Winners and Finalists from 2024
Framing Femininity: Opportunities for Gender Non-Conformity at U.S. Women's Colleges at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Natté Fortier
A Competition Between the Economy and the Environment: An analysis on the impacts of the Olympic Games for host countries, Phuong-Anh Ha
Artlessness: A Disturbing Ideal in Fanny Burney's Evelina, Autumn Wille
Winners and Finalists from 2023
The Forced Effeminization of Male Chinese Immigrants and the Consequences of This Process, Hailee Brandt
Gold Nanoparticles and Liposomal Nanocarriers for Drug Delivery in Cancers, Ari Cogswell and Sylvia Guillet
Jewish Pioneers in the Service of Christian Whiteness in the 19th-Century American West, Elizabeth Klein
Impacts on Native American Literacy Throughout the 1800s, Alyssa Lawhorn
“A Colony of Our Choice”: Black Baltimoreans and Emigration to Trinidad, Mars McLeod
The Racial Inventions of Medieval Travel Writings, Paramita Vadhahong Painter
Retelling Tales: Patience Agbabi's Queering of Chaucer's "The Man of Law's Tale", Caylin Wigger
Winners and Finalists from 2022
Snake Reciprocation in Terms of Classical Conditioning: Scent and Auditory Stimuli, Zeina Y. Ghanem
Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve: Expressing Hecuba’s Emotions in Artistic Retellings, Marie Gruver
Jewish People and Relationships with Christians in the Antebellum US, Elizabeth Klein
Rabbits and Hogs and Bears, Oh My! Monstrous Births and Control Over Pregnant Bodies, Elizabeth Klein
The Worth of the Black Disabled Body: An Excavation of Black Disabled Legal History, Alyssa McLeod
“Their eyes met at the same instant”: The Queer Gothic and Triumphant Romance of The Price of Salt, Deirdre Price
Communication of Values and Morals Through Andrea della Robbia’s Prudence, Caylin Wigger
Winners and Finalists from 2021
Interpretresses: Native American Women Translators in Colonial America, Faith Clarkson
John Andrew Jackson: Enslaved Resistance, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the Downfall of American Chattel Slavery, Alexander Ernst
The Impact of Patriarchy on Stud Lesbians, Meilin Miller
The Relationship Between Parasocial Relationships and Chronic Ostracism Among Differing Belongingness Needs, Kaitlin M. Mitchell
The Creature in The Looking Glass: Miltonic Marriage and The Female Self in Breaking Dawn, Jay Wright
Winners and Finalists from 2020
The Effect of Long-term Stress on Hippocampus and the Involvement in the Pathophysiology of Psychological Disorders, Suicide, and Alcohol Use Disorder, Hinza Batool Malik
Rejecting Bolivarianism: Political Power in South America, Jaiya McMillan
The Practice of Clitoridectomies: Its Influence on the Gikuyu Tribe, Kenyan National Identity, Cultural Nationalism, and British Powers, Savannah Scott
Winners and Finalists from 2019
Women as Agents and Beneficiaries of Autonomy: Case Study of a Brick-kiln Community in Bhaktapur, Nepal, Grishma Bhattarai
Shaping Sexual Identity in Weimar Republic Germany, Megan Caldwell
The Impact of Adequate Funding and Expenditures on Public Education and Standardized Test Scores: A Case Study, Uma E. Casey
Social Influence on Pick-Up Truck Purchase: A Case Study, Sydney Clark
A cup of colonialism: A qualitative analysis of Starbucks and Fair Trade Coffee, Katie Grandelli
The Body Ecstatic: The Masochism of Devotion as Seen in Ritual Possession, Dean Symmonds
Freedom to Fall: Milton’s Christ, Supernatural’s Castiel, and the Secularity of Choice, Cassidy Trudeau
Winners and Finalists from 2018
The Refashioning of Gender Binaries within the Constructed Identity of Tomboy in Girlhood and Beyond, Maddie Clevenstine
Cultural Effects on Mental Health in Dreaming in Cuban Christina, E’vaan Duncan
The Turkish Embassy Letters and the Development of Discourse, Meaghan Harrington
Shakespeare’s Zombies: The (un)Dead, the Contagious, and the Resistant, Kelli Hyre
