WATU chooses award winners

The Writing Across the University program, announced last week the winners of the Samuel and Ida Mandell Undergraduate Essay Awards for the 1991-1992 academic year. The WATU contest winners get $200 cash and their works are published in an essay awards book. WATU is using the booklet with the first place essays to demonstrate distinguished student writing. Peshe Kuriloff, WATU director and essay judge, said last week that the winners needed to illustrate a "mastery of writing" and a clear "command over the subject matter." Although the contest is open to all undergraduates, Fang commented that few are aware of the essay contest and only a limited number of professors stress entry. "Often the best writers don't feel the need to take a writing class and so never enter the contest," she said. The winners, however, came from a wide variety of disciplines. For instance, Anat Ben-Zvi submitted her essay for Professor Elizabeth John's Art History 100, a Freshman Seminar in American Art History affiliated with WATU. The contestants did not have to be in courses affiliated with WATU and anyone could enter. WATU offers undergraduate writing advising and over 35 specialized writing-intensive courses, in many subjects. College sophomore Ben-Zvi took first place in the humanities category for her essay "The Ideal and the Real: Representations of End of the Century Views of Women." The faculty readers awarded an honorable mention to College junior Karen Fang for her paper "Imagining Aging: Interpreting Mrs. Dalloway." College graduates Joshua Engel, Soren Kisiel and Kate Ledger also won $200 awards. College graduate Hilary Locker was awarded an honorable mention.

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