English Department Prizes | Department of English

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2023 ESSAY PRIZES (submission deadline: March 1, 2023 at noon)

College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize
Awarded for the best essay written by an undergraduate on the literature of the English Renaissance.

Dosoretz Family Prize
Awarded annually for the best essay written by a graduating senior English major.

Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize
Awarded annually for the best undergraduate essay on American Literature.

Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize
Awarded for the best undergraduate paper on Shakespeare.

Shakespeare Sonnet Contest
TO CELEBRATE THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY of the publication of the First Folio of William Shakespeare, the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania invites students to pen their own original sonnets. The winner will receive $250, and a hand-printed broadside of their sonnet produced by the Common Press.

The Annual Student Essay Prize requirements are the following:

1. Only one entry per student per prize. If you enter two contests, you must submit one essay for each contest.

2. Please do not submit the same essay for more than one prize.

3. Essays from Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2022, and Fall 2021 are eligible.

4. All submissions must be in by March 1, 2023, at noon.

Submit your entry below. Note that if you are applying for more than one contest, you need to submit to this link one time per entry.

https://upenn.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_b3qpESc2x4cF8eF

For more information regarding the listed awards, contact Loretta M. Witham Turner in the English Department at: loretta@upenn.edu.

2022

Jane E. Bua
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (honorable mention) Honorable Mention for a Critical Creative Honors Thesis "Translating the Music of Melancholy in Victor Hugo's 'Demain, Dés l' Aube'"

Kennedy A. Crowder
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient) Flag Bearer, Class of 2022

Francesca T. Davis
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (recipient) "Crossdressing Boys On and Off Stage in Early Mdoern Europe

Tyler J. Kliem
Best Undergraduate Student Service Award (co-recipient) An Outstanding Performance of Student Service in the English Department.

Claire E. Medina
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient) "'Aught an eunuch Has:' Desiring Eunuchs in Shakespeare"

Allyson E. Nelson
Best Undergraduate Student Service Award (co-recipient) An Outstanding Performance of Student Service in the English Department.

Kalila N. Papanikolas
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (recipient) "Racial Triangulation and a Colonial Trace in the Stories of Hisaye Ysamamoto"

Maressa J. Park
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (honorable mention) “The [Re]Construction of Space, Environment, and Race in the South: Faulkner and Ward"

Sumant M. Rao
Dosoretz Family Prize (recipient) "Commodity Fetishism and Gendered Economic Exclusion in Isabella Whitney's "Wyll and Testament"
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (recipient) "The Relational Body in Margaret Cavendish's Philosophy: 'New Materialism' and a Feminist History of Science"

Emily Q. Truong
Penn English Sweatshirt Design (recipient) Creating an Awesome New Design for Penn English Sweartshirts

2021

Jessica Z. Bao
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (recipient) "Black Women's Burden of Expectations: The Politics of Respectability in Passing"

Benjamin Bond
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (co-recipient)

Jane E. Bua
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (recipient) "'A Place for Freedom'?: Construction and the Pastoral in The Convent of Pleasure"

Ashley N. Codner
Dosoretz Family Prize (honorable mention) "'What Would Happen if We Didn't Like [Louis Armstrong]?': Centering Blues Figures wihtin Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man"

Ana Lorenza R. Colagrossi
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (honorable mention) "Silence of the Lambs: A Study of Beatrice's Character Arc and Silence in Much Ado About Nothing"

Kennedy A. Crowder
English Department Community Award (recipient)

Jihan Davis
Best Undergraduate Student Service Award (recipient)

Alyson Esther del Pino
Dosoretz Family Prize (recipient) "A Hell From Which to Return: Print Theory, Deleuze and Guattari, and Rauschenberg's Inferno Series"

Sophia C. DuRose
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient) "'Iago's Punful Power': An Examination of Iago's Sexual Gratification from Puns, Wordplay, and Manipulation"

Elizabeth C. Eckhard
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (honorable mention) "Tradition More Authentic Than History: Freedom, Race, and Possession in George Washington Cable's Grandissimes"

Caitlin Quinn
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient) "'What No Book of Travels Could Inform You of': Constructing the Female Eye Witness in OROONOKO, OR THE ROYAL SLAVE and THE TURKISH EMBASSY LETTERS"

Sofia M. Rabate
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (co-recipient)

Sumant M. Rao
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (honorable mention) "Margaret Cavendish's Philosophical Letters: Early Modern Optics and Gendered Vision"

