Student Awards
The Virginia
Social Science Association sponsors an annual student paper
competition, as it has since 1990.
Any graduate or undergraduate student at a school in Virginia
is eligible to submit a paper on a topic within the broad scope of
the social sciences. The
protocol for submitting essays in each year’s competition is
detailed in the fall VSSA
Newsletter, as well as on the Web site.
Winners present their research at the annual meeting,
sometimes in a special student panel, more often as members of
various panels. Students
whose submitted essays are not recognized with an award may
nonetheless be invited to participate in the annual meeting.
Papers will be
judged in two categories:
graduate and
undergraduate.
Judges will rate each essay in terms of scholarly content,
critical thinking, clarity of expression, and overall
professionalism (style, citation of references, etc.).
Entrants will each be notified of the judges’ decision
regarding their essays some weeks before the annual meeting.
Winners will be recognized at the awards luncheon at the
meeting.
In addition,
special recognition is sometimes awarded students for the quality of
their presentations at
the conference, regardless of whether they submitted their essays
for prize consideration.
But such papers are often not actually scheduled for presentation
until the afternoon sessions, after the awards luncheon, so these
decisions are not made until the end of the conference, and such
recognition is not given until the conference is over.
Listed below
are many of the students who have been recognized for their
scholarship over the years.
2007 Students Awards
Graduate — First Place — Robert Murray (Virginia Tech), “Trepidation before the Dawn: Robert J. Breckinridge, Robert Wickliffe, and the Anti-Slavery Movement in Antebellum Kentucky”
Graduate — Second Place — Jack Atkins (Virginia Tech), “‘It is Useless to Conceal the Truth Any Longer’: Desertion of Virginia Soldiers from the Confederate Army”
Undergraduate — First place — Kate A. Cristol (University of Virginia), “‘A Duty to Respect’: The Function of Chivalry in the Southern Political Context”
Undergraduate — Second place — Liz Downey (Virginia Tech), “From Sleepy to Bustling: How the Restoration of Williamsburg Changed the Town and Its Inhabitants”
Undergraduate — Third place (tie)
Bridget Devlin (Virginia Tech), “From Sacrifice to Celebration: Virginians in World War II”
Nathen Baker (Virginia Tech), “The Integration of White Students at Hampton Institute”
Most student presenters had not submitted their papers for the essay competitions, and in 2007 the Association initiated (or resumed) an award for particularly effective presentations by undergraduates at the conference. At the close of the conference, it was determined that such recognition for 2007 should go to:
Kate A. Cristol (University of Virginia)
Jennifer Lamb (Virginia Tech)
Margaret Krome-Lukens (Randolph-Macon Woman’s College)
J. Ryan Marsh (Virginia Military Institute)
Jamie Settle (University of Richmond)
2006 VSSA Student Essay Award Winners
Graduate — Cory Brant Warnick (Virginia Commonwealth University), “More Than Just Necessity: Soviet Women in Combat during the Great Patriotic War”
Undergraduate — First Place — Lucas Gordon (Virginia Military Institute), “The Racial Integration of W&L and VMI: A Comparative Study”
Undergraduate — Second Place — Jason Smith (Christopher Newport University), “Magical Negro: Textual Analysis of The Legend of Bagger Vance”
Undergraduate — Third Place — John Cassara (Virginia Tech), “The Summer of ’51:
Percy Miller, the Norton Little Leaguers, and the Integration of Virginia Baseball”
2005
VSSA Student Essay Award Winners
Graduate — First Place —
Daniel Clapper
(University of Richmond), “Fighting for the Confederacy:
German and Irish Immigrants in Civil War Richmond”
Graduate
— Second Place —Benjamin
Sovacool (Virginia Tech), “Constructing a Rogue State:
American
Post-Cold War Security Discourse and North Korean Drug Trafficking”
Undergraduate — First
Place —
Valentina Minak
(University of Virginia), “Legal Implications for Affirmative Action
Based on the Relationship between Diversity and Prejudice”
Undergraduate — Second Place —
Erin K. Mooney (Virginia
Tech), “Women in the IT Workforce in India”
2004
VSSA Student Essay Award Winners
Graduate — Kevin M.
Levin
(University of
Richmond)
Undergraduate —
Carissa Swain Kopp
(Christopher
Newport University)
2003
VSSA Student Essay Award Winners
Graduate — Thomas
Poulin
(Old Dominion
University), “Lessons Learned:
Comparing the Militia Act of 1792 and the Homeland Security
Act of 2002”
Undergraduate — 1st
Place —
Casey Fitzgerald (College
of William and Mary), “Environmental Activism:
Who Wants to Save the Earth?”
Undergraduate —
2nd Place — Doug Turnbull
(Virginia Tech), “White Praying Indians?
Missionary Efforts and Race in Early New England”
2002
VSSA Student Essay Award Winners
Undergraduate — Lori Riley (Bridgewater College), “Consumed With Education: The Dilemma of
Consumer Models in Higher Education.”
