2020 Undergraduate Essay Contest Winners Announced
Congratulations to the winners of the 2020 CSCL Undergraduate Essay Contest!
FIRST PRIZE:
Gayatri Lakshmi Narayanan, “Strange Fruit and Questions of Sustainability.”
Judges' Comments-- Gayatri Narayanan’s striking narration is matched by her innovative approach to form in this remarkably powerful essay. Narayanan excavates the social implications of anti-waste movements in the Anthropocene, interlacing memoir and theory with confidence and care. The result is an essay whose analysis is as sophisticated as its presentation.
Written for CSCL 4993 (Directed Study), Dr. Michelle Lekas, Spring 2020.
SECOND PRIZE:
Daniel Picardo, “A Coronation: Structural Cinema and Video Games in a Post-Filmic Avant-Garde.”
Judges' Comments-- Daniel Picardo reveals the creative and critical potentials of video games by highlighting their continuity with filmic avant-garde practices. He offers a variety of intriguing approaches to reimagine the histories and futures of experimental cinema while further provoking us to think about the complex ways in which we play video games.
Written for CSCL 5411 (Avant-Garde Cinema), Dr. Emily Capper, Fall 2019.
THIRD PRIZE:
Zachary Hesterberg, “Lost and Found: Traces of an Anti-Modern Map.”
Judges' Comments-- Zachary Hesterberg draws evocative and insightful comparisons between Cao Xueqin’s The Story of the Stone and Honoré de Balzac’s Père Goriot, focusing on ideology critiques latent in both novels that reveal their precarious relation between fiction and reality. The essay is beautifully written, thoughtfully nuanced, and a pleasure to read.
Written for CSCL 5331 (Discourse of the Novel), Dr. Shaden Tageldin, Spring 2020.
HONORABLE MENTION:
Justin Symanietz, “Women of the Salariat: An Examination of Inequality.”
Judges' Comments-- Justin Symanietz examines the gender and class politics of salaried female labor in Weimar Germany. Moving elegantly from Thorstein Veblen to Siegfried Kracauer to David Graeber, Symanietz provides careful historical context for the conditions of disillusionment and frustration that alienated “women of the salariat” from their own labor, with poignant implications for our present-day situation.
Written for CSCL 1501W (Reading History), Alexis Zanghi, Fall 2019.
HONORABLE MENTION:
Jimmy Arnold, “Rodeo Queens and Queer Steer: The Frontier Myth and Queer Utopic Impulse.”
Judges' Comments-- James Arnold critiques the patriarchal ideology of the American Western frontier narrative while revisiting that myth as a vehicle for queer utopic impulses in their energetically original essay. Drawing on a range of queer theories and cultural objects, Arnold deconstructs settler colonialist myths via queer TikTok cowboys and helps show us new ways forward toward a less oppressive society.
Written for CSCL 3322 (Visions of Nature), Dr. Andrea Gyenge, Spring 2020.
Thank you to CSCL for generously sponsoring these awards.
Thank you Callie Veiga for helping organize and designing the posters.
Thank you to the judges who served on the prize committee: Alexis Zanghi, Christian Uwe, Graeme Stout, and Maggie Hennefeld.