Jadyn A. Wilensky
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient) "When Humanity Falls Apart: The Black Women Who Emerge from Poetic Chaos"

2020

Charlotte L. Bausch
Dosoretz Family Prize (recipient) Queer Sex in Scientific Discourse: Laud Humphrey's Tearoom Trade and the Pathologizing of Homosexuality in the Scientific Community

Zoe E. Braccia
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (recipient) "Payment Received in Full": Women's Labor Contributions to the Philadelphia Printing Industry at the turn of the 19th Century

Chloe Gong
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (co-recipient) The Fallen Future is Chinese: Fears of Neoliberalism in the Techno-orientalist Themes of Ling Ma's Severance

James D. Morrison
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (honorable mention) The Sound of Belch'd Woods: "Song of Myself" As The American Epic "His crudity is an exceeding great stench but it is America. To be frank, Whitman is to my fatherland what Dante is to Italy." --Ezra Pound

Alyssa L. Mulé
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient) Shakespeare Takes On the Romans: Ovid and Vergil, the Artistic Imagination, and Love over Empire in Antony and Cleopatra

Mary O. Osunlana
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient)

Sumant M. Rao
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (co-recipient) Zora Neale Hurston's Jonah's Gourd Vine: Family Dynamics and the Great Migration Narrative

Maria L. Riillo
Best Undergraduate Student Service Award (recipient)

Aileen P. Walsh
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (honorable mention) Enter Jailer's Daughter, Alone: Madness and Solo Scenes in The Two Noble Kinsmen

Annabelle G. Williams
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (recipient) 'Is it not queer?': Derek Jarman's Edward II and Dialogue Changes as a Weapon of Homophobia
Dosoretz Family Prize (honorable mention) Little Women, the Domestic Epic, and Family as Nation

2019

Amy J Chen
Penn English Sweatshirt Design (co-recipient)

Sharon R. Christner
Dosoretz Family Prize (recipient) A Chamber called Peace: Movement, Rest and Sleep in The Pilgrim’s Progress

Alyson Esther del Pino
Penn English Notebook Design (recipient)

Kristy Hsi
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (recipient) Title: Female Chastity and the Female Body in Comus

Trang M. Luu
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient) 2019-Flag Bearer

Sarah E. Murray
Best Undergraduate Student Service Award (recipient)

Isabella A. Pilotta Gois
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient) “Othello was a lie”: Impersonation and Identity in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North

Derek J. Willie
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (recipient) “A Nature Like Some Mighty River”: Historical Difference and Readerly Subjectivity in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (recipient) Remembering Deepwater Horizon: Ecological Afterlives in Sing, Unburied, Sing

Shuke Zeng
Penn English Sweatshirt Design (co-recipient)

2018

Ramathi H. Bandaranayake
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (honorable mention) "Medicine's Split Face": Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy and Wartime

Stephanie H. Barron
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (honorable mention) "Stripping of Kingship and Functionality in Shakespeare's Richard II"

Natalie V. Burke
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient) "From Fact and Reason": Student Notes by Christopher Hedrick, University of Pennsylvania, 1788-1792

Jeffrey R. Careyva
Best Undergraduate Student Service Award (recipient)
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient) "The Hedgehog and the Highway: Derrida and Knowing the Animal in Poetry"

Sean W. Gill
Dosoretz Family Prize (recipient) More Medieval than the Medieval: A Material Examination of the Kelmscott Chaucer, its Antecedents, and its Motivations "Always historicize!" -Frederic Jameson

Joshua Z. Glahn
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (recipient) Disrupting the Crowd

Arlo G. Gordon
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient) "A Constant Charade: Acting the Part in Julius Caesar."

Kristy Hsi
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (honorable mention) Inaccuracies and Interpretations in Roles and Identities within Othello and All's Well that Ends Well

Maya R. Levine
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient)

Ellie C. Schroeder
Dosoretz Family Prize (honorable mention) Chinese Eyes and Turkish Trousers: Racial Alterity and Sexual Liberation in To the Lighthouse and Orlando

Karis L. Stephen
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (honorable mention) "Black Travel through Time and Space: Music Videos from Sun Ra to Erykah Badu"

2017

Natalie V. Burke
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (recipient) 'Not Essentially Different From [Her] Sex:' A Literary Reading of the Rebecca Buckley Ferguson Letters

Liza M Davis
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient)

