The School of Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies is proud to announce that Tera Gosse has been named the recipient of the 2026 Melissa J. Knauer Essay Prize. This prestigious honour is awarded for the best essay submitted in the social sciences on a topic relating to women.
Gosse’s winning submission, titled On the Language of the Historical Colonial Contract: Language, Performative Acts, and White-Streaming Heteropatriarchy, offers a rigorous look at the mechanisms of institutional power. In Gosse’s words, the work “examines how settler colonialism persists through language as well as through law and policy. Drawing on feminist theories of performativity, Indigenous feminist scholarship, and historical case studies, it argues that colonial authority is continually reproduced through bureaucratic, legal and institutional language that transforms domination into consent. The essay concludes by examining testimony, artistic expression, and Tori Gosse's poem All My Relations Blame You as forms of refusal that challenge and disrupt the narratives sustaining colonial power.”
For Gosse, a Gender & Women’s Studies major, the recognition represents both academic rigor and personal history.
“Winning the Melissa J. Knauer Essay Prize is deeply meaningful because it recognizes work that brings together my academic interests in feminist theory, Indigenous studies and social justice with my lived experiences as a woman of Mi'kmaq ancestry,” says Gosse. “My family history and especially the influence of my late Mi'kmaq grandmother, has profoundly shaped how I understand the issues explored in my research. Receiving this award affirms the importance of critically examining the systems and narratives that continue to shape our society and encourages me to continue pursuing scholarship that amplifies Indigenous and feminist perspectives.”
Faculty members have praised the essay for its sophisticated and interdisciplinary approach. Nominator Professor Tanya Taylor noted that “Tera Gosse's work is original in both approach and content. Its sophisticated interdisciplinary analysis brings feminist theory, Indigenous scholarship and historical research into productive dialogue.”
Taylor further observed that the research provides a vital contribution to modern scholarship, saying “Tera's investigation of how language itself reproduces colonial power demonstrates exceptional theoretical depth while remaining attentive to the lived realities and ongoing effects of settler colonialism. Ultimately, On the Language of the Historical Colonial Contract: Language, Performative Acts, and White-Streaming Heteropatriarchy accomplishes more than advancing a compelling ethical and political argument about resistance, testimony and Indigenous forms of refusal; it becomes a site of knowledge production that contributes meaningfully to ongoing conversations about Indigenous resurgence, historical accountability and reconciliation.”
The Undergraduate Awards Committee corroborated this assessment, finding that “the paper was well-argued, clear and consistent unpacking of colonial governance and of how bureaucratic language works as a tool of control.” The award marks a significant milestone in Gosse's academic studies, highlighting the vital intersection of Indigenous and feminist perspectives in the social sciences.