Caliente, Crazy, and Conveniently Marketable: Latinx Female Bodies in American Media, María Fernanda Junco-Rivera
Between Heaven and Earth: Collective Memory Across Time and Place in the Quilts of Harriet Powers, Ariel Rudy
The Western, Violence, and Queer Expression in Red River, Brokeback Mountain, and Thelma & Louise, Dean Symmonds
Ces Enfants Bizarres: Exploring Music as a Space of Resistance for Queer Women in France, Rachael Walker
Winners and Finalists from 2017
Discursive Mapping: Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and Thomas Jefferson’s Construction of Selfhood and Otherness, Monica Doebel
Spiritual Essentialism at Standing Rock, Yitazba Largo-Anderson
The Role of Trade and Renewables in the Nexus of Economic Growth and Environmental Degradation: Revisiting the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), Nguyen Thi Ngoc Lan
An Impossible Standard: The Virgin Mary and the Construction of Southern Womanhood, Dean Symmonds
An examination of medicinal ethnobotany and biomedicine use in two villages on the Phnom Kulen plateau, Taylor Walker
Coming Together as ONE: How a Los Angeles Magazine Fostered the LGBT Community, Gina Wiese
Winners and Finalists from 2016
Feminism in Revolution: Women of the 19th Century Anti-Tsarist Movements, Kayley DeLong
Nasser of Egypt and the Egypt of Nasser, Pria G. Jackson
Art as Propaganda in Ancient Greece: The Feeding of the Greek Soldier’s Ego, Judith M. Lamb
A Quandary of Errors: The Problem of Innocence in Paradise Lost, Mandy Moore
A Matter of Class: Sin Yun-bok’s Depictions of Kisaeng as Participants of Everyday Life, Abigail Sease
Winners and Finalists from 2015
The Feasibility of a Terraforming Expedition, Maura Lydon
Darlings In Love: A History of Romance Between Women at Hollins University in the Early 20th Century, Antonia Nagle
The Case for Women in Financial Services, Thao Thanh Nguyen
Healing Through Hope: A Rhetorical Analysis of Barack Obama’s National Eulogies, Victoria West
Winners and Finalists from 2014
Higher Education, Higher Costs: An Income-Contingent Approach, Catherine Hensly
Female Activism: Reevaluating Traditional Buddhist Patriarchy in Chinese Occupied Tibet, Mikaela Murphy
Advice or Consent: The U. S. Senate's Role in Confirming Supreme Court Nominees and the Robert H. Bork Confirmation Hearing, Marjory O'Leary
Anxiety of the Unknown in Art: Xu Bing's A Book from the Sky, Abigail Sease
A Style of His Own: A Rhetorical Analysis of President Barack Obama's Inaugural Addresses, Victoria West
Winners and Finalists from 2013
Madame Tussaud and the Women of the French Revolution, Leah Craig
Playing Politics with Rape: Republican Apologia in the 2012 Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization, Kelsey DeForest
Proceed to Olympus: The Iconography of the Return of Hephaestus, Catherine Hensly
The Beginning of the End: A Look at the Causes of the Schism in the Methodist Episcopal Church, Rebecca Rowe
Winners and Finalists from 2012
Kalligeneia: Fertility and Feminine Focus on an Athenian Bell Krater, Suzanne Allison
Decision Height: a Three-Act Play with Music, Meredith Levy
The McVitty Book of Hours; Finding a Link to the Illustrations, Ashton Little
"Gone but not Forgotten": A Study of Gravestone Imagery and Iconography in Southwest Virginian Cemeteries, Amanda Marcus
The Complexity of Kadmos, Abbey Minor
Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Leader of the Constitutional Women's Suffrage Movement in Great Britain, Cecelia Parks
Winners and Finalists from 2011
Imperial Performativity: the Life, Transgressions, and Writings of Isabelle Eberhardt under the Lens of Queer Theory, Kelsey DeForest
Absurdity as Resistance in Arab Literature, Melissa Hammond
Living in the Dark in Nepal, Raisha Kasaju
A Unique and Mysterious Shahnama Miniature, Sarah Mirseyedi
Why God, Why? A Defense of the Contradictory God in Paradise, Amber Rambharose