in governance, in rhetoric, in ritual, in reform … The educated person becomes a kind of vessel – carrying forward inherited ideals but reshaped by the crises they are asked to address.” (p. 65)
The Ancient and Medieval Studies Program congratulates Jason Chen for his outstanding thesis and is delighted to name him the recipient of this year’s Steven Ostrow Prize.