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.
2022 Award Winners
HUMANITIES
Award Winner
Austen Walker
"Juana and Me: Into the Erotic Archive"
Written for The Other Atlantic (HIST 386W), Professor Pablo Sierra
View Paper
Honorable Mention
Demetrius Sadler
"HELL ON EARTH: Kendrick Lamar’s Contradictory Message on Theodicy, Nihilism & The Cursed Race"
Written for Religion and Hip Hop (RELC 170), Professor Cona S.M. Marshall
View Paper
MULTIMODAL PROJECT
Award Winner
Angie (Quynh-Anh Lan) Pham
"Untitled"
Created for Advanced Writing & Peer Tutoring (WRTG 245), Professor Stefanie Sydelnik
Watch Video
Honorable Mentions
Isabella Mihok
"What’s Your Last Name Again?"
Created for American Experiments: Film and Art of the 1930s (ENGL 262), Professor James Rosenow
View Paper
Katherine Serna
"Trapeze"
Created for Arts and Activism (DANC 248), Professor Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp
View Paper
NATURAL & APPLIED SCIENCES
Award Winner
Atalanta Ritter
"Ain’t No Mountain High Enough"
Written for Evolution Writing (BIOL 205W), Professor James Fry
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Honorable Mentions
Elianna Dunster
"The Efficacy of Ocular Antibiotics in Combination"
Written for Efficacy of Antimicrobials (IND 395W), Professor Rachel Wozniak
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Sherif Negm
"RepeatProfiler: A pipeline for visualization and comparative analysis of repetitive DNA profiles"
Written for Independent Research (BIO 395W), Professor John S. Sproul
View Paper
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Award Winner
Chloe Campbell
"Life in the Death Strip: Examining the History of Germany's ‘Green Belt’ and the Paradox of Militarized Conservation"
Written for History of Nature (HIST 300W), Professor Stewart Weaver
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Honorable Mention
Megan Emery
"The Emergence of White Racial Sovereignty from 1803-1830: How the Louisiana Purchase Induced the Formation of a Unique White Identity Leading to Indian Removal"
Written for History of White Supremacy (HIST 267W), Professor Ryan Purcell
View Paper
WRTG
Award Winner
Regan Collins
"From Pentameter to Poirot: Analyzing Agatha Christie’s Usage of Shakespearean Text"
Written for Argumentative Detectives (WRTG 105), Instructor Oishani Sengupta
View Paper
Honorable Mentions
Nora Rooney
"The Ethicality of Athletic Testosterone Regulations"
Written for Where We Come From (WRTG 105), Professor Amy Arbogast
Grace van der Meer
"Hearing the Deaf"
Written for Where We Come From (WRTG 105), Professor Amy Arbogast
Submission Process
Spring 2022: Submissions due March 4, 2022
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.