Amy Clukey is the recipient of the 2002 Gray Award, given for her paper “‘So I Shifted’: Zora Neale Hurston’s Negotiation of the Position of the Black Artist.” Clukey wrote the paper in Katie McKee’s Southern Studies 401 class in the Fall 2001 semester. Katie Snodgrass won the 2002 Coterie Prize for her paper “Yearning for Land: The Disconnection of the Soil and Spirit in African American Literature.” Snodgrass wrote the paper in Katie Henninger’s Southern Studies 402 class in the 2001 Spring Semester.
The Gray Award, established by Colonel and Mrs. Homer Gray of Oxford, includes a $100 prize and is designated for an outstanding paper that analyzes aspects of the Southern experience. The Coterie Award, which also carries a prize of $100, is given by the Oxford Coterie Club to encourage student scholarship and to support research in Southern culture. 
Ted Ownby, Annette Trefzer, and David Wharton, professors who teach in the Southern Studies Program, served as members of the awards committee.