Stanford Report, June 14, 2006

Twelve first-year students awarded annual Boothe Prizes for excellence in writing

Twelve students have earned Boothe Prizes for Excellence in First-Year Writing, an award that recognizes exceptional work by first-year students in the Introduction to the Humanities Program (IHUM) and Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) courses.

First-place winners received a copy of The Riverside Shakespeare and $350; runners-up received a copy of the volume. The prizes are made possible by the generosity of the late D. Power Boothe, '31; his widow, Catie Boothe; and their son, Barry Boothe, '62.

Students are nominated by instructors teaching IHUM and PWR courses, and papers are judged by a prize selection committee on criteria appropriate to the particular assignment and general program goals for writing. All winning essays are published in Boothe Prize Essays: Excellence in First-Year Writing at Stanford. Previous editions of the publication can be viewed at http://bootheprize.stanford.edu and http://pwr.stanford.edu/publications/index.html.

Following is a list of this year's winners, their essay titles and instructors (in parentheses):

Spring quarter 2005

Jessica Lee, winner: "Death of the Faces of God" (Kirsti Copeland)

Kimber Lockhart, winner: "Women in Computer Science: A Skill-Specific Analysis" (Claire Bowen)

Julie Byren, honorable mention: "If You're Lost Enough to Find Yourself: Unveiling Nature's Secrets in Robert Frost's 'October' and 'Directive'" (Alice Staveley)

Nick Parker, honorable mention: "The Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell: Mistakes Worth Fixing" (David Colon)

Autumn quarter 2005

Jennifer Chin, winner: "Reaffirming, Not Redefining: A Look at Rem Koolhaas' New Seattle Central Library" (Mark Feldman)

Patrick Leahy, winner: "The Three Furies of Dublin" (Alison Lovell)

Matthew Gribble, honorable mention: "Gender, Art and the Nursing Shortage: The Effect of Gendered Visual Rhetoric on the American Healthcare System" (Scott Herndon)

Nathan Pflueger, honorable mention: "Hamlet's Imagined Filial Love" (Joel Slotkin)

Winter quarter 2006

Sarah Johnson, winner: "Breaking the Watch Along with the Wedding Glass: Conceptions of Time in the Transition from Biblical to Rabbinic Judaism" (Keila Diehl)

Cecilia Yang, winner: "The Memorial Hall for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre: Rhetoric in the Face of Tragedy" (Scott Herndon)

Jason Dunford, honorable mention: "Empowering the Oppressed: The Role of Language in the Struggle Against Apartheid in South Africa" (Kathryn Mathers)

Aaron Quiggle, honorable mention: "In Search of an Anorexic Rhetoric: A Theory of Language, Meaning, Society and Mental Illness" (Scott Herndon)