Kenneth Hall receives 2026 essay prize at the Tri-U Conference. L-R Dr. Andrew Hunt, Judging committee; Dr. Adam Crerar, Tri-U Director; Kenneth Hall, MA student at Guelph.
Bharathan Chandrasekaran, PhD prize
Kenneth Hall, MA prize
A "thoughtful meditation" on popular media and sport published in the online journal, Animus, in October 2026, was commended for the 2026 Tri-U Essay Prize. Written by PhD candidate from the University of Guelph, Bharathan Chandrasekaran, "The Invisible Michael Jordan: Why Sports Films Eschew Sports," reflects "on how popular media sources of the late 2010s and the 2020s engaged with, and also elided, history in their portrayals of sporting 'greats' (and not-so-greats) from a generation earlier."
The judges' citation further explains that the article, "Blends sports history and media history and considers how highlights packages, repositories of behind-the-scenes footage, and broad changes in the nature of fame since the 1980s contributed to the crowding out of context, analysis, and explanation in many treatments of figures and events from the not-too-distant past."
The prize was announced at the annual Tri-U annual conference and awarded to Bharathan in absentia.
University of Guelph MA student, Kenneth Hall's "impressive and original paper," "The “Magical Negro Mammy” Stereotype and the Biopolitics of Creole Cuisine in White American Print Culture, 1885-1914," won the MA essay prize at the Tri-U conference. (See photo above.) "The paper analyzed the 'magical mammy' stereotype within white‑authored Creole cookbooks. It traced how visual, rhetorical, and nostalgic strategies worked to contain Black women’s labour within white cultural memory. Particularly commendable was the way Hall situated culinary discourse within broader Jim Crow–era projects of racial ordering, linking textual analysis to the larger structures of American domestic ideology," states the judges' commendation.
As a student at Guelph who took a course at Waterloo, Kenneth's achievement demonstrates the breadth of course options MA students have available in the Tri-U.
I am happy to have received this honour and look forward to continuing research in the history of sport.
I am thankful to Dr. Jane Nicholas, whose excellent course syllabus [The History of the Modern Body] provided crucial inspiration and theoretical background for my research. The paper reflects my broader ambition to critically analyze how colonial structures of power have been represented, reinforced, and renegotiated through the production and consumption of food.
The PhD Prize is given to the best paper published by a doctoral student in the previous calendar year.
The MA Prize is awarded to the best paper written for a Tri-University MA seminar in the previous fall semester, nominated by the student's instructor.
The Tri-U thanks the judges this year who provided thoughtful feedback on the submissions:
- Dr. Ben Bradley, University of Guelph
- Dr. Jeff Grischow, Wilfrid Laurier University
- Dr. Andrew Hunt, University of Waterloo
The prize for each winner is a $100 gift certificate towards a book purchase.