Arts Competition
Our annual arts competition recognizes student-created works of art on course-related theme.
Website Project in Multimodal Writing
The inaugural award for the outstanding Website Project in Multimodal Writing for the 2020-2021 academic year goes to Jonathan Le for his Humanities Core website The Lightbulb Moment, https://sites.google.com/uci.edu/humcore-site. This award is funded by the generous donors to the 2021 Zotfunder campaign.
UROP Research Paper Awards
Humanities Core and the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) have combined efforts to recognize excellence in undergraduate research. Each spring, instructors nominate outstanding research papers on an independently chosen topic in the course theme, and a panel of instructors selects the ten best.
2021 Award Winners
Shaylah Davis, “Spongebob Squarepants: How a Sea Sponge Became a Vital Member of the LGBTQIA+ Community” (nominated by Mary Schmitt)
Roseanne De Guzman, “The Othering of the Igorots by the Imperial Archive: Bontoc Eulogy‘s Reversal” (nominated by Giovanna Fogli)
Andrew Lee, “Beyond the Anthropocene: Becoming-Animal and A Thousand Plateaus” (nominated by Larisa Castillo)
Kawain Lo, “Tailored Bodies and Reconstructed Illusions: The ‘Authentic’ Transgender Figure in The Silence of the Lambs” (nominated by Ben Garceau)
Beatriz Lopez Galeana, “Living with Nature: Miyazaki Films as Fantasies and Frameworks of a Human-Nature Coexistence” (nominated by Susan Morse)
Laine Matkin, “Musical Metamorphosis” (nominated by Alice Berghof)
Sammy Merabet, “Conservative and Radical Madness Narratives in Creepypasta and Petscop” (nominated by Tamara Beauchamp)
Lauren Sayat, “Reshaping the Narrative: How Media Misrepresentations Frame Indigenous Issues” (nominated by Ben Garceau)
Dorothy Truong, “Capitalist Mindset: Root of Speciesism and Sexism in Okja” (nominated by Margaret Speer)
Enya Walker, “The Human-Animal Construct: Social Perceptions as a Basis for Personhood in Isle of Dogs” (nominated by Amalia Herrmann)
2020 Award Winners
Alejandra Garcia Ceja, “Disney’s 2016 Film Zootopia as Postracial Utopia Created by the White Imaginary”
Kristian Chung, “Bojack Horseman: A Cynic’s Hollywood”
Nirvana Guzman, “‘Cannibalize the Colonizer’: Manifesto Antropófago’s Brazilian Utopia and Narcissism”
Rishik Lad, “The Paradox of Animal & Human Rights in Nazi Germany”
Maya Lenrow, “A Beginner’s Guide to the Human-Guide Dog Relationship”
Christopher Nagelvoort, “Becoming Anti-Human: How Lovecraftian Horror Philosophically Deconstructs Otherness”
Emily Schoeff, “The Damsel and the Dominatrix: How Catwoman in Batman Returns Serves Simultaneously As a Feminist Icon and a Victim of the Male Gaze”
Flor Solano, “Animalized Enfreakment: The Elephant Man”
Ainsley Vanzyl, “Re-Humanizing the Dead or How Films Transform the Abject Zombie Figure”
2019 Award Winners
Joseph Cheung, “Nostalgic Futures: The Self-Fashioning of Victoria Harbor in Film Posters”
Soo Bin Cho, “Owning Identity by Reclaiming History: Korea and its National Treasure, the Oegyujanggak Uigwe”
Edith Guadalupe Garcia, “A Fairy Tale for Troubled Times: Guillermo del Toro’s Reconstruction of Humanity in The Shape of Water”
Jacob Huang, “Boston, The Soiling of Old Glory, and the Role of Race in Conflating Busing with Desegregation”
Lam Kha Huynh, “Nineteenth-Century Perceptions of Chinese Immigrants and Chinatown through the Principal Chinese Theatre”
Aiden Lovell, “The World’s War as Seen in Jamaica: Racial Oppression Reflected in Reggae”
Nghi Uyen Ly, “The Warren Cup: Male Sexual Transgression and Resistance in Ancient Rome”
Cheyenne Tanner, “The Captive Life of a Puritan Woman: Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity Narrative”
Steven Young, “A Call to Action: Using Theological Language Against Apartheid Rule in the 1985 Kairos Document”
2018 Award Winners
Masaa Al-moukdad, “Ruins of Bosra”
Demetria Baxter, “The Stolen People: Race, Slavery, and the African-American Identity in Black Panther”
Jesse Chong, “A Photograph’s Exemplification of Borderless Christian Hakka Identity”
Sophia Costa, “Rosie Revealed: The Problematic Portrayal Produced by the Pop Culture Icon”
Delia Cruz Kelly, “The Disavowal of Black Motherhood and Its Complexes: Thomas Satterwhite Noble’s ‘Margaret Garner’”
Leeanne Qussiny, “The Immortal Refugee Child”
Reema Saad, ““The Afghan Girl’s Role in Creating a Pathway for White Feminism and American Intervention in Afghanistan”
Maven Sinaguinan, “The Ideological Resistance within José Rizal’s El Filibusterismo: Deconstructing a Post-Colonial Schema”
Michelle Tran, “The Romances of Ishi: A Mark of Civilization or Savagery?”
Michelle Trinh, “Den Lille Havfrue against The Little Mermaid: The Female Other’s Induction into Patriarchy”
2017 Award Winners
Gouri Ajith, “The Immolation of Sampati Kuer: Hindutva and the Defining of Volition and Agency in Sati”
Matthew Chong, “Pilipino Paradox: Carlos Bulosan’s Vision of Identity in American is in the Heart“
Ying Chow, “1984: Seeking Humanity in a Heartless Society”
Isabel Galvez, “Into the Shadows of Identity: On Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza“
Kimberly Hu, “Frankenstein–from Humanity to Monstrosity”
Katie Lynch, “Walls and Waiting: The Power of Expectations in Access Denied“
Alice Nguyen, “Its own Worst Critic: Language’s Self-Analysis in George Orwell’s Animal Farm“
Gwynette Paez, “Seeking its Hidden Identity Within Contemporary Japan”
Michelle Wan, “Beyond Visualizing Homelessness: Ethics of the Aesthetic Production of the Homeless”
Philip Wilkinson, “The Chiasmus of the Augustus of Prima Porta and its Propagandistic Utility”
2016 Award Winners
Samiha Ali. “The Birangona Women of Bangladesh: Analyzing Representations of Sexual Violence during the 1971 Liberation War.”
Sean Beall. “How Martin Luther Killed Mars: The Effects of On War Against the Turk on the European Psyche.”
Michelle Bui. “Beckett and Brecht: Thoughts on the Human Condition.”
Erika Higbee. “Ip Man 2 as a New Discourse: Challenging the Existing Hegemonic Order.”
Stephanie Matsuno. “The Kamikaze of Individual Dreams: A Film Analysis of Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises.”
Aidan McGeath. “Fantastical Conflicts: War as Storytelling Tool in Glen Cook’s The Chronicles of the Black Company.”
Nicole Nguyen. “Media Representations of the Nanking Massacre.”
Dominique Oei. “Constructing Magneto: the (Anti)-American Vision of the Holocaust.”
Meghan Osato. “Proving Loyalties: The Japanese American Struggle for Agency During World War II.”
Darlene Vales. “Hamilton: Bringing Together the Past and the Present.”
See also prize-winning essays from previous years.
