The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced over $4 million in fellowship awards to 308 scholars, scientists and artists chosen from 2,319 applicants.  Among those awarded a fellowship was Vassar English professor, Harriett Hawkins, whose research topic was “Tragic and Satiric Studies in the Art of the Insoluble.” Professor Hawkins spent her year's sabbatical at the University of Oxford, where she was a member fo the senior faculty at Balliol and Linacre Colleges.

The British Academy awarded the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize for English Literature to Professor Hawkins's Poetic Freedom and Poetic Truth: Chaucer to Milton (1976) in 1978.