2024 300 Level Literature

Madeline Dagnall, “A For Adultery, Ambiguity, & Authority: Public Discipline in The Scarlet Letter,”  1st Place. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter offers an intimate glimpse at the personal and social implications of longstanding public punishment. Hester Prynne is indefinitely visibly marked as an adulteress through the scarlet letter A embroidered on her dress, but… Read more Madeline Dagnall, “A For Adultery, Ambiguity and Authority: Public Discipline in The Scarlet Letter,” 1st Place.

Emily DeGarie, “Environmental Exploitation and the Subaltern in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things,” 2nd Place. The issue of environmental destruction is one that is not limited to postcolonial countries, yet it undoubtedly has a greater effect in countries that have experienced colonization than in the Western world because of the exploitation of resources… Read more Emily DeGarie, “Environmental Exploitation and the Subaltern in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things,” 2nd Place.

Kamryn Kobel, “’An Eternal Moment’ of Practice: Engaging in the Act of Oral Storytelling in N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn,” 2nd Place. N. Scott Momaday’s novel House Made of Dawn follows the main character, Abel, as he engages in a series of returns home: from war, from prison, and from hospitalization. Throughout the… Read more Kamryn Kobel, “’An Eternal Moment’ of Practice: Engaging in the Act of Oral Storytelling in N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn,” 2nd Place.

Jasmine Mattey, “Negotiating Humanity: Race, Representation, and Privilege in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man,” 3rd Place. There is no more powerful position than that of being “just” human. The claim to power is the claim to speak for the commonality of humanity. Raced people can’t do that—they can only speak for… Read more Jasmine Mattey, “Negotiating Humanity: Race, Representation, and Privilege in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man,” 3rd Place.