The Department of English

Information for Current English Graduate Students

Past Graduate Student Essay Award Winners

2011

Wade Gum and Lauren Shook are the co-winners of the English Department's Graduate Student Essay Award for 2011. Wade's fessay, "An Apologie for Poets: The Workes of Benjamin Jonsonand the Value of Authorship," was written for Dr. Hodgkins's ENG 713: Studies in Seventeenth-Century British Literature. Lauren's essay, "Britomart's 'Famous Progenee': The Birth of Female Authority in Book III of The Faerie Queene," was written for Dr. Feather's ENG 710: Studies in English Renaissance Literature. Each winner will receive $100.

2010

Dan Burns, Scott Gibson, and Rae Ann Meriwether are the co-winners of the English Department's Graduate Student Essay Award 2010. Dan's essay, "The Performance Model: Rhetoric and Composition in Stanley Fish's Late Foundationalist Turn," was written for Dr. Stephen Yarbrough's ENG 691: History of Rhetoric, Enlightenment through contemporary. Scott's essay, "Invisibility and the Commodification of Blackness in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Percival Everett's Erasure," was written for Dr. Christian Moraru's ENG 740: Studies in Contemporary and Postmodern American Literature. Rae Ann's essay, "'Morality Without Any Touch of Politicks'?: Cultural Dislocation and Subjectivity in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters and Beyond," written for Dr. Jennifer Keith's ENG 717: Studies in Eighteenth-Century British Literature. Each winner will receive $100.

2009

Mary Beth Pennington is the winner of the English Department's Graduate Student Essay Award 2009. Mary Beth's essay, "The Persistence of 'Country': An Ethnographic Study and Reflection on Being Rural and Academic," was wrtten for Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater's English 590: Literacy, Learning and Fieldwork. She will receive a $200 prize.

Will Dodson is the winner of this year's Graduate Student Essay competition for "Clare at Play: Enclosure and Accessible Mythology." He wrote the essay for Dr. Anne Wallace's ENG 719: Studies in British Romanticism course. He will receive a $200 prize.

2007

Tonya Hassell and Angus Bennett are co-winners of the English Department's Graduate Student Essay Award 2007. Their collaboratively written essay is entitled "Notes from the Underclassed." They will share the $200 prize.

2006

Deidre Hall is the winner of the English Department's Graduate Student Essay Award 2006. Deidre's essay, "'That miserable devil, the singer': David Gamut and Racial Alchemy in The Last of the Mohicans," was written for Karen Weyler's English 731 class. She will receive a $200 prize.

2005

Linda Gretton and Liz Wilkinson are co-winners of the English Department's Graduate Student Essay Award 2005. Linda's essay, "The Secret Diary of Cathy Locke," was written for Dr. Eve Widerhold. Liz's essay, "Sarah Winnemucca: 'PostIndian Warrior' Writing for the Land," was written for Dr. Jeanne Follansbee. They will share the $200 prize.

2004

Heidi Hanrahan and Chip Smoak are co-winners of the Graduate Student Essay Award 2003. Heidi submitted "Resisting, Revising, and Rewriting: Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as a Retelling of Child's "The Quadroons." Chip submitted "Sex, Birds, and Paradigms: Kate Chopin Rewriting Charles Darwin." They will share the $200 prize.

2002

Sheryl Clouse and George Upper are co-winners of the Graduate Student Essay Award  2002. Sheryl submitted "Making the Myth Viable: Milton's Reformation of the Masque." George submitted "Discovering Unknown Complexity, Recovering Forgotten Texts:  Gender in the Early Fiction of Carroll John Daly." They will share the $200 prize. Heidi Hanrahan wins an Honorable Mention and a $50 honorarium for her essay, "'Thanne was he bothe in lordship and servage': Arveragus as Ideal Husband."

2001

Cameron Golden and Nick Crawford are co-winners of the Graduate Student Essay Award 2001. Cameron Golden submitted "From Punishment to Possibility: Reimagining Hitchcockian Paradigms in The New York Trilogy." Nick Crawford submitted "Chaucer's Drama of Disjunction: Inverting the Dramatic Principle in The Canterbury Tales." They will share the $200 prize. Lara Savu receives a Honorable Mention and a $50 honorarium for her essay "In Desire's Grip: Gender, Politics, and Intertextual Games in Updike's Gertrude and Claudius."

For more information, contact:
Ms. Alyson Everhart
3137 MHRA
(336) 334-5311