UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT ESSAY CONTEST

Each year, three grand prizes of $100.00 each and "honorable mentions" of $25.00 each are awarded for the BEST STUDENT ESSAYS WRITTEN FOR AN ENGLISH CLASS during the previous Spring , Fall or Winter quarters. Essays are submitted to Linda Nellany in the English Department Office, 1203 HMNSS during April of each year. Winners are announced at the end-of-the-year English Student Union party usually held in June.

Limit 1 essay per student. You need not be an English major to submit a paper to this contest. Essays should include a cover sheet stating the student's name, ID number, local address and phone, the title of the essay, the course and professor for which the essay was written, and the quarter the course was offered. The essay itself should include the title, but NOT the student's name.

RECIPIENTS

Spring 2010 Winners:

First prize winners:

• Kaitlyn Dodson
  Title:  The Nature of Virtual Existence
• Breeanna Jent
  Title: Breaking Through The Haze: Opium and its Effects in The Moonstone
• Daniel Ante
  Title: Gender Conflict and Anxiety: The Function of the Maternal and Parternal Spheres in Macbeth

Honorable mentions:

• Jaime Gonzalez
  Title: Construction of the Self in Finnegans Wake
• Kristen McDonald
  Title: "Newes From an Other World"

Spring 2009 Winners:

First prize winners:

• Justin Cosner
  Title:  Galahad is a Maid
• Eddie Eason
  Title:  Recognition of Whiteness and its Relation to the Other in Night of the Living Dead
• Kristina Garza
  Title:  Praestet Fides Supplementum Sensuum Defectui: The Struggle to  Unite a Decadent and Catholic Spirit

Honorable mentions:

• Arianna Asercion
  Title:  Maggie Happened: The Voiceless "Other"
• Sarah Baylus
  Title:  Beauty and the Beast: Art as Reactive Propaganda
• Martin Godinez
  Title:  Atanarjuat's naked race scene as a counter-argument to "Scopophilia Pleasure"
• Kristen McDonald
  Title:  "Stumbling Blocks and Interpretations: Difficulty in Billy Budd"

Spring 2008 Winners:

First prize winners:

• Justin Gautreau
  Title:  "Power and Genre: The Difference Between Tamburlaine and Faustus"
• Andrew Vidal
  Title:  Short Eyes: Power/Knowledge and Hegemonic Masculinity
• Anne Sullivan
  Title:  Resisting Plasticization: Reading Alice Walker's The Color Purple through an Erotic Lens

Honorable mentions:

• Cheri Veilleux
  Title: The Use of the Animal, the Non-Human, and the Sub-Human Characters By Women Writers of the Romantic Period
• Raymund Papica
  Title:  Of Assassins and Avengers: De Flores, Bosola, and the Torn Natures of the Villainous Man
• Kristen McDonald
  Title:  Sweet vs. Sensual: The Ideal Woman of the Victorian Era

Spring 2007 Winners:

First prize winners:

• Claire Class
  Title:  "Revenge is a Dish Best Served by Men:  Gender Transgression in The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover"
• Joel Cameron
  Title:  Progressing into the Wilderness:  The Literary Impression of Moral in The Good Soldier

Honorable mentions:

• Jeffery Anderson
  Title:  "The Failure of Marriage in Modernism"
• Gretchen Heimlich
  Title:  "The Double in Heart of Darkness and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde"
• Traci Hanamura
  Title:  A Day in the Life of a Romantic Poet
• BreeAnne Yek
  Title:  Women and the Power of the Gaze:  Mulvey and Mura

2005-2006:

Anne Sullivan
Dark Curiosity: Exploring the Subconscious in Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber"

Juliana Lee
Language as Culture in Mules and Men

Ariel Greenwood
Lolita: A Postmodern Heroine

Angelina Seto
Humbert Humbert's De-centered Universe

Christine Vo
W.E.B. Du Bois' Injection into Runaway Tongue

David Hannah
Religion and Divine Law

Spring 2002 Winners:

First prize winners:

• Aaron Berkowitz
  Title:  Power-Knowledge Relations and the Female Body
• Mei Lee
  Title:  On Guilt That Comes Full Circle: Recovering The Self In >Catfish and Mandala
• Brian Frink
  Title:  Industry and Spirituality in Moby Dick

Honorable mentions:

• Leslie Ahern
  Title:  Redemptive Qualities of Socrates Fortlow In Always >Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
• Richard Contreras
  Title:  Surprised by Boredom: The Reader in Moby Dick
• Rachel Gardner
  Title:  The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty: Shattering Abjection >Within the Poetry of Defiance
• David Tellyer
  Title:  The Jesuit and Protestant Gaze Of The Native American Other

Spring 2001 Winners:

First prize:

• Rachel Gardner
  Title:  Manifest Destiny:  The American Dream, The American Nightmare

Second prize:

• Angel Reed
  Title:  Feminizing Of The Chinese

Honorable mentions:

• Leila Monroe
  Title:  New Visions
• Katie Chaires
  Title:  Sexual Identity in Typee and Moby-Dick

Spring 2000 Winners:

First prize: 

• Patricia Ploesch
  Title: Blubber, the "Skin of the Skin": The Resistance to Ethnological Racism in Moby Dick.

Second prize:

• Ryan Randall
  Title: "Tainted Love: The Anti-Hierarchical Discourse of Carnival Association in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Henry IV Parts One and Two"

Honorable mention: 

• Michael Pollard
  Title: "Reflections on Whitman and Dickinson"

Spring 1999 Winners:

First prize: 

• Kathleen Difani
  Title: "California Boundaries and Possibilities"

Second Prize:

• Ryan Randall
  Title: "Strong Similarities and a Distinct Difference in Chaucer's 'The Pardoner's Tale' and Boccaccio's 1:1"

Honorable Mentions:

• Savita Bal
  Title: "American Women's Poetry and the Reclaiming of the Feminized Body"
• Margaret Fajardo
  Title: "Are you Filipina, Maria Clara?: The Question of Cultural Identity in Michelle Cruz Skinner's 'Simbang Gabi' and Peter Bacho's 'Stephie'"