Awards & Prizes

Submit an essay for a Comparative Literary Studies Essay Prize!

Portal closes after 11:59pm CST Monday, May 19, 2025.
The Comparative Literary Studies Program holds a competition each year for prizes in essay writing. We encourage students from every department and school within Northwestern to compete according to the guidelines below.

For AY 2024-2025, the awards are in three categories:

• CLS Award for Best Honors Thesis
• CLS Distinguished Senior Essay
• Outstanding Achievement Award for Best Paper in a 300-level class

• Any original work submitted to a CLS course is eligible, regardless of the student’s major.
• All comments by instructors on course papers should be removed. Work will be judged anonymously.
• A fully legible scan of the entry copy is acceptable as long as it is in pdf format; handwritten work is not acceptable.
• Students may submit only one work in each of the categories above.
• The suggested length for Senior Essays and Best 300-level Essays is 5-15 pages; Honors theses may be submitted in their entirety
  

Past Winners

2023-2024

The following students received honors in Comparative Literary Studies for the AY2023-2024:

Mateo Gomez | Thesis: Reinterpreting the Modern Physician Through Medical Storytelling | Jennifer Weintritt, Advisor

Maggie McKenna ** (Best Honors Thesis Award co-winner) | Thesis: ”Will you join me in taking up the body?” Adaptation as a Call to Collective Action in Four 21st Century Adaptations of Antigone | Marianne Hopman, Advisor

Peirong She | Thesis: Adaptive Dreaming: Dream of the Red Chamber and the Supercut as Commentary | Corey Byrnes, Advisor

Ivanka Shen | Thesis: Revolution of Affect:Gender, Love, and Identity in the Works of Alexandra Kollontai and Ding Ling | Clare Cavanagh and Paola Zamperini, Advisors

Bobby Yalam **(Best Honors Thesis Award co-winner) | Thesis: Tangier, in and against the Nation-State: Postcolonial Bureaucracy in Recent Tangérois Fiction | Harris Feinsod and Nasrin Qader, Advisors

2022-2023

The following students received honors in Comparative Literary Studies for the AY2022-2023:

Tomer Cherki | Setting Up the Punchline: Exploring the Dark Humor of Avimelech Goes Up by a Whirlwind to the Heavens in Translation | TOMER CHERKI contextualizes his process of translating the novel Avimelech Goes Up by a Whirlwind to the Heavens from Hebrew into English through the lenses of translation theory, history, Holocaust studies, and humor studies. He will argue that the novel’s use of dark humor calls for a translation style that captures the essence of the work as temporalized by the social and historical setting of its publication. 

Inbo Gottlieb-Fenves | Striated and the Smooth | INBO GOTTLIEB-FENVES critically examines the mathematical and literary legitimacy of the fractal structures of “smooth space” presented as rigorous definitions within Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, as well as their relation to the literary works of mathematician Felix Hausdorff, and Jorge Luis Borges’s The Library of Babel.

Rosalie Liu | Under the Webcam: Representation of Lesbian Character and Technological Surveillance in Spider Lilies | ROSALI LIU Rosalie Liu engages with critical theories and close readings of five shots in this presentation to show how the director of Spider Lilies, Zero Chou, problematizes surveillance of the lesbian character. Chou uses complex cinematic techniques to construct and disrupt surveillance and its power on the lesbian character.

• Outstanding Achievement Award for Best Paper in a 200-level class: Bobby Yalam | Heavenly Whores: Exalting the Abject in Genet's The Screens | COMP_LIT 202-0-20/FRENCH 277-0-20, Interpreting Culture | Winter Quarter 2023 | Professor Scott Durham
• Outstanding Achievement Award for Best Paper in a 200-level class: Jacob Emmons | Animal's People and White Disability Studies | COMP_LIT 201-0-20, Reading World Literature | Fall Quarter 2022 | Professor Azadeh Safaien
• Outstanding Achievement Award for Best Paper in a 300-level class: Diana Deng | Looking While Imagining: How the World Makes Sense to Cher through Dionne in Clueless | COMP_LIT 307-0-20 Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and Representation: Romantic Comedies, Old and New | Fall Quarter 2022 | Professor Tristram Wolfe
• Outstanding Achievement Award for Best Paper in a 300-level class: Madison McClellan | Counter Context: Max Aub,s Case for Time- and Spacelessness | COMP_LIT 398 Senior Seminar | Professor Maite Marciano

2021-2022

The following students received awards in Comparative Literary Studies for the AY2021-2022:

