Spring 2025
The Adelphic Award went to Archawin Kittirattanapaiboon for “Undoing Un-Thainess: Portraying Isaan “Hired Wife” (Mia Chao) in Thai Cold War Songs.”
The James E. Rice Prizes were awarded to Paulina Delgado for “Slamming the Door on Conversion Therapy” and Anton Nazarenko for “The Role of Sense in Song (and Poetry).”
The English 2880, Expository Writing Prize went to Muna Mohamed for “Of Gods and Melanin: Theorizing the Resistance to Black Bodies in White Imaginative Spaces.” Honorable mention went to Rma L. Polce for “The Price of Pain: How True Crime Media Commodifies Trauma.”
The Spencer Portfolio Award for Students and Instructors went to Katie Soltis, student, and Anna Koshcheeva, instructor, for “Portfolio: Investigating Cultural Transition and Gender through Cold War Cultural Objects.”
The James F. Slevin Assignment Sequence Prize was awarded to Lars Johnson for “Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Creation and Analysis.” Honorable mention went to Yue Zhao for “Making a Voice: The Art of Persuasive Writing Through an Op-ed.”
The Neil Lubow Prize was awarded to Simon Cui for “Unmasking Pandemic Legacies: Domestic Violence.”
The John S. Knight Award for Writing Exercises and Handouts went to Nic Vigilante for “To Be Or Not To Be: Writing Active Prose.”
Fall 2025
The Adelphic Award went to Uliana Doroshenko for “Impact of the war in Ukraine on smart textile innovation in military applications.” Honorable mention was awarded to Jianxi Wu for “Universal Language or Just a Tool: The Impact of Emojis on Digitalized Communication.”
The Spencer Portfolio Award for Students and Instructors was awarded to Katherine Zhao, student, and Chiara Visentin, instructor, for “Power in Medieval Paris: Causes, Conduits, and Contradictions.” Honorable mention went to Shabana Mahdis, student, and Tanner Crunelle, instructor for “To Write is to Resist: Feminist Solidarity Across Borders.”
The Writing in the Majors Prize went to Jaxon Jacobs for “Revelation Without Revelation: The Intelligence Apocalypse.” Honorable mention went to Rylee Landau for “Quiet Symptoms with Loud Consequences: How Gender Norms Shape ADHD Diagnosis in Girls.”
The James E. Rice Prizes were awarded to Max Greene for “The Persistence of Vaccine Hesitancy: What It Says About Trust in Institutions” and Lionel Hearon for “What I Learned as Prey.” Honorable mention went to Cassidy Takeuchi for “Material Resonance: Embodiment, Gender, and the Acoustic Guitar.”
The Elmer Markham Johnson Prize went to Sean Li for “Fica! Automobility and Infrastructure in Post WWII Yugoslavia.”
The Gertrude Spencer Prize for Students and Instructors was awarded to Brenna Lucio-Belbase, student, and Jingya Guo, instructor, for “Debate of the Inner Chambers of the Bound Lotus.” Honorable mention went to Justin Chen, student, and Lanxin Shi, instructor, for “On Existentialist’s analysis of anxiety.”
The James F. Slevin Assignment Sequence Prize was awarded to Ryanne Berry for “Writing Like a Medieval Visionary: Visual Analysis, Creative Writing, and the Johnson Museum Collection.” Honorable mention went to Becca Ames for “From Personal Narrative to Analytical Argument: Mining Spatial Experience for Meaning.”
The Buttrick-Crippen Assistantship was awarded to Liam Packer for “Mathematics and Social Justice.” Honorable mentions went to Luc Barrett for “Writing the Universe: Science Communication in Physics & Astronomy” and Mark Mahoney for “Jazz Fictions.”
The Neil Lubow Prize was awarded to Nathan Speert for “Are States Like Clubs?”
The John S. Knight Award for Writing Exercises and Handouts went to Charlie Tebbutt for “Critical Essay Evaluation for Reflection on Writing and the Use of AI.” Honorable mention went to Kim Phung Nguyen for “Peer-Review Activity: Sentence/ Paragraph Puzzle, Bingo card, and Reverse Outline.”