Student Essay Award Winners 2007-2008

English 102

Millicent L. Angleton                                                                                      Instructor: Rebecca Barrett Fox

"A Diamond Is Forever: A Lifetime of Joy or a Lifetime of Pain"
An essay which uses Louis Althusser's theories on ideology to discuss the horrors of the diamond trade and how these horrors are kept from American consumers

Alli Fielder                                                                                      Instructor: Samantha Bishop Simmons

"No Easy Answers: A Disease, A Dilemma, and a Controversial Cure"
An essay that combines memoir and research to discuss the loss of memory in those who have had ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy)

200-Level English Classes

Tristan Bowersox                                          Instructor: Stephen Johnson                                           English 210

"Concept Collisions Hammer Out Larger Issues: The Use of the Non Sequitur in Ben Lerner's The Angle of Yaw"
An explication of this prose poem, made up of seemingly disconnected lines, to reveal the poem as a statement on the nature of modern society

Matt Gieschen                                               Instructor: Steve Evans                                                English 210

"'Time flies': The Evolution of Theme and Form in the Carpe Diem Tradition"
An essay that traces the theme through poems from the fifteenth century through the twentieth

A. Bryce Myers                                          Instructor: Katie Egging                                           English 211

"Machinal's All About the Benjamin's Baby!"
An analysis of the play as an indictment of how the system of capitalism causes the characters to be recognized chiefly by attributes that link them to others rather than as individuals, and as those who are only recognized as individuals when they participate in the system as consumers and the consumed.