News & Events
Calendar
People
Undergraduates
Graduates
Courses
Awards & Honors
Jobs
Research & Resources
Home
 

 
LGBIT Studies
Film and Visual Culture
Center for Ideas and Society
Inland Area Writing Project
California Museum of Photography
Student Affairs
Blackboard
UCR Webmail
Campus Tour
Search
Contact Us

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'"