Esther Grace Brenner, a senior Classics major with Art History and Fine Arts minors, has been awarded the 2026 Carol Kaske Prize for "Juridical Authority and Visual Exegesis in the Rossano Gospels: Anatomizing Folio 16". The prize was announced at the annual Quodlibet Lecture on April 24, 2026.
The Kaske Prize was established in 2024 in memory of Carol V. Kaske (1933–2016), a renowned Cornell Professor of English and Medieval Studies from 1963 to 2003, who was widely respected for her groundbreaking teaching and scholarship on figures such as Marsilio Ficino, Edmund Spenser and Thomas Malory. She was a founding member of the Medieval Studies Program, shaping its trajectory and securing its national and international reputation. The Carol Kaske Prize is awarded to an undergraduate student in any major at Cornell who has written the best essay on a medieval or Renaissance topic.
