Graduate Humanities Essay Contest

The Western Michigan University Center for the Humanities invites submissions to the WMU Graduate Humanities Essay Contest - Essay Submission Deadline: April 1, 2025.

Details

The contest invites essays from all graduate students at WMU. Previously published essays or essays already accepted for publication elsewhere are not eligible for the contest.

Length: 25 pages maximum. If your essay is part of a longer piece, a chapter in your dissertation for example, please indicate that on the first page of the essay.

Essays should be in English.

Call for Papers 

Eligibility

The essay contest is open to currently enrolled graduate students at WMU. 

Deadlines

Submission deadline: April 1, 2025

The faculty serving as respondents will select two outstanding submissions to be awarded significant prizes: the first place prize will be $1000 and the second place prize will be $600 (in the form of financial aid).

*Some WMU graduate students may not be eligible to receive monetary awards.

Contestants will be contacted by email to confirm receipt of the essay.

Submit a Paper

Previous Winners

2024

First-place ($1000): Anita Zandstra: "The Ironic Feminine Voice in Three Poems by Rosario Castellanos"

Runner-up ($600): Levi Smith: "Gender and a Pluralist Account of First-Person Authority"

2023

First-place ($1000): Kyle C. VanderWall: ‘‘‘In the beets’ Mexican Women and the Sugar Beet Industry in Michigan, 1917-1927”

Runner-up ($600): Henry Curcio: “Irony in Plato’s Crito: Making Sense of Socratic Disobedience"

2022

First-place prize ($1000) Ruth Aardsma Benton: “Challenging Colonialism through Religion: Connections Between Colonialism, Power, and Religion in Colonial Uganda"

Runner-up prize ($600) Eric Morningstar: “All for The Glory of God: Reconstructing the Jesuit Perception of Odawa Female Identity in New France, 1660-1675”

2021

First place prize ($1000) Jason Rose: “Mentalités and the Search for Total History in the Works of Annalistes, Foucault, and Microhistory"

Runner-up prize ($600) Austin Avison: “Delusional Mitigation in Religious and Psychological Forms of Self-Cultivation: Buddhist and Clinical Insight on Delusional Symptomatology”

2020

First place prize ($500) Dale Brown: “The Promise of Higher Education in Prison: Cognition, Character, and Citizenship"

Runner-up prize ($300) Mitchell Winget: “Freedom’s Paradox”