Department of Religious Studies

Annual Essay Contest Winners 2007

Each spring the Department of Religious Studies holds several essay contests: undergraduate essay, graduate essay, senior honors thesis, and the Gallagher essay contest.

At our annual Honors Day celebration, the winners were announced. This year's Gallagher essay contest winners are:

First Prize -- Christopher Chrzan for "Beyond Mystic, Monastic & Misogynist: Challenging the Inferiority of Feminine Power Roles in Medieval Japanese Religion."

Second Prize -- Aaron Goldman for "Broken Individuality and Fractured Community: Tracing the Badiouian Event from the Road to Damascus to Auschwitz"

Third Prize -- Timothy Swanger for "Passion Against Passion: The Spirit at War with Itself."

The Undergraduate Essay Award went to Becky Winn for ' "By word formyd in my understonding": Language and its Reworking in The Shewings of Julian of Norwich'

The Graduate Essay Award went to Erik Hammerstrom for "Chinese Buddhist and Lingbao Daoist Metaphors of Roots in the 5th and 6th Centuries ."

The Senior Honors Essay Award was a three way tie:
"Pedagogy, Polemic, Propaganda: The Evolution of Martin Luther's Art and Rhetoric," by Christine Foust

"Defending Liberation Theology: A Rejoinder to Cardinal Ratzinger," by Emily Crouch

"Eastern Orthodoxy and Virtue Ethics: Community Formation and Social Action in the Liturgy," by Maggie Downham

Congratulations to all of our winners!