SCIO is delighted to announce Michaelmas Term 2023’s Prize winners. The prizes are awarded to students who demonstrate academic excellence in their tutorials, research essays, British Culture course, or overall academic performance throughout the term (the Alumni prize).
Hilary’s awardees include:
Alumni Prize
- Lydia Camp (for excellence in all aspects of the programme)
Academic Prizes
- Brianne Moore (for excellence in the Research Project, Primary Tutorial, and Secondary Tutorial)
- Brody Eldridge (for excellence in the Research Project, Primary Tutorial, and British Culture Course)
- Kira Dewey (for excellence in the Research Project and Secondary Tutorial)
- Sarah Pouliot (for excellence in the Research Project and Primary Tutorial)
- Pace Hartfield (for excellence in the Research Project)
- Rebekah Aldea-Cruz (for excellence in the Primary Tutorial)
- Annika Currell (for excellence in the Research Project)
- Maggie Ortmeyer (for excellence in the Research Project)
A few of the prize winners shared a bit about their work and the reasons why they find it important…
- In her research essay, Annika Currell (Wheaton College, IL) analysed the appropriation of Virgil’s fourth Ecloguein various writers. Currell explains:
My research paper compares the ways in which Constantine, Jerome, and Augustine reference Virgil’s fourth Eclogue and make meaning from it. There is a long history of Christians interpreting the fourth Eclogue, a Latin poem written prior to the time of Christ, as a reference to Christ. My topic allowed me to read the fourth Eclogue in more depth, having only touched on it briefly in a previous course. Dr. Kirkpatrick helped me to formulate a question which would explore the fourth Eclogue through a Classical reception lens. I aimed to understand how Constantine, Jerome, and Augustine quoted the fourth Eclogue in support of their own ideas, thus reinterpreting it for their contexts. I also examined to what extent each of the authors portrayed Virgil himself as a prophet or Christian. This project was a valuable opportunity to build on the research skills I learned in my SCIO tutorials and use my Latin knowledge to explore a question on my own.
- Sarah Pouliot (Palm Beach Atlantic University, FL) received her award for excellent, original essays in her primary tutorial and her research project. With regard to her work, she states:
My essays in my primary tutorial, Modern Literature, addressed a diverse range of topics: the significance of nature in Sylvia Plath’s poetry, a feminist analysis of Virginia Woolf’s rejection of traditional novelistic narrative, and a didactic ecocritical reading of Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Modern literature often reflects the complexity of the changing human experience—the fragmentation of fleeting thoughts and enduring fears—which I sought to explore in my essays. I also received an award for my research paper examining how the intersectionality of race and disability are depicted in Stephen Crane’s 1898 novella The Monster and Claude McKay’s Romance in Marseille, posthumously published in 2020 (eighty-seven years after it was originally written). My paper offers new insight to critical race and disability studies—two disciplines that have historically been contributed to at the expense of one another. I am thankful to Dr. Thorpe, my primary tutor and research advisor, who encouraged me to explore topics outside of my comfort zone and strive to complicate and further literary scholarship in my writing.
- Lydia Camp (Belmont University, TN) was awarded the Alumni Prize for the second term in a row. She describes her experience of Oxford like this:
Studying with SCIO in Oxford for two semesters has been the most meaningful aspect of my undergraduate career. In formalized tutorials and informal conversations, I engaged with diverse viewpoints, felt intentionally supported by my intelligent tutors and peers, and discovered my vocational passion for academic research. Studying disciplines as diverse as Comparative Government, British Literature, Applied Ethics, and Ecological Thought, a common question arose throughout: Why do people make the particular political and economic choices they do? In my undergraduate thesis on the contemporary rhetoric surrounding Ugandan Asian immigrants in Britain, I had the opportunity to explore this question in greater depth within the context of migration preference. Incorporating insights from the government reports and telegrams that I read at The National Archives in London, I realized firsthand that formal institutions consist of individuals making decisions based on the limited information available to them. As I build on the foundation I developed in Oxford and continue my studies within the subdiscipline of Political Sociology, I look forward to conducting research that further explores this question and informs policy makers’ decision-making.
- Brianne Moore (George Fox University, OR) was awarded a prize for her performance in the Research Project and her Primary and Secondary tutorials. She explains:
During the Michaelmas 2023 term I studied psychological disorders and child development, engaging with a variety of topics including what constitutes abnormality, the potential causes of phobias, and when theory of mind develops. Each week I had the opportunity to better understand the human experience while becoming more efficient at reading and better at communicating my thoughts. I found myself operating at a faster pace than ever before and learned to use the natural transitions of walking from place to place to intentionally take in both what I was learning and the beauty and bustle of Oxford. My most meaningful endeavour was a research project of how cultural differences implicate grief pathology and bereavement counselling. With hopes to someday serve bereaved individuals, I found this work particularly invaluable. Thank you to my tutors and advisor, Drs. Anna Scarnà, Ann Dowker, and Miguel Farias for a truly memorable and enriching few months.
SCIO wishes the prize winners a very happy and successful future!