Students bring home three Trollope Prizes

Each year the program in Expository Writing at Harvard University awards the Trollope Prize to the best undergraduate essay in English on the works of Anthony Trollope.  This year William and Mary students took home three prizes in the competition.

Victoria Ryan won first prize ($2,500) for her essay "Tolerant Reading and Women's Liberation in He Knew He Was Right."  Christopher Adams won second prize ($1,000) for "'A terrible tragedy, is it not?':  Shakepearean Discourse in He Knew He Was Right."  Margaret Harvey received an honorable mention and a prize of $250 for her essay "Re-Gendering Fallenness:  The Fallen Man in Trollope's He Knew She Was Right."  The students will also be given hardcopy editions of Trollope novels.

The three prizes are a special honor for Professor Deborah Denenholz Morse, who advised all three essays.  To recognize her special role in the process, Professor Morse will receive $1,600 for curriculum development.  The English Department also wins:  "Dedicated faculty come from dedicated departments," the prize administrator wrote, and so the Department will receive $850 for curriculum development.

This is the second year in a row that William and Mary English students have won Trollope Prizes.  Last year seniors Matthew Sherrill and Lauren Klapper-Lehman won first and third prizes, respectively.