English Department Awards Day 2025

English Department Awards Archive

2024 Award Winners
2023 Award Winners
2022 Award Winners
2021 Award Winners 

Congratulations to all of our 2025 winners! Our annual awards day will be on Thursday, May 1st (study day) from 11am-12pm in Patterson Hall 456. 

Undergraduate Awards

Giem and Collins Awards

Joseph and June Riley Essay Contest

1st Place: Bee Wade, “------- God-Damned"
2nd Place: Abby Griffith, “There is Still Time: I Saw the TV Glow as a Haunting Departure from Hollywood Ideals”
3rd Place: Audrey Rollen, “You Are Not Alone: The American Literary Response to Shifting Cultural Values Between the 1950s and 1980s”

Awards and Scholarships

Children's Literature Award: Jonah Alexander Taylor
MidSouth Society for Technical Communication Scholarship: Cate VanNostrand
Emalie Appleton Brooks Memorial Scholarship: Jenna Demmons
Elizabeth Phillips Scholarship: Jenna Demmons, Timothy Presley, & Cate VanNostrand
Honors Thesis Prize: MaKenna Beck, "Burning Bush"
Department of English Distinguished Scholarship Award: MaKenna Beck

Undergraduate Theses

Caitlin Archibald, “Be Careful What You Wish For” 
Rachel Adkins, “Children of Eden” 
MaKenna Beck, “The Burning Bush” 
Laura Isaacs, “Stag of Shadows” 
Chloe Ozier, “Fictional Wounds, Real Impacts: Domestic Abuse in Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us and Sally Rooney’s Normal People” 
Leyla Pehlivan, “The Weaponization of Literature in the Classroom: Propaganda Surrounding George Orwell’s Animal Farm" 

Graduate Awards

Concentration Awards

African American Literature: Madison Hunter
Applied Linguistics: Heri Yusup
Creative Writing Fiction: Gloria Odary
Creative Writing Non-Fiction: Justin Okwarachukwu
Creative Writing Poetry: Sabrina Spence
Creative Writing Service Award: Aether Henry & Jacob Williams
Literature: Spencer Horner
Teresa Dalle TESOL Prize: David Justin Cole
Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication: Tek Chhetry

Awards, Fellowships, and Scholarships

Rebecca Argall Award for Graduate Student Teaching Excellence: Gabrielle Alston
Dr. Reginald Matrin Teaching Award: Julia Creson
Dr. Lawrence and Sarah Wynn English Fellowship: Matthew Farmer
Dr. Lawrence and Sarah Wynn English Scholarship: Kayla Lutes
William and Martha Donigan Department of English Graduate Scholarship: Ifeoluwa Awopetu
Ruth and Henry Loeb Scharff Scholarship: Tek Chhetry, Ahmet Curuk, Halle Griggs, Pejman Javanmardi, & Huda Saleem
Eugenia & Fred P. Gattas Scholarship Fund: Gabrielle Alston & Ming Cheng
Joe Orgill Fellowship in English: Seiko Hayashi & Kayla Lutes
Outstanding Graduate Student Award: Emily Gillo
Department of English Service Award: Tek Chhetry & Hana Alqabba