Prizes Awarded at Honors Convocation
The Periclean Scholar Awards recognize outstanding senior projects and theses and offer the winning students the opportunity to share their work with the Skidmore Community during an open ceremony hosted by the Periclean Honors Forum.
2024 - Emilka Jansen '24
2024 - Carla Crawford '24
2022 -Luke Deuterman '23
Established in honor of Joseph C. Palamountain, president of Skidmore College, 1965-87, and awarded to the students submitting the best examples of expository prose in English, unrestricted as to subject matter.
2024 - Emilka Jansen '24
2024 - Anesu Mukombiwa '24
2023 - Emily Kayser '26
2022 - Emilka Jansen '24
For exemplary student work of significant scale that centers social justice and presents a substantive engagement with one or more of the following issues: racism/racial justice, racialized systems of power, colonization/decolonization, and intersecting oppressions.
2022 - Dotty Irrera '22
This is awarded to a senior in English who has shown outstanding promise as a literary critic, scholar, or artist, and who intends to pursue graduate studies or a career in writing.
2024 - Emilka Jansen
2023 - Kate Whatley
2022 - Miriam Harrow
2021 - Eliza Kuperschmid
2020 – John Brox McCarthy
2019 – Kallan Dana
2018 – Laura Pierson
2017 – Brian Allan
2016 – Elina Schenker
2015 – Matthew Gellman
2014 – Ryanne McEvoy
2013 – Margaret Myers
2012 – Benjamin Horton
2011 – Catherine Pond
2010 – Julia Louise Dauer
This is awarded to the student who has excelled as a critic or scholar during their career as an English major.
2024 - Kari Stein
2023 - Tory Abbott
2022 - Merrill Brouder
2021 - Nicole Wong
2020 - Hannah Rose Sacks
2019 - Juni Ahari
2018 - Caity Cook
2017 – Taylor Ray
2016 – John Volza
2015 – Eleanor Laurence
2014 – Katherine Cavanaugh
2013 – Laura Geralyn Naperstek
2012 – Molly O’Brien
2011 – Anne Potish
2010 – Emma Newcombe
This is awarded annually to a student who has shown promise and superior work in the writing of poetry.
2024 - Kimberly Pienkawa
2023 - Natalie Viebrock
2022 - Ella Fishman
2021 - Andres Priest-Lopez
2020 – Samuel Evan Weinberg
2019 – no prize awarded
2018 – Nell Mittelstead
2017 – Ryan Davis
2016 – Corey Baumer
2015 – Matthew Gellman
2014 – Margaret Kaplan
2013 – Chloe Ann Stricklin
2012 – John Maher
2011 – Catherine Pond
2010 – Daniel Kraines
This is awarded annually to a student for a fiction manuscript or set of manuscripts that reveal sensitivity to theme, structure, characterization, and language found in serious fiction written in English.
2024 - Georgie Svrcek '25
2023 - Yotam Dinour '25
2022 - Nakeysa Hooglund '23
2021 - Grace Hickey
2020 – Nicole Wong
2019 – Nicole Wong
2018 – Jeffrey Dingler
2017 – Julianna DiStefano
2016 – Sean van der Heijden
2015 – Lucia Akard
2014 – Cameron Fay
2013 – Shannon Keane
2012 – Deven Bussey
2011 – Marie-Claire Verna Churchouse
2010 - no prize awarded
This is awarded to a student who has excelled in the writing of fiction.
2024 - Coltrane Cho '24
2023 - Avighna Koppala '23
2022 - Kimberly Pienkawa '25
2021 - Aidan Norr
2020 – Natalie Jacobs
2019 – Olivia Lipkin
2018 – Rose O’Connor
2017 – Brian Allan
2016 – Monica Horowitz
2015 – Quinn Martin
2014 – Jennifer Evans
2013 – Rowley Coffin Amato
2012 – Sophia Stewart
2011 – Amanda Werner
2010 – Christopher Keyser
Recipients of Distinguished Writing Awards
These awards recognize excellent student essays at the 103/105/105H; 110; 200; and 300 levels. Members of the faculty submit papers to the Honors and Awards Committee, which consists of department members who evaluate and discuss the nominations and announce the award winners at a ceremony in the spring semester.