Sean W. Gill
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (honorable mention) A Broken Hallelujah: A critical addendum to Brodtkorb's "Selfhood and Others"

Emily A. Hoeven
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (recipient) Umambiguous Ambiguity
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient) John Gower: Narration and Theatricality in Shakespeare's Pericles

Michaela J. Kotziers
Dosoretz Family Prize (recipient) The Oppressed Haunts the Oppressor

Rebecca E. Pritzker
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient) "Sensing Sensibility: Jane Austen's Pedagogical Sympathy"

Nayeli Riano
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient) Introduction to "Pastorcillos", or "Little Shepherds:" Exploring a Miscellaneous Manuscript Book from Spain's Early Modern Period

2016

John D Baranik
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient) "Temporality and Choice in Milton's Middle Sonnets"

Soomin (Suzy) Kim
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient) Rittenberg Prize winner and Flag Bearer.

Sophia J. Lee
Dosoretz Family Prize (recipient) "Raptus in Wuthering Heights: the Rape and Theft of Isabella Linton"

Nathan S May
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient) "Caressing the Rabble: Richard II and Theatricality, 1598-1773"

Gabriel A. Ojeda-Sague
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient) "'Another, Then Another': Gay Male Orgy and Political Futurity"

Connie Yu
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (recipient) "Performing Painting in the Sonnets of Wroth and Sidney"

2015

Soomin (Suzy) Kim
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (recipient)

Nathan S May
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient)

Rachel S. Miao
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (recipient)
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient)

Carolina I Ortiz
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient)

Julia A Rossi
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient)

Caroline M. Yost
Dosoretz Family Prize (recipient) "Politicizing the 'Real': The Representation of Class in The Road to Wigan Pier and Housing Problems (1935)"

2014

Jessica Bergman
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (co-recipient)

Rachel Del Valle
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (honorable mention) Whose Hamlet Is It Anyway? Clueless, Reality Bites and Redefining Popular Culture in the Generation X

Matthew J Fernandez
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient) "Re-enacting Self, State and Trauma: Civil War Memory and John Brown's Body 1913-1964:

Kevin M Hudson
Dosoretz Family Prize (co-recipient) "Adapting the Aesthetic Encounter: Lech Majewski's The Mill and the Cross (2011) as an Enframement of the Art Museum Experience" (2013)

Brittney P Joyce
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (honorable mention) Trawing in Silences: Intimacy and Authority in the Writing of Junot Diaz

Rachel S. Miao
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (recipient) Syntax and Strangeness in Whitman's "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night"

Olivia Rutigliano
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (co-recipient)

Seth A Simons
Dosoretz Family Prize (co-recipient) "Streams Gush Down the River: The Lyric Moment and Epic"
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient) "Realistic and Not Imagined: Medieval Illusion in Hamlet"

Hannah G Van Sciver
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient) Quoting Poetry in Contemporary Drama: Poetry as Resurrection, and Redemption from Death

2013

Alexa M Bryn
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (recipient) "The Politics of Crosshatching: Formal Hybridity in Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard"

Janet A Chow
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (recipient) Welty and the Tramp: The Formation of Loneliness in Eudora Welty's 'The Hitch-Hikers'

Michael S King
Dosoretz Family Prize (recipient) "For Unspeakable Reasons: Humming as Improvisation"

Anya K Lichtenstein
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient)

Rivky (Jennifer) Mondal
Dosoretz Family Prize (honorable mention) "Performing Oneself: The stage of the theatrical persona in Ross McElwee's essay film, "Sherman's March"

Benjamin S Notkin
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (co-recipient) "Less Accessible by Extension: The Theologies of the Poetry of Crashaw, Donne and Herbert"

Eesha V Sardesai
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (co-recipient) "Authority Through Contradiction: Material and Immaterial in Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World"

Michael R Scognamiglio
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient) "Maintaining Homeostasis: London and the Bodily Threat"

2012

Jenny Chung
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient) Title: "Variant Configurations of Kingship in Q and F Lear"

Caitlin M. Drummond
Dosoretz Family Prize (recipient) Title: 'Minds unhing'd from old faith and love': Self-Forgetfulness, Memory and Social Redemption in the Works of George Eliot.