Graduate — Jonathan A. Noyalas (Virginia Tech), “Early’s Costliest Victory: The Second
Battle of Kernstown and Its Impact on Union Strategy in the
Shenandoah Valley, 1864.”
2001 Students
Awards
This year the
student awards were unusual, in that the best undergraduate papers
in our annual competition were deemed to be of equal quality. Also,
students were given awards this year for the actual presentation of
their papers in the panels.
Outstanding Papers
Brooke Dunbar,
Mary Washington College, "Is the Country More Important Than the
District?"
Natalie Edmonds,
Christopher Newport University, "Brother Against Brother:
Baptists and Race in the Aftermath of the Civil War"
Lori Riley,
Bridgewater College, "Examining the Meaner World Syndrome:
The Effects of Television on Interpersonal Mistrust and
Anomie"
Outstanding
Presentations
Laura Fanning,
Mary Washington College, "The Fall of a Legend:
The Evolution of Historical Perspective Regarding Molly
Pitcher"
Thomas Harman,
Virginia Military Institute, “The Role of Gender and Sympathy on
Helping Behavior”
Kevin James,
Hampton University, "A Sociohistorical Analysis of Black
Masculinities"
Tim Robinson,
Mary Washington College, "America's Oil Supply:
A Crisis in the Making"
Kelly Turcic,
Mary Washington College, "Age, Educational Attainment, and Media
Source: Indicators of Political Efficacy"
1996 VSSA Student Essay Award Winners
Undergraduate
— 1st Place — Eve Simi, Roanoke College, "Portrayal of the
Physician-Patient Relationship in the Mass Media"
Undergraduate —
2nd Place — Beth Wiley,
Washington and Lee University, "Goals 2000 Educate America Act and
the Improving of America’s Schools Act"
Undergraduate —
3rd Place — Cynthia Lynne
Strickland, Virginia Tech, "The Conflict Leading to the Removal
of the Chinese From Seattle, 1885–86"
Graduate
— 1st Place — Ping Deng,
Old Dominion University, "U.S.–Chinese Relations in the 1990s and
Beyond: Seeking Cooperation Under Fragility"
1995
VSSA Student Essay Award Winners
Undergraduate
— 1st Place — Elizabeth Hottle, Washington and Lee University,
"Making Myself Understood:
The Labeling Theory of Deviance Applied to Stuttering"
Undergraduate —
2nd Place — Stacia Childers,
Radford University, "Life on Virginia’s Eastern Shore in the
Seventeenth Century"
Undergraduate —
3nd Place — Shefali Sharma,
College of William and Mary, "Waikava Village"
Graduate
— 1st Place —Chuck Carey, Virginia Tech, "These Black Rascals:
The Origins of Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment"
1994
VSSA Student Essay Award Winners
Undergraduate
— 1st Place — Anastasia M. Cadden
Undergraduate —
2nd Place — Stacia L.
Childers
Undergraduate —
3rd Place — Jennifer Maslow
Graduate
— 1st Place — Vivian E.
Thomsom
1993
VSSA Student Essay Award Winners
Undergraduate
— 1st Place — Linda Keller, University of Richmond, “Interest Groups
and the Confirmation Process of Supreme Court Justices”
Undergraduate —
2nd Place — Laura Thomson,
Mary Washington College, “Gender among the Igbo”
Undergraduate —
3rd Place — Don Woolverton,
George Mason University, “John Adams, Edmund Burke, and the French
Revolution”
Graduate
— 1st Place — Joseph E. Gleason, Old Dominion University, “Syria and
Iran: Competing Analyses
in Lebanon”
Graduate — 2nd
Place — Shannon Lee Dawdy, College of William and Mary, “Visual
Reconstructions of Human Evolution:
Dioramas and Debates”
Graduate — 3rd
Place — Janice McLaughlin,
Virginia Tech, “Trade Relations between Africa and Europe:
Interdependence or Dependence?”
1992 VSSA Student Essay Award Winners
Graduate Papers
Nancy Mannikko,
Virginia Tech, “There’s More to the Picture Than Mets the Eye—Edward
Wegmann’s Use of Illustrations in
The Design and Construction of Dams”
Neil Kennedy,
College of William and Mary, “Work Enough for Head and Heart:
Dramatic Interaction and the Dynamics of the Steward-Planter
Relationship in Antebellum Tidewater Virginia”
Mark Kemenovich,
College of William and Mary, “The Cultural Inevitability of Wars of
National Liberation:
Toward an Ecology of Event”
Undergraduate
Papers:
Amelia Vinroot,
College of William and Mary, “The Support of Breastfeeding within
American Culture: A
Feminist-Functional Analysis”
Dan Konnor,
James Madison University, “Comparable Worth:
Is It Fair and Necessary?”