Core Essay Contest
One of the three major goals of Core, as specified in the Core syllabus, is to help students develop their ability to engage and compare texts through reading, thinking, discussion and writing. As regards writing, Core students devote a great deal of time to the design and composition of essays, while Core instructors provide careful guidance and feedback. Typically, students write two to three essays in each of the two semesters of Core. The general standards by which Core essays are assessed are specified on the final page of the Core syllabus.
To encourage excellent writing in Core, the Core faculty sponsors an annual essay contest. The most recent guidelines for the contest are distributed to all Core students in the fall semester and are posted on the Core Web site.
From among the essays that are submitted, a Core essay contest committee composed of seven Core faculty and two previous Core students usually selects from one to three essays for the Core essay award, more specifically known as the John Rilling Award for Excellence in Writing. Each recipient of this award receives special recognition and a cash prize of $100 during the Arts & Sciences Honors Convocation, held in April of each year.
Previous Award-Winning Essays
2007-2008
Karin Eastby, "Karl Marx Addresses M. K. Gandhi"
2005-2006
Lauren Pryor, "Rare Creatures: Remarkable Beauty's Inversion of Expectations and Assumptions in The Ramayana and The House of Mirth"
2004-2005
Elizabeth Jones, "The Power of Song in Song of Solomon"
Allison Speicher, "An Insatiable Hunger: Society's Glutinous Consumption of the Individual in The Second Sex and The House of Mirth"
Mark White, "The Life of Value: Nietzche's Ascetic Ideal as the Will to Humility"
2003-2004
Margaux LeSourd, "Identity, Meaning, and Morality"
Katherine Weber, "Augustine and Nietzsche on the Achievement of Moral Health"
Claire Yezer, "Forming a Persuasive Argument"
2002-2003
Stephanie Chandler, "Augustine's Encounter with Cicero Ambrose"
2001-2002
Oyindamola Osonowo, "Suicide as a Panacea for Loneliness; Loneliness as a Necessity of Spirituality"
Lauren Shea, "Only now, under a powerful, womanly lens, I can decipher your suffering and deny no part of my own"
Anna Mary Weir, "What Makes Sensei Tick? A Freudian Perspective"
2000-2001
Michael LeGower, "Opposites Attract...and Then Collide"
Tara Williford, "Okonkw Nietzschean Nobleman or Man of Ressentiment?"
Christopher Zuk, "Socrates Falls Short"
1999-2000
Emily Kay Carson, "Freud & Frankenstein"
Esther Daily, "Jerusalem's Priestly Class as Defined by Fredrich Nietzsche"
Katherine Dixon, "Rich's 'Snapshot of a Daughter-in-Law' as Evidence of Feminist Philosophy"
1997-1998
Carla Francischetti, "Repression and Ruin in Relationships"
George H. Paterson, "Serious Monkey Business"
1996-1997
Nancy Annett, "A Freudian Analysis of Kokoro"
Mike Cammarano, "Search for God: Augustine's Confessions, Book VI"
Brett H. Story, "Plato's Absolutes vs. Thomas Kuhn's Turbulent World of Paradigmatic Shifts"