• Outstanding Achievement Award for Best Paper in a 200-level class: Bobby Yalam | Comp_Lit 200-0-20: Introduction to Literary Theory | Winter Quarter 2022 | Professor Jonas Rosenbrück
• Outstanding Achievement Award for Best Paper in a 400-level class | Pranav Baskar | Comp_Lit 487-0-21/MENA 490-0-20 | Winter Quarter 2022 | Professors Hannah Feldman and Rebecca Johnson
• Outstanding Achievement Award for Best Paper in a 300-level class: Joy Fu | HUM 370-6-23/French 379-0-20 | Fall Quarter 2021 | Professor Christopher Bush
• Outstanding Achievement Award for Honors Thesis: Violet Decker | Professor Jonas Rosenbrück

2020-2021

The following students received honors in Comparative Literary Studies for the AY2020-2021:

• Hanbyul Jenny Kang | Thesis Title: "Re-Belonging to the Body: South Korean Women’s Resistance to Double Colonialism in 중국인거리 (Junggugingeori) and 고삐 (Goppi)" | Advisor: Evan Mwangi
• Jeremy Lopategui | Thesis Title: "Nietzsche’s Understanding of Truth, Lies, and Constructing" | Advisor: Samuel Weber
• Lucy McDermott | Thesis Title: "A Reading of Assia Djebar’s L’Amour, la fantasia and Eugène Fromentin’s Un été dans le Sahara and Une année dans le Sahel" | Advisor: Nasrin Qader
• Tara Shirvaikar | Thesis Title: The Rise of the Female Vernacular: Contemporary Indian Women Authors and the Subversion of the Heteropatriarchal Linguistic Establishment | Advisor: Laura Brueck

The Best Honors Thesis Award was given to Jeremy Lopategui and Tara Shirvaikar.

The Highest Achievement in Undergraduate Research was given to Hanbyul Jenny Kang.

2019-2020

The following students received honors in Comparative Literary Studies (2019-2020):

• Lois Biggs | Thesis Title: "Dreams of a Different Bridge: Indigenous Art, Embodied Resurgence, and the Alcatraz Occupation" | Advisor: Kelly Wisecup
• Lucy Yang | Thesis Title: "Human Landscapes: Nation and Nature in 1980s China" | Advisor: Corey Byrnes

The Distinguished Senior Essay was awarded to Camille Lopez-Silvero.

The Highest Achievement in Undergraduate Research was awarded to Isabella Schmidt.

The Best Honors Thesis awarded to Lois Biggs.

The Best Honors Thesis awarded to Lucy Yang.

2018-2019

The following students received honors in Comparative Literary Studies (2018-2019):

• Lauren Lee Place | Thesis title: "Kim Ae-Ran’s Run Dad Run: Korean Realism and the Value of Translation" | Advisor: Laura Brueck
• Sophia Lencioni | Thesis title: "Transforming and Flinching away in Julio Cortázar’s “Axolotl” and Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung" | Advisor: Anna Parkinson

The Distinguished Senior Essay was awarded to Jack Drumm.

The Translation Prize was awarded to Lauren Lee Place.

The Highest Achievement in Undergraduate Research was awarded to Sophia Lencioni.

2017-2018

The following students received honors in Comparative Literary Studies (2017-2018):

• Erin Dunbar (advisor: Domietta Torlasco)
• Nicole Kempis (advisor: Harris Feinsod)
• Max Rowe (advisor: Corey Byrnes)

The Distinguished Senior Essay was awarded to Nicole Kempis.

The Best Honors Thesis was awarded to Erin Dunbar.

The Hightest Achievement in Undergraduate Research was awarded to Max Rowe.

2016-2017

The following students received honors in Comparative Literary Studies (2016-2017):

• Eleni Dima (advisor: Laura Brueck)
• Emma Montgomery (advisor: Tristram Wolff)
• Ben Shear (advisor: Harris Feinsod)
• Erica Yoshimura (advisor: Christopher Bush)

The Distinguished Senior Essay was awarded to Emma Montgomery.

The Highest Achievement in Undergraduate Research was awarded to Eleni Dima.

The Translation Award was awarded to Ben Shear and Sofia Rivera Sojo.

2015-2016 

The following students received honors in Comparative Literary Studies (2015-2016):

• Mary Bradford (advisor: Alejandra Uslenghi)
• Andie Forsee (advisor: Laura Brueck)
• Emily Liao (advisor: Erica Weitzman)

The Distinguished Senior Essay was awarded to Mary Bradford. 

The Highest Achievement in Undergraduate Research was awarded to Nicky Swett.