Megan Dale, a senior University Honors student, has won the 2012 North Callahan Essay Prize, administered by the Humanities Program at UTC. Dale, who has a double major of history and English, was honored at the UTC Arts and Sciences Awards Day for her submission, “Nancy Drew, Girl Detective: The Paradoxical Nature of Femininity in the 1950s.” She received a $1,000 cash prize.
The North Callahan Essay Competition is awarded each year to an undergraduate whose exceptionally fine essay addresses a subject related to the Humanities (art, music, philosophy, religion, rhetoric/literature, history, or interdisciplinary studies that combine these disciplines).
Funding for the competition award is provided by an endowment established by the late Dr. North Callahan, distinguished Professor Emeritus of History (New York University), author of seventeen books, and alumnus of The University of Chattanooga.
This year, the competition received many fine essays, ranging from theorizing the western on film, to the metaphysics of the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism, to Virginia Woolf’s female characters.
Entries for the 2012 competition were judged by UTC faculty Dr. Bill McClay (SunTrust Chair of Excellence in the Humanities; Department of History), Dr. Michelle White (Department of History), and Dr. Abbie Ventura (Department of English).
“I’m so, so excited! I plan to use this award toward the Honor’s trip to China. We leave in early May,” Dale said.
Days after she receives her undergraduate degree from UTC, Dale will join 25 fellow students, faculty and staff as they leave the US on Tuesday, May 8, for the first UTC University Honors trip to the Far East. The group is scheduled to visit Nanjing, Beijing, including a trip to the Great Wall, Suzhou, and Shanghai, where the Shanghai Acrobatics Troupe will perform.