2024 - Aleksandr Gideon ‘27, “A Language Lost and Recovered"
2023- Abby Brew '26 "The Little Boat That Could"
2022 - Zia Foxhall '25 "Dirty Computer. The Power of Protest Music"
2021 - Annika Johnson '24 "Letter to my Future Daughter"
2020 - Grant Summermatter ’23, “Dirty Beach on the Edge of Forever”
2019 - Abby MacDonald '22, “No Frills Dining”
2018 - Amira Silverman '21, "Swinging In A Courtyard: Childhood Within the Walls of Silwan"
2017 - Joseph Gouvin '20, "Encyclopedic Organization in 'The Heat of the Universe'"
2016 - Elianna Mentzer '19, "Monster Mash: Gothicism in Never Let Me Go"
2015 - Eve Stewart '18, "Toward Heaven and Back: On Robert Frost's 'Birches'"
2014 - Taylor Ray '17, "A Worldly Interpretation of The Tempest as Internally Contrapuntal"
2013 - Eleanor Maude Laurence '15, "Graham Swift's Waterland: Mythical Fact in 'Historia'"
2012 - Jonny Ausubel '14, "The Infinite Cave"
2011 - Nicole McAllister '14, "The Audience of Autohagiography: Insight into the Medieval Mind"
2024 -Kaiyu Watkins ‘27, “Lovers and Beloved: Interpretations of Everyman’s Deity-Figure”
2023 - Sasha Green '26 "Temptation and Commodification"
2022 - Becca Haberman '25 "Where She Lies Low: The Neglected Voice and Price of Experience in Goblin Market"
2021 - Emma Stratman '24 "Kevin Young's 'Ode to the Midwest' as a Love Letter to Passive Aggression"
2020 - Aymon Langlois ’23, “Pip’s Penitence”
2019 - Franny Hough `22, “The Many Layers of Games in ‘The Purloined Letter’”
2018 - Noah Mendel '20, "The Crucial Complexity of 'My Papa's Waltz'"
2024 -Aoife Keefe ‘24, “’Curiouser and curiouser’: Dali’s Surrealist Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
2023 - Yotam Dinour '25 "The Myth of Babel and the Translator's Lot"
2022 - Dani Wood '24 "Making Space for Women's Testimony"
2021 - Natalie Jew '23 "Dreaming Awake"
2020 - Rose O’Gara ’20, “The Surreal Imaginary: Salvador Dali’s Alice”
2019 - Jonah Cohen `20, “Forgiveness and Sympathy: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a Revolutionary Text”
2018 - Basil Lilien '19, "Disentangling Characters and People: A Criticism of 'Narrative Prosthesis'"
2017 - Lauren Jaeger '19, "Recognition of the Other: Reconciliation of Identity in Disgrace and Wide Sargasso Sea"
2016 - Juni Ahari '19, "Motionless Modern Love: Stillness in 'Modern Love: I'"
2015 - Brian Allan '17, "Gender in The Passion of New Eve"
2014 - Peter Beiser '15, "Poe and Dupin: A Calculating Artist and an Imaginative Analyst"
2013 - Margaret Haas '15, "Infant Sight: Elizabeth Bishop and the Loss of Innocence"
2012 - Allison Kruse '12, "John Ruskin's Illustrated Fable King of the Golden River as an Avenue for Environmentalism
2011 - Adina Fried '12, "Nonviolence versus Violence: Competing Conceptions of Indian Independence in Tagore's The Home and the World and Adiga's The White Tiger"
2024 - Austin Brannan ‘24, “Bad Moms: Upheaval of Late-Victorian Conventions of Motherhood”
2023 - Abigail Svetlik '24 "Jane Austen's Emma: A Query into Queerness, Literal and Literary"
2022 - Justin Rizzi '23 "Milton Lives: Miltonic Ideals in John Carpenter's Reagan Era Resistance"
2021 - Salvatore Juliano '21 "Out of the Closet and Into the Gaze: Immaculate Masculinity and Gay Shame in James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room"
2020 - Annabel Pruitt ’20, “The Monster, Skinned: Defining Monstrosity at the Turn of the Century”
2019 - Sammy Bluth `16, “Subverting Societal Conventions: Sexual Desire and the
Inaccuracy of Language in Tirso de Molina’s The Trickster of Seville”
2018 - Jessica Austin '18, "Cultural Appropriation in Fiction: A Perspective from Milton's Areopagitica"
2017 - Elianna Mentzer '19, "Sea and Self: Water and Identity in David Copperfield"
2016 - Gina Simoncelli '16, "Invisible Monsters: Internalized Monstrosity in Lolita, Psycho, and Silence of the Lambs"
2015 - Claire Cohen '17, "The Riddle of a Man and a Woman: William Carlos Williams' Treatment of the Human Body"
2014 - Emily Willstatter '14, "Zadie Smith's On Beauty as Revisionist Fiction: The Need for an End to Howard"
2013 - Lena Bilik '14, "'Qui est la?': Identity and the Feminist Revisionist Imagination"
2012 - Adina Fried '12, "'A Pessimism of Strength': The Nietzschean Elements of Irony in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man"
2011 - Elizabeth Adelman '11, "The Blakean Dialogue: An alaysis of the voices and discourse of William Blake's 'Visions of the Daughters of Albion' through the dialogical philosophy of Mikhail Bakhtin's The Dialogic Imagination"
The Honors and Awards Committee also annually selects the recipient of the Miranda Warner Award. This award, established in memory of Miranda Warner, Class of ’79, recognizes a student who produces exemplary literary criticism on the work of a female author, or an essay sensitive to women’s issues.
