Undergraduate Writing Colloquium Awards
The annual undergraduate writing contest recognizes and celebrates outstanding student writing and shares that writing with the University of Rochester community.
2023 Award Winners
HUMANITIES
Award Winner
Joshua Jung
"The Dialectical Intimacy of Frank Ocean"
Written for Expression at Large: The Arts in the Age of Social Media (WRTG 105), taught by Orisa Santiago Morrice
View Paper
Honorable Mention
Sophia Klin
"The Physicians’ Crusade: Horatio Robinson Storer and the Anti-Abortion Movement of the Nineteenth Century"
Written for Birth in the Nation: Reproduction in the United States (HIST 369W), taught by Brianna Theobald
View Paper
MULTIMODAL PROJECT
Award Winner
Haleila Harrison and Julia Berkman
"Unconditional"
Created for Advanced Painting (SART 222B), taught by Emily Tyman
Watch Video
Honorable Mentions
Quinn Kubistek
"Identity of a Communicator"
Created for Advanced Writing & Peer Tutoring (WRTG 245), taught by Stefanie Sydelnik
Fatimah Al Dulaimee
"In My House Lives A Green Colored Lump"
Created for Introduction to Sound Art (SART 153), taught by Cary Adams
Listen
NATURAL & APPLIED SCIENCES
Award Winner
Archita Amudhan
"In Vivo Dopamine Production and Alterations in the Pathway for Parkinson's Disease Treatment"
Written for First-Year Organic Chemistry II (CHEM 172), taught by C. Rose Kennedy
View Paper
Honorable Mentions
Rachel Whitmoyer
"Improvements in Football Helmets to Prevent Traumatic Brain Injuries"
Written for Classical Mechanics (PHYS 235W), taught by Chris Marshall
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SOCIAL SCIENCES
Award Winner
Elvis Vasquez
"How an Insidious Global Power Ensures the Enslavement of a Population: Creating the Haitian Migrant Labor Force and its Utilization in the Dominican Republic"
Written for America's Latino (HIST 149), taught by Ruben Flores
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Honorable Mention
Clarice Mckee
"From the Pearl River Delta to Powell Street: Ethnic Institutions in the Development of San Francisco’s Chinatown"
Written for Race, History and Urban Politics (PSCI 241W), taught by Gerald Gamm
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WRTG
Award Winner
Ella Croyle
"Queer Representation in Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
Written for Teens on Screens (WRTG 105), taught by Tanja Beljanski
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Honorable Mentions
Oskar Lelko
"The 35% gap: How does poverty affect voter participation?"
Written for Problems in Authority and Expertise (WRTG 105), taught by Rob Rich
View Paper
Submission Process
Spring 2023: Submissions due February 24, 2023
Each spring we accept submissions from students in five categories:
- Humanities
- Social sciences
- Natural and applied sciences
- WRTG 104, WRTG 105, WRTG 105E, WRTG 105B
- Multimodal Projects from any discipline (e.g. websites, podcasts, video projects)
Submissions should be academic work and may have been created any time during your undergraduate career at UR. Please limit papers to twenty pages.
Submissions are reviewed by graduate student writing tutors and faculty members from across the disciplines.
Prizes are awarded for the winning and honorable mention papers/projects in each of the five categories.
Entries should be submitted using our writing colloquium awards form.
If you would rather email your submission as an attachment, please send it to writingcontest@lists.rochester.edu.
For email submissions please create a title page for the paper that includes the following information:
- Your name, student ID, e-mail address, and phone number
- Your class year and major
- Title of course (if this paper was written for a course)
- The category for which you are submitting the paper
If you have any questions about the contest please contact the Writing and Speaking Center director at stefanie.sydelnik@rochester.edu.