I'm late in posting this announcement, but on May 5, 2009, the English Department held its annual Awards Ceremony, at which the following awards were presented:
Excellence in English, Undergraduate
Nikki Alimonda
Barbara Joseph
Excellence in English, Undergraduate
Katuraka Alston
Christy Bright
Nell Del Giudice
Charulata Dyal
Jacqueline McCormick
Cherisse Mayers
Lindsey Miller
Jessica Rogers
Charles Thorne
The Edward Edelman and Susanne Popper-Edelman English Essay Prizes
Tashana Thompson (Developmental Essay)
Essay Title: "New York"
Professor Deborah Mutnick's Citation: In her book, The Situation and the Story: The Art of the Personal Narrative, Vivian Gornick writes: "The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say" (13). She goes on to suggest that once the crucial elements of story and narrative persona become clear, other elements of the essay such as clarity, diction, and syntax also fall into place. Tashana Thompson's essay "New York" is a fine example of this crystallization. From her suburban high school graduation to Manhattan's canyons of skyscrapers and across the Brooklyn Bridge, Tashana blazes a path for herself and for us: "I stepped out of the subway car, and made my way up the stairs. As I entered the streets of Brooklyn, I felt like a gazelle in a lion's den. The busy streets roared as cars zipped by, leaving a whirlwind of smoke and dust behind. Walking down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, I smell the aroma of cheese pizza and the exhaust from the honking cars. Amazing how everyone is in a hurry in this city, I think, as a woman walking towards me, vigorously biting into her ruby red apple, tries to keep her balance as she buries her head in the Wall Street Journal. The heavy, cold, smoked-filled breeze tugs at my navy blue wool jacket; I pull my bag closer to my quivering ribs. Moving to New York City was one of the biggest decisions I have ever had to make. Who would have thought a quiet small town girl from the suburbs of Connecticut, would be attending a multi-cultural urban school in the heart of downtown Brooklyn?" Capturing the ethos of the big city for a young newcomer, Tashana succeeds in creating a persona who sees New York City anew, telling an old story of the transformative powers of the city with fresh insight. She achieves just that clarity, precision, and syntactic grace that Gornick describes, and in so doing, she richly deserves the Edelman Popper Award for the best English 14 essay in 2008-09.
Rebecca Scher (Freshman Essay)
Essay Title: "A Jury of your Peers"
Professor John B. Killoran's Citation: The best citation I can offer for Rebecca's writing is to describe her essay. The essay is about how lawyers consider race when selecting jurors and whether such considerations are racist. The essay engages with a diverse range of sources: not just a course reading but also the U.S. Constitution, the Magna Carta, a law journal article, a Time magazine article, and interviews with two lawyers. So it engages the issue at many levels and from diverse perspectives. And it's well written. Ask yourself for a moment, How would you start off such an essay? Here's Rebecca's opening sentence: "One of the first questions asked after the jury was selected for the infamous trial of OJ Simpson, the black football player accused of murdering his white wife, was what was the racial make-up of the panel." Rebecca thereby makes her essay topical for contemporary readers, but does not dwell on the Simpson case. Yet at the very end, she returns to Simpson, this time his second trial. So with this ending the essay goes full circle, but also symbolically advances.
Robert Barnes (Core Literature)
Essay Title: "God, War, and Morality in God is Dead"
Professor Bernard Schweizer's Citation: Robert Barnes's essay "God, War, and Morality in God is Dead" is a superbly clear and intelligent elucidation of a challenging, complex text. He maturely engages the deeper implications of the text, rather than simply passing judgment on the brazen blasphemy of a story in which God literally dies in Sudan and then is eaten by a pack of feral dogs, who promptly become new objects of fanatical worship. Robert sheds a revealing light on the paradoxical presence of biblical allusions in this apparently anti-theistical text, and he deftly explains the author's social and political vision. Robert's advanced critical skills are evidenced in many lucid and engaging interpretive statements and in an overall thematic cohesion and rhetorical progression that makes his essay a real pleasure to read.
Sophie Vranian (Upper Division)
Essay Title: "Politics of Food in Contemporary Nigeria"
Professor Jonathan Haynes's Citation: Sophie Vranian's essay "Politics of Food in Contemporary Nigeria," written for English 170: Contemporary African Literature and Film, was the unanimous choice of the judges for best upper-level essay. A study of the ways in which food figures in Sefi Atta's recent novel Everything Good Will Come, the essay illustrates Sophie's skill and flair as a literary critic, which allows her to deal with the novel in all its literary complexity. It also puts fully on display her education as a Global College student, which has given her an acute and practiced ability to find her way around foreign cultures and a sophisticated, interdisciplinary understanding of how societies work, in all their complexity. The passion for social justice that comes through clearly in everything Sophie says or writes, and is in fact palpable even when she's just sitting there in class biding her time, is also integral to a Global College education, but I expect she already had that passion before she came to LIU. I like to see this award as a celebration of the connection between the English Department and Global College, which we hope will grow deeper and stronger. Her essay also demonstrates, in its wonderful clarity and incisiveness, that Sophie Vranian is smart as hell.
Franchesca Castano (Senior Thesis)
Essay Title: "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: A Vision of feminism and American culture during turn-of-the-century America"
Professor Jonathan Haynes's Citation: It will come as no surprise to anyone in this year's Senior Seminar that Franchesca Castano has won the senior thesis prize for "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: A Vision of feminism and American culture during turn-of-the-century America." In writing a senior thesis, half the battle is staying on top of the process of designing, researching, and writing such a long project. Every step of the way, from informal proposal to the final presentation, Franchesca delivered on time and up to specifications, setting the standard for the class. The interest of her topic was always obvious and her prose was always lucid and pleasant. Her essay became steadily more fascinating as she developed one of its facets after another, setting Frank Baum's familiar story in the contexts of rural Kansas at the turn of the 20th century, children's literature, and popular culture. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is her two-pronged argument about Baum's feminism, establishing a direct personal connection-Baum's mother-in-law was a close associate of Elizabeth Cady Stanton-and providing an acute reading of Dorothy as a strong female character surrounded by pathetically weak males. Franchesca's thesis is a fitting culmination to her excellent career as an English major, and we are proud to send her off down the yellow brick road with this additional honor.
The Esther Hyneman Awards
Jeremy Beauregard & Christine Gans (Poetry)
Yoav Ben Yosef & Christy Bright (Fiction)
The Louis & Ann Parascandola Graduate Award
Nell del Giudice & Jessica Rogers
New Inductees to Sigma Tau Delta, Omicron Zeta Chapter
Andrea Cox, undergraduate
Zamir Khan, undergraduate
Zahra Patterson, graduate
Jon Peacock, graduate
Congratulations, everyone!
Read more about each of these prizes/awards by visiting the English Department website. Click one of the links in the column to the right, under "SPECIFIC PAGES WITHIN ENGLISH DEPARTMENT WEBSITE." Thanks.
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