When we call something a cliché, we’re typically calling it tired, banal, repetitive, or boring. Whether it’s an art object, a turn of speech, or a pattern of behavior, we’re identifying what it lacks: distinctiveness, originality, creativity, thrill. But in pointing to a cliché, we’re also pointing to a response. Noticing cliché creates a fissure. It elicits a reflexive movement, by which we’re forced to reckon with the repetitiousness of language; the ideological and economic structures that shape the creation of art; the social patterns that guide how we relate and self-present. Pointing to cliché, in other words, opens up the possibility for subversion.

Brontë Studies is pleased to invite submissions for the 2024 iteration of the Brontë Studies Early Career Research Essay Prize. The prize aims to encourage new scholarship in the field of Brontë studies, recognise and reward outstanding achievement by new researchers, and support the professional development of the next generation of Brontë scholars. The prize was established in honour of Margaret Smith. She remains one of the most important Brontë scholars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.