To receive an award for this work is incredibly meaningful to me. I adored reading Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, and I think that enjoyment really comes through in my writing. I'm so grateful for my time at King's, and particularly for Dr Michael Collins whose encouragement and guidance has been so valuable to me. Being given this award feels like a lovely way to celebrate coming to the end of my degree.
Zuzu Burton
23 April 2026
King's student wins prize for undergraduate essay on American literature
Zuzu Burton (English with Film Studies BA) won the British Association for American Studies (BAAS) Undergraduate Essay Prize for her piece on ‘Calvinist Theology and Sacred Landscape in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping’.
Dr Sarah Thelen, Chair of Awards at BAAS, said of Zuzu’s writing that ‘the author’s unique voice came through, which is no small feat’ and that her analysis was ‘apparent, well-evidenced and convincing’.
I am delighted to see Zuzu's superb essay on Robinson win first prize at the BAAS Awards. It is absolutely deserved. I first read this as an assessed essay on my second year American Land module and was blown away by it. A product of great critical insight, deep secondary reading and more than that passion which shone from the page.
Dr Michael Collins, Reader in American Studies and Chair of the British Association for American Studies
Zuzu chose this essay topic as she loved reading Housekeeping due to the author’s use of abstract evocative language surrounding the story of Ruth – a young girl who moves to Fingerbone, Idaho, to live with family after the death of her mother – as enjoyable and moving to read.
The essay began to form into an idea after Dr Collins' lecture on 'Homesteads and Settler Colonial Legacies', in which he discussed displacement as a fundamental idea to American selfhood, and that Ruth's sense that she doesn't belong in Fingerbone, or on Earth at all, speaks to bigger ideas at the core of the American mind.
Writing this essay allowed Zuzu to think more deeply about the ways in which contemporary America still grapples with the tension between spirituality and the realities of violence embedded in the land.
In this story
Reader in American Studies