Core Course essay contest entries due March 24, 2008
Each year, the faculty of the Core Course sponsors an essay contest to recognize the best essays written in the course. Up to three essays are recognized and winning essayists receive cash prizes of $100 during the Honors Convocation held each April. Winning essays are also posted online to serve as models for future students.
Guidelines
Essays must have been written as regular Core Course assignments during the academic year 2007-2008.
Essays may be nominated by Core Course professors or submitted by students on their own. Professors may nominate no more than one essay per student and two student essays per section. Students may submit no more than one essay.
Essays must have the same content they had when submitted for final grading. No revising for the purposes of this competition is allowed. The essays may, however, be retyped or reprinted to conform to the format guidelines below.
Essays must be 1,000-3,000 words in length. They must have one-inch margins on all sides and use a standard 11-12 point typeface. All pages after the cover page must be numbered. The copies submitted must be clean (i.e., free of marginal notes or instructors' comments or grades).
The following must be affixed to the front of the essay:
1) A cover page with the title, the author’s name and the following signed pledge
"I pledge that I have not received unauthorized assistance during the completion of this essay, nor have I altered it since it was submitted to my instructor for grading."
2) A copy of the assignment that prompted the essay.
In addition to submitting a hard copy, students must also submit an electronic version of the essay and cover sheet. Hard copies should be addressed to David Leary, Core Course coordinator, Department of English, Ryland Hall. Electronic copies should be emailed. Both versions should be received no later than Monday, March 24, 2008.
The essays will be judged by the Core Course Advisory Committee, which consists of six faculty members and two students. Measures will be taken to insure judges will not know whose essays they are reading. Faculty members on the committee will abstain from discussion of essays written by their own students.
Previous Essay Winners
2007-2008
Karin Eastby, "Karl Marx Addresses M. K. Gandhi"
2005-2006
Lauren Pryor, "Rare Creatures: Remarkable Beauty's Inversion of Expectations and Assumptions in The Ramayana and The House of Mirth"
2004-2005
Elizabeth Jones, "The Power of Song in Song of Solomon"
Allison Speicher, "An Insatiable Hunger: Society's Glutinous Consumption of the Individual in The Second Sex and The House of Mirth"
Mark White, "The Life of Value: Nietzche's Ascetic Ideal as the Will to Humility"
2003-2004
Margaux LeSourd, "Identity, Meaning, and Morality"
Katherine Weber, "Augustine and Nietzsche on the Achievement of Moral Health"
Claire Yezer, "Forming a Persuasive Argument"
2002-2003
Stephanie Chandler, "Augustine's Encounter with Cicero Ambrose"
2001-2002
Oyindamola Osonowo, "Suicide as a Panacea for Loneliness; Loneliness as a Necessity of Spirituality"
Lauren Shea, "Only now, under a powerful, womanly lens, I can decipher your suffering and deny no part of my own"
Anna Mary Weir, "What Makes Sensei Tick? A Freudian Perspective"
2000-2001
Michael LeGower, "Opposites Attract...and Then Collide"
Tara Williford, "Okonkw Nietzschean Nobleman or Man of Ressentiment?"
Christopher Zuk, "Socrates Falls Short"
1999-2000
Emily Kay Carson, "Freud & Frankenstein"
Esther Daily, "Jerusalem's Priestly Class as Defined by Fredrich Nietzsche"
Katherine Dixon, "Rich's 'Snapshot of a Daughter-in-Law' as Evidence of Feminist Philosophy"
1997-1998
Carla Francischetti, "Repression and Ruin in Relationships"
George H. Paterson, "Serious Monkey Business"
1996-1997
Nancy Annett, "A Freudian Analysis of Kokoro"
Mike Cammarano, "Search for God: Augustine's Confessions, Book VI"
Brett H. Story, "Plato's Absolutes vs. Thomas Kuhn's Turbulent World of Paradigmatic Shifts"