2024 - Jessica Byers ‘24, for “Sarojini Naidu: A Female Decadent and Her Poetic Song”
2023 -Tory Abbott '23 "Blooming: Gender and the Transformative Power of Names in Ulysses"
2022 - Emma Stratman '24 "From the Small-Minded to the Strong-Minded: The Angel and Failed Angels of Vanity Fair and David Copperfield"
2021 - Jackie Allaire-MacDonald '23 "Reading the Brontë Canon for Feminist Messages"
2020 - Nicole Wong ’21, “The Art of Re-knowing in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse”
2019 - Basil Lilien '19, “Race, Gender, and Objectification in Oroonoko”
2018 - Jessica Austin '18, "Beauty and Recognition in Dickens' Bleak House"
2017 - Juni Ahari '19, "Naming, Power and Possession in Jane Eyre"
2016 - Tali Cohen '19, "Shame and Sexuality: Blake's Poetic Exploration of the Fall from Eden"
2015 - Rebecca Morofsky '15, "Untitled"
2014 - Lena Bilik '14, "Unnaming Her: Reechantment, Language, and the Ecofeminist Imagination"
2013 - Ryanne McEvoy '14, "Q"
2012 - Emily Cohen '12, "Woman with No Navel-Song of Solomon's Room for the Impossible"
2011 - Angela Doran '11, "Sexing the Unsexed with Terror and Mad Laughter"
2024 - Yej Rodriguez ‘24
2023 - Matthew Duda '23
2022 - Andre Stark '22
2021 - Maalik Dunkley '21
2020 - Maddie Bonin ’20
2019 - Hannah Haines '19
2018 - Elisa Smith '18
2017 - Isabel Goldstein '17
2016 - Cara Kraus-Perrotta '16
2015 - Shannon Keane '15
2014 - Lindsay Camp '14
2013 - Sarah Minney '13
2012 - Monica Ginsberg '12
2011 - Rachelle Oldmixon '11
2024 - Quinn Butterworth ‘26
2023 - Emilka Jansen '24
2022 - Trinity Rollins '22
2021 - Zeynep Inanoglu '21
2015 - Arman Avasia '15
2014 - Arman Avasia '15
2013 -
2012 - Laura Naparstek '13
2011 - Benjamin Currotto '11, "The Visual Cliff"
2015 - Bryan Perley '15, "Tropic of Solitaire"
2014 - Maya Gittelman '14, "Untitled"
2013 -
2012 - Ben Horton '12, "Long Island"
2011 - Naomi Telushkin '11, "Ashton"
2024 - Tess Fresco ‘24
2023 - Anesu Mukombiwa '24 " A Song"
2022 - Emma Stratman '24 "My Shoebox Letter: Dear Afton"
2021 - Given in Memory of Samantha Sasenarine '21: Sophie Wolfman '22 "Fairfield Hills"
2020 - Matthew Clyne '20
2019 - Jessica Pavia '20, "A Bibliography of Remembering"
2018 - Kellina Moore '18, "Waiting Room"
2017 - Zoe Freedman Coleman '17, "Lejos"
2016 - Eliza Dumais '16, "Dear F"
2015 - Jake Musich '15, "Fragments"
2014 - Lindsay Camp '14, "Stains"
2014 - Margaret Kaplan '14, "A Haunting"
2013 -
2012 - Margo Shickmanter '12, "Shirley"
2011 - Annie Bruckner '11, "Motion of Being"
2020 - Tamar Bordwin '21
2019 - Maria Llona '19
2018 - Sarah Calaman '19
2017 - Clara Moser '17
2016 - Kaitlin Curley Anders '17
2016 - Honorable Mention: Pete O'Connell '16
2015 - Maggie Haas '15
2014 - Matthew Gellman '15
2013 -
2012 - Jolene Paternoster '12
2011 - Jake Bauer-Anstadt '11