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2024 Essay Contest Winners
Category 1: Nikesh Shrestha
Essay Title: “Embracing Failure as a Pathway to Growth”
Professor: Anne Winchell
Course: ENG 1310Category 2: Natalie Bolch
Essay Title: “Ostensibly Dissimilar, Truthfully Alike: Beloved and We Have Always Lived in the Castle”
Professor: Jacob Moore
Course: HON 2309PCategory 3: Brianna Dorado
Essay Title: “Shiva Baby! An Anarchic Masterpiece: Notes on Jewish and Queer Culture”
Professor: Dr. Zoe M Bursztajin-Illingworth
Course: ENG 3307Category 4: Gemini Parker
Essay Title: “The Autoethnography of a White Native: Whitewashing, White-Passing, and Other White BS”
Professor: Dr. Scott Bowman
Course: CJ 7313 -
2023 Essay Contest Winners
Category 1: Abby Myers
Essay Title: “Projected Perfections and Distorted Reflections: The Damaging Nature of EDs on Film”
Professor: Whitney May
Course: ENG 1320Category 2: Addyson Wilhite
Essay Title: “Guns ARE the Problem: Why Gun Reform Policies Are the Solution”
Professor: Anne Winchell
Course: HON 2301ACategory 3: Jaelyn Dominguez
Essay Title: “My Mother's Keeper”
Professor: Dr. Eric Leake
Course: ENG 3311Category 4: Allison Hopson
Essay Title: “The Impact and the Motivations of the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition's Indian Congress”
Professor: Dr. Ron Brown
Course: HIST 5350 -
2022 Essay Contest Winners
Category 1: Callie Farrar
Essay Title: “Letter to Young Women”
Professor: Hannah Smothers
Course: ENG 1310Category 2: Ashlynn Friudenberg
Essay Title: “The Hidden Destruction of Our Planet: Fashion”
Professor: Anne Winchell
Course: HON 2301ACategory 3: Elektra Jordan
Essay Title: “The Poet’s Experiment: The Legacy of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and the Evolution of the First Amendment”
Professor: Dr. Lauren Rowlands
Course: PS 3332Category 4: Kandi Pomeroy
Essay Title: “Remember, Remember the Fifth of November: An Inquiry Into Public & Private Empathy”
Professor: Dr. Eric Leake
Course: ENG 5317 -
2021 Essay Contest Winners
Category 1: Aubrey Hernandez
Essay Title: “On Keeping a Notebook...or Photographs”
Professor: Dr. William Feeler
Course: ENG 1310Category 2: Madison Harris
Essay Title: “Green Themes to Green Thumbs”
Professor: Whitney May
Course: ENG 1320Category 3: Cara Vocale
Essay Title: “How do you police a community that won’t talk to you?”
Professor: Justice Clark
Course: CJ 4350Category 4: Elizabeth Wrightsman
Essay Title: “My Reflection – I am NOT a Stereotype!”
Professor: Dr. Emily Summers
Course: DE 7305 -
2020 Essay Contest Winners
Category 1: Keira Kirk
Essay Title: "Strangers and Self-Esteem"
Professor: Ross Feeler
Course: ENG 1310Category 2: Luke Merchant
Essay Title: "The Structure May Change, but the Heart Stays Stagnant: What the Seventeenth Century Plague and COVID-19 Pandemic Suggests About Us"
Professor: Debra Law
Course: HIST 2311Category 3: Soul Schillaci
Essay Title: "Walk The (Color) Line: Representations of 'White Trash' in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina and U.S. Race/Class Dynamics"
Professor: Amanda Mixon
Course: ENG 3338 -
2019 Essay Contest Winners
Category 1: Kaitlyn Toomey
Essay Title: "The New Sexual Revolution"
Professor: Anne Winchell
Course: HON 2301ACategory 2: Cheyanne Clagett
Essay Title: "The Damage of Spoils"
Professor: Stephanie Noll
Course: HON 2309ECategory 3: Brooke Younger
Essay Title: "A(she)ism: The State of Feminism in the Non-religious Narrative"
Professor: Amanda Scott
Course: ENG 3311Category 4: Zach Lindsey
Essay Title: “Where the Road Forks: Gender Performance in the Childhood Illustrations of Guaman Poma”
Professor: Dr. Christinna Conlee
Course: ANTH 5349 -
2018 Essay Contest Winners
Category 1: Jazmine Beatty
Essay Title: "The Defining Feature of the Black Race"
Professor: Jason Coates
Course: ENG 1310Category 2: Lauren Frank
Essay Title: "The Disappearance of the Lesbian Bar"
Professor: Ashton Kamburoff
Course: ENG 1320Category 3: Chloe Hinze
Essay Title: "Old English, as Illustrated by 'The Dream of the Rood'"
Professor: Dr. Susan Morrison
Course: ENG 3319Category 4: Natalie C. Brown
Essay Title: "Narrowing the Cutter: Rendering Images in Text in The Red Parts"
Professor: Dr. Geneva Gano
Course: ENG 5320 -
2017 Essay Contest Winners
Category 1: Elias Rivas
Essay Title: "Culture Discretion: How Music, Poetry, and America Adopted me or Nineteen: The Age of Inquisition"
Professor: Ross Feeler
Course: ENG 1310Category 2: Gabri Brown
Essay Title: "Colorism: The Origins of an Antagonizing System"
Professor: Shannon Shaw
Course: ENG 1320Category 3: Jonathon Wellinger
Essay Title: "A Graver Situation: Flint and Obsidian Needles"
Professor: Dr. Robert Lassen
Course: ANTH 4315Category 4: Lauren Ferebee
Essay Title: "'Hear the Bones Sing': The Reinvention of the Narrative Body in Four Plays"
Professor: Dr. Sandra Mayo
Course: TH 5369 -
2016 Essay Contest Winners
Category 1: Amira H. Mohamed
Essay Title: "A Letter to Our President-Elect"
Professor: Ross Feeler
Course: ENG 1310Category 2: Ethan Roberts
Essay Title: "Thorium: The Final Frontier"
Professor: Sean Rose
Course: ENG 1320Category 3: John Michael Hoke
Essay Title: "The Reversal of Social Class Structure: An Analysis of the Servant Class in Commedia dell'Arte"
Professor: Kevin Gates
Course: TH 3320Category 4: Erica Nielson Vargas
Essay Title: "A Formative Research Design Study to Enhance Mindfulness, Self-Compassion, and Motivation of Students in Integrated Reading and Writing through Participation in an Eight-Week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program"
Professor: Dr. Eric J. Paulson
Course: DE 7999 -
2015 Essay Contest Winners
Category 1: Samantha Yarto
Essay Title: "Fifty Stars, One Flag: How the Common Core State Standards Will Unite America"
Professor: Sarah Youree
Course: ENG 1310Category 2: Bianca Beronio
Essay Title: "Desperate Glory: Wilfred Owen and Grim Reality of WWI"
Professor: William Feeler
Course: ENG 1320Category 3: Marcelina Garcia
Essay Title: “A Portrait of Community and Violence in South Texas 1930-1975”
Professor: Laura Ellis-Lai
Course: HON 3395Category 4: Jane Hawley
Essay Title: "Houses, Hotels, and Hauntings: The Functions of Physical Structures and Magical Realism in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Beloved, and The Lady Matador's Hotel"
Professor: Dr.Teya Rosenberg
Course: ENG 5231
