Lizzie Apple, 2025 Stephen Horne Award for Excellence in Teaching Winner

May 14, 2025

Quantá Holden | Duke English Communications Strategist

Duke English proudly announces that Lizzie Apple, a fourth-year Duke English PhD candidate, has received the 2025 Stephen Horne Award for Excellence in Teaching. Candidates in consideration for this award are nominated by their students, and the Director of Graduate Studies in conjunction with the DGS Advisory Committee selects the winner. Six students in Apple’s English 90S “Literature and Medicine” course taught during the Fall ’24 semester nominated her for this honor.

Her course description shared with interested students prior to the semester included the following:

“From Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Birth-mark (1843) to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005), literature provides a record of how humans have understood not only sickness and contagion, but also medicine and its many technologies. Intended as an introduction to the fields of literature and medicine and health humanities, this course will examine a variety of texts, investigating representations of illness from the nineteenth century to the present.”

One of her students stated in their nomination:

“My professor is so passionate about the course she is teaching, and she fosters this same passion in her students by encouraging us to share our ideas with the class through our writing and in-class discussions. She is also super supportive and has taken time out of class to meet with students and discuss class material. She helped me refine my ideas and explore my interests when working on an essay.”

Another student stated:

“English 90S by Elizabeth Apple has been the most engaging and transformative humanities class I’ve taken at Duke. As a senior chemistry major, I’ve found it hard to dive into humanities classes in the past. The structure of this course and overall instruction have been incredibly beneficial to my undergraduate education, and I plan to interact more with the health humanities as a result.”

These and other compliments from students in Apple’s course were considered when selecting this year’s honoree.

This award was established in memory of Stephen Horne, a 1991-97 graduate student in English who displayed an inspiring passion for teaching that was evident to his students, friends, and mentors. This award is presented annually to a graduate student instructor in the Duke English Department who demonstrates outstanding commitment and excellence in the classroom.