For Yasmin Solomonescu, literary studies isn’t just a place to explore her own ideas — it’s an opportunity to pull in more voices and provoke more questions.
An associate professor in the Department of English, Solomonescu was recently recognized for her exceptional collaborative work by the International Conference on Romanticism. She won the ICR’s Jean-Pierre Barricelli Book Prize for Persuasion After Rhetoric in the Eighteenth Century and Romanticism, which she co-edited with University of California, Davis, associate professor Stefan Uhlig.
“I’m so delighted,” said Solomonescu, a fellow at the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. “The award is an important marker for us of the relevance of this work.”
Since 1991, the ICR has cultivated multilingual and international study of Romanticism, working to expand its field beyond what is traditionally considered literary studies. The Barricelli Book Prize has recognized the best book in Romanticism studies from each year since 1993. Persuasion After Rhetoric continues the winners’ legacy of groundbreaking work in the discipline, but it is unique from past awardees because it is a collection of essays rather than a single-author monograph.
The book is “exceptional, an example to future scholars of how an essay collection should be done,” said Larry Peer, prize committee chair, when announcing the award.
Persuasion After Rhetoric compiles 13 essays from different literary scholars with an introduction co-written by Solomonescu and Uhlig. The essays cover the practice and institutions of persuasion, as well as how it changed in the Romantic period, by examining five global contexts: England, France, Germany, Scotland, and the United States. The pieces address writings by authors ranging from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Jane Austen, covering a diverse range of topics, from botany to law.
While “wildly interdisciplinary,” Solomonescu said, the book tells one comprehensive story about rhetoric and persuasion in the 18th and 19th centuries.
“There have been some studies of the ways in which certain kinds of rhetoric survived and were adapted,” she said. “But generally, there hasn’t been any systematic study of what happened to the end goal of rhetoric: persuasion.”
Scholars of literature and rhetoric generally agree that rhetoric — the theory of using language to influence others — underwent a significant cultural decline across Europe during that time period, she said, as, among other things, aesthetic values shifted from imitation to originality, and pedagogy focused more on spreading basic literacy than studying verbal power.
“Rhetoric may have declined, but persuasion certainly didn’t go away during a period marked by agitation for human rights and abolition, and questions of political reform and revolution,” Solomonescu said.
Contributions to the book emphasize that persuasion is not only a mode of judgment and influence, but also a way of engaging in deliberation and contestations. It involves emotion, as well as logic and reason — a trait of persuasion that some might say should be external to rational debate.
“It’s my own contribution to this constellation of questions.” – Yasmin Solomonescu, associate professor of English
But Solomonescu and Persuasion After Rhetoric place persuasion in a role that supplements and elevates rationality.
“It becomes the name for a messier — but I think more productive and democratic — way of engaging with each other and our complex reality,” Solomonescu said.
Persuasion After Rhetoric was created in that spirit, with the hope that more people will join the conversation around persuasion in both the Romantic and modern worlds. With the Barricelli Book Prize, as well as a review in the Times Literary Supplement, the book creates a space for itself in Romantic studies and provokes further thought.
Solomonescu is continuing the conversation with her next monograph, Reimagining Persuasion in British Romantic Literature, which will be published with Cambridge University Press in 2026. The book will examine how, in British romantic literature, persuasion became a framework for considering questions of epistemology, law, politics, and personal relationships, and why it’s associated with specific literary strategies.
“It’s my own contribution to this constellation of questions,” she said.
Originally published by at al.nd.edu on November 03, 2025.