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William Patrick Day Essay Contest

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At Collation every year, a $300 award (sometimes split into two awards of $150 each) is given to an outstanding essay by an English graduate student. Essays are judged by graduate students who have been nominated by the GEA. Any English graduate student who hasn't won the award in the past is eligible to enter.  Any essay that has been written in the past academic year for a course, or any work produced as part of a dissertation, is eligible. The prize is named in honor of Patrick Day, formerly a teacher and (both formerly and currently) a friend of Penn graduate students.

All submissions must be 25 pages or fewer (notes, works cited, and other appendices excluded). Your name should appear nowhere on the essay itself; instead, submit a separate cover sheet with your name and your essay title. 

Submit two hard copies of your essay to the GEA President by July 31. Results will be announced at Collation at the beginning of the fall semester.

William Patrick Day Essay Contest Recipients

2023

Eilis Lombard (recipient)

Essay Title: “Blues, Blueprints, and Bildung: National Narrative and Sonic Irruption in Invisible Man.”

2022

Matthew Aiello (recipient)

2021

Melanie Abeygunawardana (recipient)

"Yes, Pain, But What Else?: Racial Liberalism And Late-Style Morrison"

2020

Jonathan Dick (recipient)

"If the Ear Were a Mouth"

2019

Ethan Plaue (recipient)

Hearing Echoes: Glissant and Black Media Theory

2018

Ajay Kumar Batra (recipient)

“Wrongful Convictions: Abraham Johnstone and the Poetics of the Dead End”

Devin William Daniels (recipient)

“Kill the Body and the Head Will Die: Realism, Capitalism, and the Financier"

2017

Travis Chi Wing Lau (recipient)

“Defoe Before Immunity: A Prophylactic Journal of the Plague Year

Joan Lubin (recipient)

“‘Tired of Cruising? Try Numbers!’: Pulp Sexology and the Literature of Quantity”

2016

Clare Mullaney (recipient)

“Not to Discover Weakness is The Artifice of Strength: Emily Dickinson, Limitation, and the Literary.”

2015

Kelly Mee Rich (recipient)

"Nowhere's Safe: Ruinous Reconstruction in Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means"

Monika Bhagat-Kennedy (honorable mention)

"Sarath Kumar Ghosh as Scheherazade: Hindu Heroism in Indian Nights' Entertainment: The Trials of Narayan Lal"

2014

Don James McLaughlin (recipient)

"Color-Phobia: Rabies, Race, Prejudice, and the Mad Cry of Analogy in U.S. Antislavery Print Culture"

2013

Vaclav Paris (recipient)

"Beyond the Tree: Gertude Stein's The Making of Americans and the Modern Epic"

2012

Laura Soderberg (recipient)

2011

Jessica Hurley (recipient)

2010

Bronwyn V. Wallace (recipient)

2009

Kara Gaston (co-recipient)
Greg Steirer (co-recipient)

2008

Jennifer Jahner (co-recipient)
Adrian Khactu (co-recipient)

2007

Megan Cook (co-recipient)
Emily Ogden (co-recipient)

2006

Jane Malcolm (co-recipient)
Jill Shashaty (co-recipient)

2005

Rosemary O’Neill (recipient)

2004

Joseph Drury (co-recipient)
Denise Tanyol (co-recipient)

2003

Hannah Wells (co-recipient)

2001

Miriam Jacobson (recipient)