David E. Dunning
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (recipient) Title: Battered or Battering? Sexual Roles in Donne's Sonnets
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (recipient) Title: "Cantorian and Beautiful" Pragmatic Abstraction in David Foster Wallace
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient)

Steven R. Green
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (honorable mention) Title: "Out of the Past and onto the Screen: Christopher Nolan and Blockbuster Noir"

Rebecca A. Levine
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (recipient) Title: "Remains Without Remaining': Trauma and Melancholia in the Design, Construction, and Destruction of Holocaust Memorials."

Deven M. Parker
Dosoretz Family Prize (honorable mention) Title: Re-rewriting the Gothic: Christabel and the Lucy Poems

2011

Anusha M. Alles
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (recipient) Title: "I'm sane, you're not": Possibilities and Paradox of Passing in Charles Johnson's Oxherding Tale"

Jenny Chung
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient) Title: "Shakespeare's Lives: Anthony, Cleopatra, and Appropriation"

Anne Huang
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (honorable mention) Title: Discontinuous Biblical Reading Practices"

Trisha Y. Low
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient) Title: "Guts: On Jack Spicer, Robin Blaser, and a Poetics of Masochism"

Kaneesha C. Parsard
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient)

Jessica K. Penzias
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (recipient) Title: Prompt: Jacobean drama was 'troubled with the mother' - that is, the plays express considerable anxiety about the maternal." Discuss the representation of motherhood in Jacobean Theater.

Valeria A. Tsygankova
Dosoretz Family Prize (recipient) Title: "The Philosophers and the Animals": Opening gaps in reason with teh inarticulate voice.
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient) Title: "Representing Church and State: Paratexts of the Authorized Elizabethan Bible"

2010

Whitney Bounty
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (honorable mention) Title: "The Art of Life: Artistic Mimesis and Biological Reproduction in the Works of Ovid and Shakespeare"

Dalglish Chew
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient)

Victor X. Gamez Barrera
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (co-recipient) Title: "Love in Black-American Prison Literature"

Stephen W. Krewson
Dosoretz Family Prize (co-recipient) Title: "Putting the Salt Back Inside Sozaboy"

Di Lu
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (honorable mention) Title: "Shadows in The Garden"
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient) Title: "Very tragical mirth": Ovidian Desire in A MIdsummer Night's Dream

Maxime D. McKenna
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (recipient) Title: "An Apology for Difficult Poetry: The Politics of Glossing in Spenser's Shepharde's Calendar"
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (recipient) Title: "In the Wake of a Fair Use Trial: Incest, Citation and the Legal Legacy of Finnegans Wake"

Jessica B. Wolfe
Dosoretz Family Prize (co-recipient) Title: "'Do Thyself No Harm!' Suicide in Richardson's Clarissa and Eighteenth-Century Religious Discourse"
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (recipient) Title: Identifying "The Thing Not Named": Narrative Absence and Consumer Culture in Cather's The Professor's House

2009

Joshua B. Bennett
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (recipient)

Sarah G. Cantin
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient)

Yael Landman
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (honorable mention)

Mary Kathryn Miller
Dosoretz Family Prize (honorable mention)

Brooke S. Palmieri
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (recipient)
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (recipient)

Alicia G. Puglionesi
Dosoretz Family Prize (recipient)

Alyssa Sclafani
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient)

Benjamin J. Wiebracht
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (recipient)

Caleb Y. Yap
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (honorable mention)

2008

Meghan M. Daly
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (honorable mention)

Alexandra J. Gibson
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (recipient)
Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize (recipient)

Kevin M. Kimura
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (recipient)

Richard Z. Lee
Dosoretz Family Prize (recipient)
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient)

Stephen R. McLaughlin
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (honorable mention)

Cynthia L. Padera
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (recipient)

2007

Caitlin M. Charos
Dosoretz Family Prize (honorable mention)

Maayan P. Dauber
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient)

Sara E. Gorman
Dosoretz Family Prize (recipient)

Amro K. Suboh
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (co-recipient)

2006

Kathryn Fleishman
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient)

2005

Sara E. Gorman
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (co-recipient)

Thomas C. Lay
Dosoretz Family Prize (1st place)

Yelena Litvinov
Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize (co-recipient)

Alicia Oltuski
College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize (1st place)

Willa Rohrer
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient)

Amir Shachmurove
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient)

2004

Lynn Huang
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (recipient)

2003

Sharon Fulton
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (recipient)

2002

Sara Murphy
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient)

Brenner Thomas
L. Barry Pick Prize for Best Undergraduate Thesis (co-recipient)

2001

Greg Steirer
Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English (recipient)