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The Janice E. Cole Writing Prize

Awarded by the Center of Humanities at Hood College for the best essay submitted for a course in the humanities at Hood College.

The Center invites submissions every spring for the annual presentation of its writing prize. The prize is named in honor of the late Dr. Janice E. Cole, a professor of English at Hood College for thirty-one years.

Essays submitted should be no more than thirty pages in length on a subject in the humanities. These essays should have been written since the beginning of the spring semester of the previous year for a course in the humanities at Hood College. They should be accompanied by a paragraph of self-description. Include in this description your place of residence, your year and major at Hood, some examples of your interests or extracurricular activities, and your current plans for the future.

Please submit, if possible, the original, graded copy of your essay along with any revised version of the essay you choose to submit. (If the original, graded version is no longer available, the revised version, with a note of explanation, will suffice.) The papers should be typed, double-spaced, and printed dark enough for easy reading. In most instances, the paper will probably have been written for a course or an independent study, but a section or chapter of an honors paper will also be eligible if the submission can stand on its own as a self-contained unit. All full-time and part-time undergraduates are eligible to participate. Papers may be submitted directly by a student or by a faculty member, with the student’s permission. Only one paper by the same student may be submitted. Essays written originally in a foreign language should be accompanied by an abstract in English.

Submissions will be judged with the following criteria in mind: the quality and style of the prose and the clarity, originality, and breadth of the ideas presented. The committee reserves the right to disqualify any submissions that are not, in its judgment, written on “a subject in the humanities.”

The prize will be $500 for the best essay submitted. One to three honorable mentions may also be awarded.

The members of the selection committee are members of the Humanities Council and are typically drawn from at least three departments in the Humanities. For further information, contact Dr. Genevieve Gessert, Chair of the Humanities Council, at gessert@hood.edu. Official announcement of each year’s guidelines and deadline will be made at the beginning of the spring semester.