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, 2024.
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.
Eligibility
The essay contest is open to currently enrolled graduate students at WMU.
Deadlines
Submission deadline: April 1, 2024
The faculty serving as respondents will select two outstanding submissions to be awarded a cash prize and publication in the Hilltop Review. The first place prize will be $1000 and the second place prize will be $600 (in the form of financial aid). The prize-winning papers may be published in the Hilltop Review.
*Some WMU graduate students may not be eligible to receive monetary awards.
Contestants will be contacted by email to confirm receipt of the essay.
Previous Winners
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”