Arts Competition
Our annual arts competition recognizes student-created works of art on a course-related theme.
Website Project in Multimodal Writing
Zoë Chang won the award for outstanding Multimodal Writing for the 2023-2024 academic year for her Digital Archive worldswalking.
Brianna Smith won the award for outstanding Multimodal Writing for the 2022-2023 academic year for her Digital Archive Worldbuilding.
Rushika Weerackoon won the award for outstanding Website Project for the 2021-2022 academic year for her website Womanimal.
The inaugural award for the outstanding Website Project in Multimodal Writing for the 2020-2021 academic year went 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.
Nora Folkenflik Memorial Essay Awards
Winners featured on the Campus Writing Contests page
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.
2024 Award Winners
Josephine Bhadran, “Revisionary Mythmaking: How Madeline Miller’s Circe Creates a Feminine World” (nominated by Daniel Siakel)
Lynn Choi, “Glee’s American Dream: the Racial Politics of ‘Asian F'” (nominated by Amanda Malone)
David Diaz, “Queer Worldmaking in Steven Universe“ (nominated by Kurt Buhanan)
Adhi Kona, “The Grammatics of Empire: How Language Captures History & Power in the Colonial Value Systems of RF Kuang’s Babel“ (nominated by Katharine Walsh)
Annika Lee, “Racism, Family Triangulation, and Gender: How the Intersection of Orientalism and the Patriarchy Frames Yu Ziyuan in The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation” (nominated by Sharareh Frouzesh)
Simon Li, “Toward a Genuine Feminism: Confucianism, the State, and Women in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon“ (nominated by Susan Morse)
Emi Mangalindan, “Surrealism in Paprika: A Portal Into the Psyche” (nominated by Kurt Buhanan)
Janaki Nair, “Appropriating the Arts: The Death of Sadir, the Birth of Bharatanatyam, and a 21st-Century Narrative” (nominated by Brook Haley)
Anh Nguyen, “Dark Souls and Existentialism: How community defines a genre” (nominated by Robin Stewart)
Niva Phueklieng, “Assimilation Ideology in League of Legends: Crafting and Dismantling Constructed Identities on Summoner’s Rift“ (nominated by Katharine Walsh)
2023 Award Winners
Bryce Bitetti, “Morality and Intended Play in Interactive Worlds: How Neocolonialist Ideology is Constructed in Breath of the Wild” (nominated by Ben Garceau)
Julia Black, “The Myth, the Man, and the Monster: The Evolution of Black Sails’ Captain Flint” (nominated by Shoshanna Lande)
Céline Dahlstrom, “Artificial Authenticity: The Role of Whiteness in Dimming the Sparkle of Samba” (nominated by Brook Haley)
Dena Falahati, “Empathetic AI: Reflecting Humanity and Combating Isolation through Hybridization and Posthumanism in Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman’s Illuminae” (nominated by Sharareh Frouzesh)
Liam Harrington, “Modern Transcendentalist Vision: How Video Game Red Dead Redemption 2 World Builds Visions of America’s Environmental Past and Future” (nominated by Robin Stewart)
Sarah Hernandez, “Race, Genre, and Beauty: A Close Reading of Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird, a Loose Snow White Retelling that Explores the External Forces that Define One’s Story” (nominated by Susan Morse)
Cali Hess, “Mapping Dreams: The Force Behind Mobility in the Joseph Narrative” (nominated by Gretchen Short)
Roger Nguyen, “Mattel’s Barbie: An Exploration of Consumer-Brand Worldbuilding and The Ethics of Female Fantasization” (nominated by Ghada Mourad)
Janice Park, “Paint the Town Red or Climb the Concrete Jungle: How Street Art Can Defy or Fail to Escape the Disciplinary Apparatus of Capitalistic Control in the Art Market” (nominated by Sharareh Frouzesh)
Vidhya Pillai, “Intersection of Art and Capitalism: Challenging Dichotomy of Form and Message and Regaining Artistic Autonomy” (nominated by Katharine Walsh)
2022 Award Winners
Colin Bolik, “Thinking Inter-Diegetically: A Renewed Model for Realizing Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax as Figuring Subjective Experience and an Ethic of Care” (nominated by Christine Connell)
Yunmeng Cai, “Female Underrepresentation in Patriarchal Male Fantasy Animation is Negatively Affecting Children: Fantastic Mr. Fox” (nominated by Kurt Buhanan)
Meha Datar, “Cyborg or Robot?: Technological Art Pieces’ Entanglement with Their Human Creators” (nominated by Daniel Siakel)
Andrew Diep,“Heed the Coyote Gospel: Understanding Cruelty Through Grant Morrison’s Animal Man” (nominated by Amalia Herrmann)
Teresa Marie Hempen, “Making Machines, Becoming Animals: The Mechanics of Psychic Numbing in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five“ (nominated by Giovanna Fogli)
Jewel Loya, “Doves and Damsels: Patriarchy vs. Feminine Agency in ‘Cinderella'” (nominated by Jie Zhuang)
Kevin Ma, “A Humanist Tale Told by Nonhumans: How Nier: Automata Resolves the Existentialist Crisis” (nominated by Susan Morse)
Karen Phan, “Becoming Popinpobopian: Defining the Self Through Abjection, Metamorphosis, and (Re)Production in Earthlings” (nominated by Ben Garceau)
Jennellee Samkhem, “Cuteness & Capitalism: the Tamagotchi’s Role in ‘Cool Japan’s’ Reinvention” (nominated by Brook Haley)
Emily Tottori, “The Herd and the Neighsayers: Exploring Anxieties and Transgressive Expressions in Brony Fanfiction” (nominated by Sharareh Frouzesh)
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.
