Student Achievements
The English Department is pleased to announce the winners of its 2010-2011 awards. There were many eligible and competitive submissions for the writing prizes, and a strong field of candidates for all the awards. We congratulate this year's winners, and thank our donors for their generosity.
Lee Ann Moczydlowski is the recipient of the 2010-2011 Academic Merit Award. This award is given to a student who demonstrates excellence in academic work overall.
Kathrine Borsuk is the recipient of the 2010-2011 Caryl Sills Teaching Award. This award is given to a student who demonstrates promise for excellence in teaching in either a primary or secondary school.
Tara Boswell is the recipient of the 2010-2011 Graduate Study Award. This award is given to a student who will be attending a graduate program full time, and who demonstrates promise for excellence in graduate study.
Yuri Albertão is the recipient of the 2010-2011 Creative Writing Award for his poem, "Forgiveness." This award is given for an individual work of creative writing completed for a class at Monmouth.
Michael McCloskey is the recipient of the 2010-2011 Academic Writing Award for his essay, "After Achebe: Textual Identity and Timelessness in Modern Culture." This award is given for an individual work of academic writing completed for a class at Monmouth.
Lea Callahan is the recipient of the 2010-2011 English Alumni Scholarship. This scholarship is awarded every two years to a rising junior English major or English double-major who has shown outstanding peformance and potential.
Sara Van Ness, student in the English Department's MA Program, has written a book titled Watchmen as Literature: A Critical Study of the Graphic Novel, published by McFarland and Company in 2010.
The study began as a paper for an independent study and grew into her undergraduate thesis project, both under the direction of Dr. Stanley Blair of Monmouth University's English Department. In addition, she completed some of her research and writing of the book during a graduate-level independent study with Dr. Blair in Spring 2009. The book explores the graphic novel's reception in both popular and scholarly arenas, and how the conceptual relationship between images and words affects the reading experience. Other topics include heroism as a stereotype, the hero's journey, the role of the narrator, and the way in which the graphic layout manipulates the reader's perception of time and space.
Sara graduated summa cum laude in May 2008 from Monmouth University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and secondary education. Her thesis was awarded honors by both the Honors School and the English Department. As an undergraduate, she received the Wayne D. McMurray School of Humanities and Social Sciences Award for Student Excellence and the New Jersey Distinguished Student-Teacher Award. She expects to complete her MA in English in Fall 2011.
MASTER'S THESES
Theses in Progress
Christopher D. Hankenson, "Long-Eared Epic: Watership Down and Questions of Readership."
Theses Completed
Frank Gogol, "Broken" and "Weeds": Short Fiction, Fall 2011.
Sara Van Ness, "Ah Pook is Where? Authorship, Textuality, and Contingency," August 2011. Distinction.
Alexis Anderson, "Deconstructing Post Race, Reception and Language (Linguistics): Richard Wright's Native Son," Spring 2011.
Nicole Gough, "Cajun Dialect and Identity in Ernest Gaines' A Gathering of Old Men," Spring 2011.
Veronica Guevara, "Genre Subversion in Where the Senoritas Are: A Play in Two Acts," Spring 2011.
Sara Krainski, "Waste," Spring 2011.
Lois Levine, "Charlotte Temple and the Making of America's First Best Seller," Spring 2011.
Tracy Lisk, "The Role of Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote in the Progression of Female Characters and Writers from Romance to Novel," Spring 2011.
Sharon Murphy, "Gender Entrapment in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss and Jane Campion's The Piano," Spring 2011.
Walter Przybylowski, "Written Screen/Filmed Page," Spring 2011.
Brianne Sardoni, "Pedagogy of Composition Theory and Synthesis of Methodology," Spring 2011.
Heather Steimel, "Domestic Disturbances," Spring 2011.
Matthew Wheeler, "Enchanting Masculinity: Women and Warrior Culture in Malory's Morte Darthur," Spring 2011.
Shanna Williams, "Postcolonial Feminism," Spring 2011.
